The Court And the London Theatres During the Reign of Elizabeth

cumstances it would not be surprising to find that these plays in their method of staging were affected more or less by the methods employed in the schools and universities of the time, that the authors, writing for a "learned" court where Rome was in fashion, and acquainted with the manner of presenting the comedies of Plautus 2 and Terence, should look to the stage called for by the plays of Plautus and Terence for models in presentation. This they did; and many of the earlier dramas at court written by such men were undoubtedly staged in the strictly classic manner as then understood. These strictly classic plays observed the unity of place, all of the action taking place before a single house,8 as in Jack Juggler or Ralph Roister Doister, in a street or "place" between two houses,4 as in Gascoigne's Supposes or in Gammer Gurton, or sometimes before even three or four houses, provided they were supposed to be in close proximity to one another. It is to such houses that the Revels Accounts refer most frequently when they mention "apte houses of paynted canvas," "Stratoes howse," "Orestioes howse" and the like, rather than to such houses as were employed in mystery plays; that is, to painted canvas stretched on frames representing houses that could be entered by a door, rather than to such structures as are seen, for example, in the picture of the Valenciennes stage; in short, the houses (exteriors) of the Roman stage rather than the maisons (interiors) of the ...