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 like the curtains of Ferrara and Rome, but like those curtains used to mark the beginning and end of a play, rather than to facilitate any changing of scenes? It is difficult to say. Wilmot, not re-writing for the stage, may have re-written loosely. Or the epilogue may after all have belonged to the first version of the play, and have dropped out of the manuscript in which that version is preserved. The Revels Accounts testify that 'great curtains' were used in Court plays, but certainly do not prove that they were used as front curtains. The nearest approach to a corroboration of Wilmot is to be found in an epigram which exists in various forms, and is ascribed in some manuscripts to Sir Walter Raleigh.

What is our life? a play of passion. Our mirth? the musick of diuision. Our mothers wombs the tyring houses bee Where we are drest for liues short comedy. The earth the stage, heauen the spectator is, Who still doth note who ere do act amisse. Our graues, that hyde vs from the all-seeing sun, Are but drawne curtaynes when the play is done.

If these four comedies and four tragedies were taken alone, it would, I think, be natural to conclude that, with the Italianized types of drama, the English Court had also adopted the Italian type of setting. Certainly the tragedies would fit*