remaining on the stage. We may also accept his inferential evidence that the Restoration methods were derived from the practice of the Elizabethan theaters, directly from that of private theaters. Still, the direct evidence for this use of the curtains on the Elizabethan stage is not quite conclusive. I wish to notice the evidence offered by A Yorkshire Tragedy, which has not, I think, been cited before. It seems to me conclusive evidence of the use of the curtains to make this transition from indoors to outdoors, and it also presents an instance of such a change of scene made with one actor remaining on the stage. Before examining this evidence, however, I may state my opinion that such alternations of exterior and interior scenes did not always involve the use of the curtains. What we may call the fundamental principle of Elizabethan staging is that the main stage was conceived as unlocalized territory. It is only a secondary principle that provides for the localization of scenes by the use of the curtains and the inner stage. We must be cautious in imagining settings for scenes vaguely localized and entirely free from any dependence on setting or properties. Take Twelfth Night, for example. It is possible to arrange this in front and rear scenes, and it may have been so played in the private theaters; but the distinction between exterior and interior scenes is very slight and there is no evidence of the use of curtains and no real need of them for actors and an audience who were accustomed to a bare stage. Indeed, in this case there is presumptive evidence that one interior scene was not designed for an inner stage. Act I, scene v, may be considered within the house, but there are no properties and it could be acted on the outer stage. At the close Olivia sends Malvolio in pursuit of Viola. If this scene had been played on the inner stage, the scene in which Malvolio overtakes Viola would have followed immediately, as in so many similar cases where it seems probable that curtains were used to mark the change. But this scene of their meeting (II, ii) does not occur until after an act interval and one other front scene. Presumably Shakespeare wished to avoid the incongruity of making the stage appear in successive scenes as the inside and the outside of the house, and yet did not use the curtains to avoid this incongruity. This case may serve as a sort of complementary comment on that of A Yorkshire Tragedy. A Yorkshire Tragedy was acted by Shakespeare's company about 1605. It is a short play, "one of the foure plaies in one," and is divided by modern editors into ten scenes. The first four scenes are apparently all within the house, but there are no indications of any use of the inner stage. In Scene iv the Husband enters with the Master of the college, who has come seeking money for the Husband's brother. After some conversation and wine, the Husband says: Now, Sir, if you so please To spend but a few minuts in a walke About my grounds below, my man heere shall Attend you, etc. The Master goes out to wait there for the Husband. The scene continues and the Husband murders his little boy and Exit with his Sonne. Immediately following this, comes the stage direction, Enter a maide with a child in her armes, the mother by her a sleepe. (Scene v.) Manifestly this is a discovery scene requiring curtains, which are opened disclosing the inner stage. In a moment, Enter husband with the boie bleeding. He struggles with the nurse and throws her down; the mother wakes and seizes the youngest child; the Husband stabs her and the child and, after a struggle with a "lusty servant" who comes to the rescue, makes his escape. My horse stands reddy saddled. Away, away; Immediately following this speech, we have the stage direction The Master meets him. Apparently the struggle and murders have taken place on the inner stage (often employed for scenes of violent horror that could hardly be enacted in the full light of the front stage), and the Husband has rushed down front. There is no direction for his exit, and the curtains must have closed behind him while he was on the front stage. There enters the Master, who has been awaiting him outdoors. The action (Scene vi) is now clearly conceived as outside the house, for the Husband at once says, "Please you walke in, Sir," and excuses himself for a moment. Both Exeunt. The curtains must have been opened again at this point, (Scene vii) disclosing the inner stage just as when the Husband had left it, the servant, wife, and others wounded and groaning. Then Enter Master, and two servants, but they immediately go out to pursue the murderer. The persons remaining soon Exeunt to seek surgeons. The curtains must have been closed, and the scene is outdoors again, for (Scene viii) Enter Husband as being thrown off his horse, And falls. In this rapid action the curtains have been used (1) to discover an interior room, (2) to change from indoors to outdoors with one of the actors remaining on the stage, (3) to change from outdoors back to the same interior, and (4) to change again from interior to outside. Scene ix, it may be added, is an interior again, the house of the magistrate, before whom the Husband is brought for trial, and Scene x is outdoors before the house. The Husband is on his way to execution and the wife is brought in a chaire from the house, now probably represented by one of the doors, or possibly by the curtains. There is one possible exception, so far as I can see, that may be taken to this analysis. Could not the interior scenes have been represented on the balcony? In many interior scenes acted on the rear stage and separated from the front by a curtain, it is often difficult to prove with certainty whether they were set on the upper or lower inner stage. So here, if these scenes are taken in isolation, it is impossible to prove absolutely that they were not acted on the upper stage. However, they should not be taken in isolation, but in connection with other similar interior scenes. Because of their length, their action, the probable use of the lower inner stage in Scene ix, and because of their similarity to many other interior scenes, it seems to me highly probable that they were acted on the level of the main stage. Even if they were acted on the upper rather than the lower inner stage, their evidence still holds in regard to the use of the curtains in alternating scenes. The importance of these scenes from A Yorkshire Tragedy in comparison with many other interior scenes in Elizabethan plays is that, in their stage directions, they offer direct and, as it seems to me, conclusive evidence (1) that the curtains were used, and (2) were used to mark immediate alternation of outdoor and indoor scenes. THE QUARTO ARRANGEMENT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN The purpose of this paper is to inquire whether we have reason to believe that the Sonnets of Shakespeare were arranged, either by the author or by any other competent person, in the order appearing in the quarto of 1609, which is followed in nearly all modern editions, and whether this order is therefore significant for their interpretation. This question is by no means identical with the question whether the sonnets are autobiographical or imaginative, much less with the various problems connected with the identification of the persons addressed. Yet it is true that critics who seek to interpret these poems in connection with Shakespeare's personal life are naturally disposed to read them as connectedly as possible, while those who reject the biographical interpretation are perhaps tempted to magnify their diversity and disorder. Since I shall undertake to test somewhat skeptically the prevailing assumption that the quarto arrangement is authentic, it may be as well to grant at the outset (for the purposes of the argument) that the sonnets are, in general, personal and "sincere," that "Mr. W. H." was the person addressed in a large number of them, and that he may be identified as the Earl of Quidlibet ; also that Shakespeare was involved in at least one amour of a lawless and disturbing character. Admitting all this tentatively, have we a fairly connected history of the relations of the three persons concerned, in the form of a collection of poems significantly arranged in two parts or series? If we should approach the sonnets without knowledge of their content, as if discovering them for the first time, our first inquiry would naturally be whether the collection appears on the face of it to be one of the "sequences" so familiar in the Elizabethan age. Of this type of collection the leading traits are well understood. A series of sonnets is addressed to a lady of great beauty, to whom a fanciful name is given (Stella, Diana, Idea, or the like), which commonly forms the title of the whole. This lady is usually cold of heart, and the sequence of poems represents the successive efforts of the writer, her lover, to win her to yield to his passion. Turning to the Shakespeare quarto, we find that the title-page bears no conventional title; no lady's name gives it a name; no lady's name is mentioned (if we may anticipate further exploration) within it. The book is called simply "Shakespeare's Sonnets: never before imprinted." It is not, we may say tentatively, a conventional sequence. |