Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/82

 London Exchange, Leadenhall, the Regent House at Oxford. There are scenes in churches or heathen temples and in monasteries. There are certainly also hall scenes in castles or private houses, and it is sometimes a matter of taste whether you assume a hall scene or a threshold scene. Certain features of hall scenes may be enumerated. Personages can go into, or come forth from, an inner room. They can be brought in from without. Seats are available, and a chair or 'state' for a sovereign. A law court has its 'bar'. Banquets can be served. Masks

Arras is drawne, and behinde it (as in sessions) sit the L. Maior Lifter the prisoner at the barre'; Warning for Fair Women, 1180, 'Enter some to prepare the judgement seat to the Lord Mayor(1193) Browne is brought in and the Clerk says, 'To the barre, George Browne'; M. V. i; 1 Sir John Oldcastle,  x; &c.] (1521) 'Entreate their Lordships come into the hall'. E. M. I. i, ii (a continuous scene), is at Thorello's house, and in iii. 1592 it is described with 'I saw no body to be kist, vnlesse they would haue kist the post, in the middle of the warehouse; for there I left them all How? were they not gone in then?' But iv. 570, also at Thorello's, has 'Within sir, in the warehouse'. Probably the warehouse was represented as an open portico.]gets vp vpon him [Bajazet] to his chaire'; Dr. Faustus, 1010 (addition of 1616 text), 'His Maiesty is comming to the Hall; Go backe, and see the State in readinesse'; Look About You, sc. xix, 'Enter young Henry Crowned Henry the elder places his Sonne, the two Queenes on eyther hand, himselfe at his feete, Leyster and Lancaster below him'; this must have involved an elaborate 'state'.]*
 * [Footnote: and thou shalt sit in the chaire' (v. 10); Sir T. More, sc. ii. 104, 'An