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 The Hope contract of 1613 provides for the heavens to be supported without the help of posts rising from the stage. For this there was a special reason at the Hope, since the stage had to be capable of removal to make room for bear-*baitings. But the advantage of dispensing with the posts and the obstacle to the free vision of the spectators which they presented must have been so great, that the innovation may well have occurred to the builders of the Globe. Whether it did, I do not think that we can say. There are one or two references to posts in stage-directions, but they need not be the posts of the heavens. Possibly, too, there was less use of the descending chair. One might even fancy that Jonson's sarcasm in the prologue to Every Man In his Humour discredited it. The new type of play did not so often call for spectacular palace scenes, and perhaps some simpler and more portable kind of 'state' was allowed to serve the turn. There is no suggestion of a descent from the heavens in the theophanies of As You Like It and Pericles; Juno, however, descends in The Tempest. This, although it has practically no change of setting, is in some ways, under the mask influence, the most spectacular performance attempted by the King's men at Globe or Blackfriars during our period. But it is far outdone by the Queen's plays of the Golden, Silver,

who encourages Horatius. After 'Alarum, and the falling of the Bridge', Horatius 'exit', and Porsenna says 'Hee's leapt off from the bridge'. Presently 'the shout of all the multitude Now welcomes him a land'.]
 * [Footnote: of knocking downe the bridge, within' and 'Enter Valerius aboue',