Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/95

 illusion may not have gone much beyond a painted cloth drawn under the roof of the heavens. More elaborate machinery may have been entailed by aerial ascents and descents, which were also not uncommon. Many Elizabethan actors were half acrobats, and could no doubt fly upon a wire; but there is also clear evidence for the use of a chair let down from above. And was the arrangement of cords and pulleys required for this purpose also that by which the chair of state, which figures in so many hall scenes and even a few out-of-door scenes, was put into position? Henslowe had a throne made in the heavens of the Rose in 1595. Jonson sneered at the jubilation of boyhood over the descent of the creaking chair. The device would lighten the labours of the tire-man, for a state would be an awkward thing to carry on and off. It would avoid the presence of a large incongruous property on the stage during action to which it was inappropriate. And it would often serve as a convenient

this is why in K. J., ii. 181, the appearance of the moons is only narrated.]
 * [Footnote: after the coronation which is certainly in 'the presence' (81). Perhaps