[In the following essay, Visser argues that the revisions that Killigrew inscribed in the 1664 folio edition of his plays were made to accommodate the newly emerging type of venues, and asserts that the “great interest” of the folio “lies in the relationship it demonstrates between the private playhouses of the early Caroline period, and the public theatres of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century.”]

More than fifty years have elapsed since Worcester College Library, Oxford, acquired Thomas Killigrew's copy of the 1664 folio of his own plays.¹ Almost all the plays are annotated in Killigrew's hand. Only two of them—The Princess and The Prisoners—escaped his pencil entirely. The two parts of Cicilia and Clorinda were untouched except for a preliminary instruction to his copyist. Claricilla was subjected to cuts totalling less than 250 lines, but significant directions were added in manuscript to the final act. All the remaining plays were revised with varying degrees of severity.

William Van Lennep was the first to describe the Worcester folio in any detail.² He gave no more than a bare account of Killigrew's deletions, and said little about his additions and revisions. Albert Wertheim in a recent article³ suggests that the reason why three plays—The Princess, The Prisoners, and Claricilla—were not, or so he believes, revised in manuscript in the folio is that the texts printed in the folio had already been revised for presentation on the Restoration stage: further changes were unnecessary. Wertheim analyses those stage directions in The Princess that he believes were added in preparing the play for the Restoration stage. He discusses, too, the directions printed in the folio text of The Prisoners and Claricilla which are not to be found in the edition of 1641. They are the only two of Killigrew's plays to have been published before the folio. Wertheim does not notice that in addition the two parts of Cicilia and Clorinda were unaltered, or that Killigrew has added significant stage directions in manuscript to the final act of Claricilla. Van Lennep does not elaborate on the Claricilla directions and Wertheim has not, apparently, seen the Worcester College copy of the Killigrew folio. In his analysis of the stage directions, which he believes that Killigrew added to the plays immediately before the publication of the folio, Wertheim confines himself to those which relate to the gestures and movements of the actors. He does not consider what the original and subsequently revised directions might reveal about the physical aspects of the stage for which the plays were originally written, or to which they were later adapted.

Closely examined, the plays and Killigrew's manuscript annotations on them yield valuable information about the playhouses for which they were originally designed, or in terms of which they were first conceived. In his adaptations of his plays to the perspective or scenic stage, immediately before publication or in manuscript after publication, Killigrew demonstrates that no fundamental changes were required to transfer the plays from one type of theatre to the other. In every instance techniques which we take to be peculiar to the Restoration scenic stage can be shown to be related to, perhaps even to have been derived from, analogous techniques in the private playhouses. The Restoration playhouses depended in great part, particularly in the critical formative years, upon the plays of the preceding age. It is unlikely that the theatre managers of the time would have designed a stage on which these plays could not easily be acted. The early Restoration stage, rather, is the result of the attempt to impose features of the scenic stage, associated with the court masque, upon the stage of the private playhouse, of which the most notable example was the second Blackfriars theatre.

Eight plays are printed in the Killigrew first folio; three of these are in two parts. All eight plays were originally designed for the stage of the private playhouse. The first play in the folio is The Princess. It was written in 1635-7, and was probably acted by the King's Men at Blackfriars before the closing of the theatres. The Princess was revived at Vere Street in November, 1661. The Vere Street stage resembled that of the earlier private playhouses, and so no change was necessary to accommodate the play to the new stage. Detailed directions appear in the text for the actors’ movements and gestures, and Wertheim may well be correct when he suggests that these directions refer to this revival. The Parson's Wedding, 1640-1, which follows in the folio, was revived several times after 1660, notably in performances with an all female cast. The play was acted at Bridges Street in 1664, immediately after Killigrew had revised it in manuscript in his folio. The manuscript revisions consist of extensive cuts, textual corrections, and the addition of some stage directions. Although the play was now to be acted on a scenic stage, changes in the stage directions are insignificant. The next play, The Pilgrim, was written in 1646. There is no record of it being acted after 1660, although Killigrew's manuscript revisions imply that a revival was intended. Alfred Harbage believes that it might have first been performed in Paris.⁴ The play itself, however, is written with the private playhouse stage in mind, and so, too, are the two parts of Cicilia and Clorinda, 1649-50. In the Worcester folio the commedia elements are cut from The Pilgrim; Cicilia and Clorinda is untouched; and the first page of the text bears the following instructions:

Mis Hancoke pray write both theis partes of Cissillia and Clorinda intiere as thay ar in this bouke in to partes for thay ar short anufe with out cutting … Feb. 14. 1666.⁵

As with The Parson's Wedding, Killigrew did not feel it was necessary to change the stage directions of Cicilia and Clorinda to adapt it to the scenic stage. It is not known whether the play was acted after 1660, although Killigrew's instructions to Miss Hancock certainly imply that it was intended to be performed.

Of the four plays which follow, two, the two parts of Thomaso, 1654, and the two parts of Bellamira, 1650-2, were Killigrew's most recent plays; two, Claricilla, 1635-6, and The Prisoners, 1632-6, were Killigrew's earliest, and had previously been published. The last two plays are paginated separately. The two parts of Thomaso and the two parts of Bellamira, are the only plays in the folio to have been adapted to the scenic stage before publication, possibly because they were the last to be written.⁶ Further manuscript annotations to Thomaso in the folio indicate cuts in the text but do not affect stage directions. Bellamira, too, is revised in manuscript in the Worcester folio. The revision consists of changes in dialogue, cuts, and a redivision into acts and scenes. The changes do not materially affect the staging. Claricilla is one of the most interesting plays in the folio for our purposes. The manuscript annotations to the final act of the play adapt it explicitly to the scenic stage. The play itself was acted at Vere Street in 1660 and at court in 1663. The Prisoners adds only one printed stage direction to the 1641 text, but the direction is, as we shall see, an interesting one.

It would seem that all the plays in the Killigrew folio were originally designed for the stage of a private playhouse, very possibly Blackfriars. They reveal much about the physical characteristics of that stage. They also call into question the common assumption that Killigrew's plays written after 1642 were closet plays that were never intended to be, indeed could not be, acted. On the contrary, all Killigrew's plays are written with a very nice sense of what is theatrically possible.

The folio confirms the existence, in the private playhouse, of a discovery area or enclosure, set into the tiring-house wall, and closed off with curtains. In The Princess, this discovery area serves, for instance, as a wood. In II i [sic = II, ii] the Lieutenant, associated with the pirate, Terresius, asks for help “to lay me down behind some tree, in the shade.” The direction follows, “Exeunt both behind the Curtains” (p. 19). The Lieutenant later reappears “under the Hanging” (III, ii, 26) and enters as from a wood.

The Parson's Wedding is unusually explicit about the discovery area. IV, vi is placed in “The Tyring-Room, Curtains drawn, and they discourse, [sic] his Chamber, two Beds, two Tables, Looking-glasses, Night-cloathes, Waste-coats, Sweet-bags, Sweet-meats and Wine, Wanton drest like a Chambermaid …” This scene could equally well play on an upper stage, for the direction continues “… all above if the Scene can be so order’d” (p. 132). V, ii of the same play opens with the direction, “The Fidlers play in the Tyring Room, and the Stage Curtains are drawn, and discover a Chamber, as it was, with two Beds and the Ladies asleep in them …” (p. 139).⁷

An interesting use of the discovery areas occurs in IV, i of The Parson's Wedding. Here Wanton and her companions call on the Pastor. They knock “within,” and one assumes that they stand within the tiring house and knock at one of the doors that lead onto the stage. Immediately the Parson is “discover’d in his Bed and the Baud with him” (p. 124). The discovery could only have been made in the enclosure. One assumes, then, that characters could enter through the stage doors, and that it would be assumed that they were entering an area revealed within the enclosure.

Evidence can be found in Killigrew's folio of the use of an upper stage. It is most explicit in The Parson's Wedding: in I, ii Mistress Pleasant, Widow Wild her aunt, and Secret, her woman, appear “above in the Musick Room” together with “a Glass” and “a Table” (p. 76). In I Cicilia and Clorinda, the prison in which Lucius finds himself could have been either the enclosure or the upper stage. Lucius resolves to leap out of a window: “This Window is not high, When they are gone, I will leap it …” (IV, iii, 247). Later Dyon confirms that Lucius has “leap’d his window that look’d into the Garden” (V, vi, 261). The window could be one of those looking out over the stage, or it could be a window in the rear wall of the enclosure: I am inclined to think it the former because of the reference to the garden, a point I shall return to later.

The existence in the private playhouse of two stage doors is confirmed in several plays. In II, ii of The Princess, for instance, Cicilia enters “at one Door,” while a pimp and a bawd enter “at the other Door” (p. 20). A third door appears in The Parson's Wedding in which Wild “comes in at the middle Door” (I, iii, 84). This, as Irwin Smith suggests, could refer to a parting in the curtains before the enclosure or it could refer to a door in the back wall of the enclosure itself.⁸

In a theatre like the Blackfriars a stage door and the window above it was often taken to represent the exterior of a house. In The Princess, II, ii, Bragadine is attacked on stage by Virgilius, and later complains of being braved “in mine own door …” (II, iv, 23). In III, i Paulina watches Virgilius in the street from the window above, and invites Virgilius to “make this house your sanctuary …” Virgilius replies that he “dare enter though I saw my ruine in the door.” “Which way do your commands guide me?” he asks, and Paulina replies, “That door” (p. 25). Virgilius enters through the door into Paulina's house. Later, in III, vi, Facertes stands outside Bragadine's house—one assumes that he stands beside a stage door—and declares, “This, by the description of the house, should be the place that holds my miseries …” (p. 29). Similarly, in The Pilgrim, a stage door represents the exterior of the Hermit's cell. Cosmo knocks at the door and the Hermit within calls “Who’s there?’ Cosmo enters and “brings forth” the Hermit. Later the Hermit begs Cosmo to “come in, and let me shut the door …” (III, iv, 182). In The Parson's Wedding a watch appears “at the Widows door,” and when she approaches warns her of plague in her lodgings (IV, iii, 128).

The stage itself could represent an interior, in which case the doors now lead from the interior to the exterior of the house. In The Princess, for instance, the stage is at one point a prison. Someone knocks, presumably on the door, and Sophia cries out, “Whose [sic] that? come in; Prisoners keep no doors” (IV, iii, 32). In IV, iv of The Parson's Wedding, the Widow, Mrs. Pleasant, and the two lovers “knock at the door” from within the tiring house, and we are told that they are abroad or without (p. 129). A further convention assumes that, when the stage is an interior, the doors lead to other rooms in the house, or that other doors lie beyond the stage doors. So in The Princess, Paulina remarks, “There is another door leads into a street less frequented then that you entered at.” “Which way must I take to find it?” Virgilius asks, and Paulina takes him off the stage with the words, “I’ll guide you, Sir” (III, iv, 28).

An interesting episode occurs in The Princess, in which Facertes stands outside Paulina's house and declares, “This is the Place, Love be thou propitious, and let my fears prove false; hereabout should be the door” (IV, v, 37). He exits through the door, and immediately Paulina and Cicilia enter and we are now inside Paulina's house. After a brief conversation “one knocks” and the Bawd announces, “There’s a young fellow without desires to speak with you” (IV, v, 38). Paulina leaves to speak with Facertes. In the scene which follows immediately Paulina re-enters with Facertes. The principle is established that the actor can exit through a stage door from the exterior to the interior of a house. He re-enters almost immediately, and the stage is no longer the exterior he has just left but the interior he has just entered.

The folio refers explicitly to the bay windows that projected over the two stage doors. It seems that when one door indicated the front of a house, the window above it would then be assumed to look from the house into the street below. In II, ii of The Princess, for instance, Paulina and the Bawd appear “Above in the window,” and look out onto a scene in the street beneath them (p. 22). In The Parson's Wedding, the Widow and Pleasant are similarly described as “looking out at a window” to observe a conversation in the street below. The Widow remarks, “I shall love this bay window” (I, iii, 84). A curious direction occurs at the head of II, vii, and reads, “Enter (at the windowes) the Widow and Master Careless, Mistress Pleasant and Master Wild, Captain, Master Sad, Constant, Jolly, Secret, a Table and Knives ready for Oysters” (p. 100). Smith cites this direction as evidence that the Blackfriars windows were “of considerable size.”⁹ Even assuming, however, that the windows were large, surely nine people, a table, and oysters, could scarcely be accommodated in the window space, let alone be seen in it. Does Killigrew perhaps intend this scene to play on the upper stage? He does set it “at the windowes,” but IV, vi, which is set in “The Tyring-Room,” can also be played in the upper stage, for the direction continues, “all above if the Scene can be so order’d” (p. 132). The scene concludes with the Widow's words, “Prithee, shut the windows …,” and the direction, “The Curtains are closed” (p. 133). Here, then, a curtained area is referred to very loosely as being windowed, and it seems possible that the direction “at the windowes” (one notices that the windows are plural) might simply indicate an upper level which can be closed off. The upper stage with its curtains could, I think, be implied in the II, vii direction.

The plays that Killigrew designed for the private playhouse stage afford evidence, finally, of the existence of traps. In The Princess the direction occurs, “They throw all the bottles in at a hole upon the Stage …” (V, ii, 55). Much more elaborate use of a trap occurs in The Pilgrim. In V, i Julia and Martino are in hiding. Carlo enters to them “at a hole in the Vault” through which he later leaves (p. 207). In V, iii Martino hears “a noise in the Vault” and Carlo and Cosmo enter “at the Vault” (p. 208). Subsequently they all leave “with the light down the hole” (p. 209). One can only imagine that the hole refers to a trap in the enclosure. The directions are exactly parallel to those in The Wonder of Women, acted at Blackfriars in 1606. Here, Smith observes, “the rear-stage trap serves as the indoor end of an underground passageway whose other end is in far-off Belos Forest.”¹⁰ Sophonisba questions Vangue:

Sophonisba: To what use gentle
Negro serves this
          cave
Whose mouth thus opens so familliarly,
Even in the Kings bedchamber?
Vangue:                                                            O my Queene
This vault with hidious darkness and much length
Stretcheth beneath the earth into a grove
One league from Cirta.

Sophonisba descends into the passageway with the words:

Deere Zanthia close the vault when I am sunk
And whilst he slips to bed escape …(11)

In both plays, then, the trap would seem to serve an identical purpose.

Windows, doors, and enclosure could, in the private playhouse, function together in a way that would later be characteristic of the Restoration scenic stage. An excellent example of this occurs in The Princess. In IV, vi Paulina arranges for Virgilius to meet Cicilia “This night … in the garden …” (p. 38). The Bawd informs Bragadine of the arrangements, and confirms that “the garden is the appointed place to receive the slave in …” (IV, vii, 43). She suggests that Bragadine take the opportunity to be revenged on his rival, Virgilius. “The Moon,” Bragadine affirms, “will assist us, for she shines early this night” (p. 44). In IV, viii Bragadine enters with Bravoes to assault Virgilius. The Bawd arrives and leads them off, I believe into the enclosure, with the words, “I’le see you plac’d where they must pass by” (p. 47). Paulina and Cicilia immediately enter, and the Bawd, who is Paulina's maid, returns to tell her mistress, “Madam, are you ready, they [i.e., Virgilius and Facertes] stay at the Garden gate, shall I let them in?”

Paul.: Yes, yes, and see the
gates shut that lead to the
          street.
Baud: All is safe, pray make haste.
Paul.: Wee’le meet you, call
at my window.

(IV, ix, 48)

In IV, x, which follows immediately, Facertes and Virgilius enter, presumably through one door, and cross to the other, which they take to be the gate which leads from the street into Paulina's garden. The Bawd enters with the question, “Is the Galley ready, they Expect you.”

Facert.: All's ready,
lead the way.
Baud: Follow me.

They all exeunt through the door into the garden. Bragadine comments “within,” that is behind the curtain in the enclosure, “Stand close, I hear 'em come.” Immediately Virgilius, Facertes and the Bawd re-enter, and they are now in the garden. The Bawd says, “Stay here, while I return, with the Key,” and she joins Bragadine and the Bravoes in the enclosure. Facertes remarks, “This is the Garden.” At that moment, “Bragadine shoots, Virgil puts his hand to his eye, with a bloody spunge and the blood runs down. Facertes draws his sword, and takes him in his Arms.” (p. 48) Cicilia and Paulina now appear “above” and Bragadine, the Bawd, and the Bravoes enter from the enclosure. A fracas ensues, and Cicilia declares “above,” “… let's haste, our presence may bring some aid …” (p. 49). They enter the stage through the door which now leads not from the street, but from their chamber into the garden. Bragadine and the Bravoes are defeated, and Paulina, Cicilia, Virgilius, and Facertes exeunt with the words, “this way through the Garden to the Galley …” (p. 51) leaving perhaps through the door opposite to that through which Paulina and Cicilia had just entered. It is a scene that makes very precise use of several physical characteristics of the stage of the private playhouse. What is particularly striking is that the scenic stage, as we shall see, is used in exactly the same way in the years immediately following the Restoration.

The directions we have looked at so far all relate to the stage of the private playhouse. When Killigrew revised his plays, either before publication or in manuscript notes in the folio after publication, for performance on the scenic stage, he was often content to leave his stage directions as they were: the transference to a scenic stage was easily effected. On occasion, however, he would add or alter directions to accommodate the play more precisely to the scenic stage. Every time this occurs the direction simply modifies a direction that exists or is implicit in the original text. It emerges from this that many features that we take to be most characteristic of the Restoration stage themselves evolve from or are elaborations of features that already existed on the stage of the private playhouse.

Of the eight plays in the folio, four were explicitly adapted to the scenic stage either before publication, or in manuscript additions to the Worcester folio after publication. These four are the two parts of Thomaso, the two parts of Bellamira, Claricilla, and The Prisoners. Of these, Claricilla was adapted in annotations to the folio; the others, with the exception of The Prisoners, were adapted before publication and were also revised in manuscript in the Worcester folio after publication. The Prisoners was revised before publication, but not in manuscript after publication.

The adaptation to the scenic stage is most obvious when a description is given of a required setting. In I Bellamira, I, iv, the place is originally the undifferentiated space of the private playhouse stage, with the enclosure serving as a cave. In the folio text this is elaborated in the printed direction: “Enter Pollidor from hunting, and some part of the Quarry in his hand; the Scene must be a fine Land-skip, and a Cave must be in the Scene.” The transformation of inner stage into cave is insisted on in the direction that immediately follows: “He goes into the Cave to seek his Sister, and Father, and Satyre, finds none. and returns presently (The Scene must represent a Cave) Enters as from the Cave.” (p. 475) Later, in the same scene, the Satyre's comment, “My Sire was worshipped in these woods, and lies buried under yon Altar …” has beside it the marginal printed note “That Altar must be expres’d in the Scene” (p. 476). A similar transformation is effected in a manuscript annotation to the final scene of Claricilla. Here Killigrew comments: “the seane shoes a grofe by the seaeside with a tempel dedicated to Neptun and then enter all perssuns as a boufe menssind.” (V, x, 45)

Sometimes the translation from one stage to another is less complete than might at first appear. In I Thomaso the first act plays off in a street in Madrid. II, i opens with the description:

The Scene changes and discovers a Piazza and Balcony-windows in which the [sic] Angellica and her woman appears, other windows, and other women in them; neer the door of Angellica stands a Pillar, upon which hanges her Picture, and by it stand two Bravoes to protect it from affronts. …

This suggests that the entire scene is discovered, but the first impression is modified by the direction which immediately follows: “Enter two Bravoes and place themselves by the Pillar” (p. 326). It is now clear that the scene change is to be effected merely in the back-shutters and possibly the wings, while Angelica and her woman appear in a balcony over a proscenium door. The door and balcony represent the exterior of their house.

As we have seen, the principle had been established on the stage of the private playhouse that the stage door and the window above it could represent the exterior of a house. The stage could also represent an interior, in which case the doors would lead from the interior to the exterior of the house. The attribution of these same functions to the proscenium walls, doors, and balconies of the Restoration theatre can be demonstrated time and again from Killigrew's plays. The proscenium walls, indeed, with their doors and balconies, would seem to have evolved directly from the opposing doors and windows of the private playhouse stage.

It would be tedious to recite all instances in the folio of these several functions of the proscenium walls. A few, taken from the two parts of Thomaso, will serve to demonstrate the argument. In I Thomaso, II, i, one proscenium wall is established as representing the outside of Angelica's house: Angelica herself appears on the balcony with her maid. In I Thomaso, II, iii, Angelica and Anna again appear “above,” that is on the balcony. Pedro, Carlo, and Johanne enter and we are told, “all three lean against the wall, by her house; Then Enter two Bravo's, and plant themselves by the pillar.” Immediately after, Thomaso and his companions enter, and remark on Angelica, who, Harrigo observes, is “now at her Window” (p. 334). In I Thomaso, III, ii, Edward enters and “knocks at Angel. door.” “See who knocks,” she asks from the balcony:

Anna: What would you have?

Harrigo: Prithee tell Don Thomaso 'tis late, and we stay for him.

Anna: Would you had him out at Window, so we were rid of him; a curse on the Door where he enters in, for Anna.

Enter Thomaso, and embraceth his friends; Angellica peeps through her window upon him.

Harrigo [to Thomaso] And how? come be Ingenuous now; do's fortune smile? Shall we break her windows, or Sacrifice in her Temple?

(p. 345)

All these exterior scenes could, of course, be played equally well before the doors and windows of the private playhouse stage.

The space before the proscenium and between the proscenium walls could represent on the early Restoration stage an interior without, I believe, necessitating any corresponding scene on the wings and back-shutters which lay beyond. The doors would then lead out of the house. This function of the walls is, perhaps, best demonstrated in those scenes in which characters enter a house through a proscenium door, immediately re-enter, and without any indication of a change of scene, are assumed to be inside the house. At the end of II, iii in I Thomaso, Thomaso tells Angelica “'tis not your doors could have kept me out; And to remove your doubt, would you durst meet me as naked in your Bed as I durst enter” (p. 337). He exits into Angelica's house, presumably through a proscenium door, and immediately re-enters with Angelica (II, iv, 337). They are now inside the house. In I Thomaso, IV, iii Edwardo and Sanco appear on the stage before Lucetta's door. “Stay here, Sir,” Sanco says, “Till I go before and knock, to see if the coast be clear” (p. 366). In the scene which immediately follows, Lucetta enters with Philippo. “Heark, heark,” she says, “one knocks; away to the Kitchin, and observe your Q” (IV, iii, 367). Philippo leaves through one door while Sanco and Edwardo enter in at the other. In II Thomaso, II, i, Thomaso meets Pedro and Johanne in front of his house, and remarks,

Don Pedro, What occasion stops you here, Sir? will you do us the favour to see our house? 'tis the poor habitation of strangers …

Pedro has been following Serulina, he believes to Thomaso's door. Thomaso invites Pedro and Johanne in, and with Thomaso's words, “If you please to go in, wee’ll inform our selves better” (p. 413), they enter, leaving the stage. III, ii follows immediately with Edwardo, Serulina, and Ferdinando inside the house. “Quick, Fred.” Edwardo says, “look out, I heard some body open the Street-door.” “'Tis Thomaso,” Ferdinando replies, “and strangers with him …” (p. 413). A few moments later Thomaso enters with Pedro and Johanne. They have, it seems, left through one proscenium door immediately to re-enter through the same door or the one beside it. This door now leads from the exterior to the interior of the house.

On several occasions someone enters through a proscenium door into a scene which has been revealed behind the back-shutters, paralleling a similar convention in the private playhouse. This occurs in I Thomaso, V, viii and ix. Here Mathias decides to surprise Lucetta in her bed. “’Tis resolved now,” he says, “if I can find the door; so, softly, puss, softly” (p. 376). Mathias leaves, one imagines through a proscenium door. In V, ix, which follows at once, the direction reads, “The Scene changes, and discovers a Chamber and a Bed in it, in which Edwardo lies.” Edwardo remarks, “Heark, the door opens,” and Mathias enters (p. 376). Mathias is now in Lucetta's bedchamber, where he mistakes Edwardo for Lucetta.

The windows and balconies above the proscenium doors conventionally look into the street below. They can also give onto a garden. We have seen earlier in The Princess the existence of a staging convention which attributes very specific functions to the doors and balconies of the private playhouse stage. In terms of this convention a door with a window above it can represent the outside of a house. The door leads into the house; it can also be thought of, however, as a back-door which leads not into the house, but into the garden. The door and window or balcony can, it seems, represent, in addition, the facade of the house facing the garden. In this case the door now leads from the house into the garden. The door or gate from the garden into the street lies off the stage, out of sight. This same convention is carried into the Restoration theatre where, since there are two doors and windows in each wall, the front door (into the house) and back door (into the garden) can be shown simultaneously.¹²

This arrangement is assumed in I Thomaso where in IV, ii, Serulina enters the garden from the house—I assume through the proscenium door—and tells her maid, Calis, “… you shall find me in the Arbour …” (p. 355). Later, we are told in a direction in the margin, “She steps into an Arbour, and lyes down” (p. 357). I believe that the arbour corresponds to the discovery area in which in The Princess Bragadine and his Bravoes had concealed themselves and which on the scenic stage corresponds to the area behind the back-shutters—a correspondence I shall look at later. Edwardo now enters from the house with the comment,

I have reel’d and stumbl’d through all the house, without a Question. What's here? a Garden? it tempts me to take a nap in Fresco. …

(p. 357)

He discovers Serulina and tries to rape her. Johanne enters and attacks Edwardo; Edwardo repulses him; both Johanne and Serulina make off; two servants enter and attack Edwardo who makes his escape. The scene concludes when the second servant asks, “Who left the Gates open?” His companion replies, “That's a Question out of season; Let us go, and shut it” (p. 359). They leave the stage. It seems likely that Serulina and Johanne have entered the house through the proscenium door. Edwardo, however, has left through the gate that leads into the street; that gate is now offstage, and the two servants must leave the stage in order to close it.

This arrangement is confirmed in II Thomaso, IV, v, in which Serulina and Calis “appear above in her window” (p. 434). They look out into the street, for subsequently they see Anna arrive, who knocks at their door to be greeted by the porter. Serulina is planning to flee her brother's house in disguise, and asks Calis, “Where are the keyes of the Garden?” (p. 434). When Calis reassures her that, “All is done as you ordered,” Serulina replies,

Then let us sit quiet and hide the light; if they intend any force, thus disguis’d and thus provided we may by the back door make our escape through the Garden to the Embassadours house. …

(p. 434)

The house in question leads off the street, for in IV, x, Saretta proposes to make an escape “… through the Venetian Embassadours which is but three doors off” (p. 439). It seems, then, that Serulina proposes to take the back door from the house into the garden, and then the back door from the garden into the street.

For one acting area no equivalent seems to have been found on the Restoration stage: the upper stage, lying directly above the enclosure or discovery area. In both I Thomaso and II Bellamira there are directions which may originally have referred to this area, but which, on the Restoration stage, would have had to have been changed. In I Thomaso, V, ix, in the scene we have already looked at, in which Mathias finds Edwardo in bed and mistakes him for Lucetta, the two men begin a brawl. “The noyse,” we are told, “is heard into Philippo's Chamber, where Lucetta, Philippo, and Sanco are undressing her [i.e., Lucetta]; they open the curtain window and listen to the noyse; Edwardo and Mathias are cuffing still.” (p. 377) The reference to a “curtain window” suggests that Lucetta's chamber might be the upper stage. One wonders, too, whether in II Bellamira, V, ii, when Clytus, Ravack, Cleon, and various soldiers and sailors are “supposed aboard their Galley,” the galley might not originally have been the upper stage, which would give some point to Clytus’ remark, “Come, Sir, let us look out, 'tis a fine Evening” (p. 568).

In Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse, Smith assumes the existence at Blackfriars of two traps, one in the “inner stage,” and a more elaborate trap in the stage proper. In The Pilgrim, as we have seen, Carlo enters “at a hole in the Vault” (p. 207), which seems to refer to an inner or rear stage trap. A very similar but far more complex use of the trap is called for in II Bellamira. In II Bellamira, IV, iv a prison is discovered behind the back-shutters. When Leopoldo enters “The Scene” or the prison with a candle and lantern, some foxes are observed to run away through some exit within the scene. Palantus remarks “let us retire, for they are now shutting of the door” (p. 564). Palantus and his fellow prisoners withdraw behind the back-shutters, and the scene closes. Immediately after, Fidelia, Arcus, and Philemon enter, “as out of a Cave” (p. 565). A pair of shutters representing the entrance to a cave has been drawn over the prison, and through these Fidelia and her companions enter. They, too, observe the foxes, and resolve to “return and see if we can find any sign of their passage.” They re-enter the cave or “grot” which, we are told, “must be in prospective to present a Cave by the Seaside.” Inside the grot, Arcus “goes towards the hole, and finds the Foxes furr upon the Rock” (p. 565). Arcus lays his ear to the hole or trap and hears Leopoldo approach. Leopoldo appears through the trap into the cave or rear stage. He subsequently returns through the trap with Arcus to fetch up Bellamira and his fellow prisoners, who later appear “at the hole” (p. 566). In V, iii Almanzor resolves to enter the prison where he believes Leopoldo and Bellamira are still confined. He is told that the “doors are still lock’d and the key in the Inward side.” Roderick decides to “force the doors.” At this, “They all go out towards the doors of the prison, which they force open; They all draw their Swords, and with Torches in their hands enter the prison, which is the same Scene where Bellamira and the prisoners lay.” (p. 569) The reference to forcing doors is not to be taken literally: rather the back-scene opens to reveal the prison once more in the rear stage. Almanzor finds the prisoners fled. He discovers the hole or trap, and he and his party go down into it. The scene, we are told, shuts. The cave entrance is drawn over it as before, for now Almanzor and his friends “come all out with their Torches at the hole of the Cave where the princes came out” (p. 569).

The prison scenes in II Bellamira are placed in the area behind the back-shutters, or in what is commonly called the vista area, although this seems to me too restrictive a term. I would prefer “rear-stage” or “discovery area.” When we compare the use of the discovery area in those plays which Killigrew adapted to the scenic stage, with the use of the discovery area or enclosure in those plays printed as acted in the private playhouses, it becomes clear that they are identical. All discoveries, at least in the early Restoration theatre, are effected behind the back-shutters or back curtain. Moreover, all shutter changes, and indeed the shutters themselves, seem to have been confined to the back of the stage.

The prison in II Bellamira is, as we have seen, revealed behind the back-shutters and is described in III, i in the following terms:

The Scene opens and discovers a Prison where Pollidor and Phillora appear next the Stage chained to a Ring fastned to the ground upon the other side of the Prison, and in a darker part of the Scene lies Palantus chained behinde them in the darke, Bellamira chained, and afar off in prospective other Prisoners and dead Carcases.

(p. 542)

The action might seem confined too exclusively upstage, but that is a problem that could be solved by the simple expedient of making the chains long enough to allow the prisoners to wander downstage. Indeed that is implied by having the chains fastened “upon the other side of the Prison. …” The discovery area in the play later serves as a cave or grotto. The discovery area corresponds to the earlier discovery area in I Thomaso, V, ix, in which “The Scene changes, and discovers a Chamber and a Bed in it …” (p. 376). In I Thomaso, IV, ii, the discovery area is, it seems, the arbour, in which Serulina lies down to be rudely disturbed by Edwardo. In The Prisoners, the change to the scenic stage is attested by one significant stage direction only. In IV, i, Killigrew has added the direction, “The storm begins in the Scene” (p. 71). Taken in conjunction with the distinction between scene and stage in the direction form II Bellamira that I have just cited, this reference to “Scene” suggests that the storm begins in the discovery area, and that in the early Restoration theatre at least, the “scene” as opposed to the “stage” was the back-shutters and the area behind them.

The most remarkable use of the discovery area is made, however, in Killigrew's adaptation of Claricilla, an adaptation he has tried to effect in his manuscript notes. Claricilla is not itself particularly adventurous in its use of the stage; most scenes are not localized. The crucial changes occur right at the end of the play, and involve V, iii particularly. V, iii is originally designed for the private playhouse, but how it might have been staged there is not entirely clear. Manlius in this scene has promised to help Melintus and Philemon to abduct Claricilla. He ostensibly betrays them, and reveals the plot to Claricilla's father, the King, who wants his daughter to marry the favorite, Seleucus. It transpires, however, that the whole abduction was no more than a ploy to reveal to the king the perfidy of Seleucus, so that all ends well with the relationship between Melintus and Claricilla now recognized by the grateful King.

Manlius arranges to bring Melintus and Philemon in his galley to abduct Claricilla from her garden. As he tells Claricilla in V, v “… you will meet Melintus this evening without delay, your woman only in company; and [to] be received from the Garden-wall …” (p. 40). In V, viii Melintus, Philemon, and Ravack arrive—if we assume for a moment a performance on a private playhouse stage—through a stage door to encounter Manlius. Manlius leads them immediately into the galley which is supposed to lie nearby, for although there is no direction to that effect, Killigrew has added in the folio the manuscript direction “… hear thay enter in to the galley” (p. 42). The King arrives with Seleucus and Appius. In the 1641 edition of the play, the direction follows, which was subsequently omitted: “Enter Manlius, Phi. Mel. Ra. and stand close.” The King enters, and Manlius and his friends have, it seems, entered the galley. Manlius now calls to the King, Seleucus, and Appius, and leads them, too, into the galley. Claricilla and Olinda now appear “bove”—that is, in the window. Manlius instructs Claricilla and Olinda to “come to the next corner,” from which they are helped into the galley. Olinda, however, misses her footing, and is drowned. Once she is on the galley, Claricilla is met by Manlius, Melintus, Philemon, and Ravack. Immediately after Manlius “Discovers the King, Appius and Seleucus” (p. 43).

It is difficult to imagine what happens in this scene. Where, exactly, is the galley supposed to be? There is no indication that Claricilla and Olinda come down to stage level to enter the galley. It seems possible that Killigrew originally thought of the galley as being on the upper Stage, as it might have been in II Bellamira, ii. Melintus, Philemon Ravack, and later the King, Seleucus, and Appius, are all concealed behind the curtain that closes off the rear of the upper stage, while Manlius is in front of the curtain on the “tarras.” Claricilla and Olinda step out of the window onto the upper stage as from a wall onto a galley. Olinda ostensibly falls into the sea, and unobtrusively leaves the stage. Melintus, Philemon, and Ravack meet Claricilla. Subsequently the curtains are drawn to reveal the King, Seleucus, and Appius.

There is, of course, no upper stage in the Restoration playhouse, and so the text is modified in Killigrew's manuscript annotations. The opening of V, viii has beside it the manuscript observation:

The seane must present a shipe [cancelled] galley with oeres liing lenge waey ouer the stage in which thay must be and a bateament is [?] a garden walle and at it the slaefes wating in the galley.

(p. 41)

What this “bateament” is, if that is indeed the word that Killigrew has written, is difficult to tell.¹³ Later Killigrew adds the note “Manlius calles to them [i.e., Melintus, Philemon, and Ravack] from the loe walle” (p. 42). Beside the printed direction “Enter Claricilla and Olinda above” Killigrew writes: “upon the walle i menssind and dessend by the stares to the galley or bote formarley menssind in the interim the king Appius and Selucus stade at the Cabbine to hide till they cum in to the bote” (p. 42). Manlius’ line, “Come to the next corner …” is altered to read, “Come to the stayres. …” (p. 43). It is evident that the galley is now revealed behind the back-shutters, and that it is a substantial construction with standing room and a curtained-off cabin. The garden wall is no longer the stage window, but an independent three-dimensional structure (bateament = battlement?/bâtiment?) standing in front of the galley in the discovery area, and revealed by the drawing apart of the shutters. Claricilla and Olinda appear not in the window, but on the wall, from which they descend by the “stayres” into the galley. Some idea of the arrangement may perhaps be gleaned from the setting for II, i of The Empress of Morocco, shown in Dolle's “sculptures” for the 1673 edition of Settle's play. Here, too, a galley approaches a low wall with, one assumes, stairs leading down to the water. Settle's scene is, I think, intended to occupy the discovery area, with the step down from the stage to the scene clearly apparent, although in the engraving it takes up the entire stage behind the proscenium.

The great interest of the folio of Killigrew's plays at Worcester College, Oxford, lies in the relationship it demonstrates between the private playhouses of the early Caroline period, and the public theatres of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century. The Restoration stage, it appears from the study of the folio, was greatly indebted to the stage of the earlier Caroline private playhouse. The proscenium doors and windows of the Restoration theatre derive from the doors and windows of a playhouse such as Blackfriars, and function in exactly the same way. The “vista” or discovery area corresponds to the discovery area of the earlier stage, and it is in the back-shutters and in the area immediately behind them that all scene changes and discoveries were effected. The term “scene” refers peculiarly, and perhaps in the early Restoration theatre exclusively, to the back-shutters and discovery area.

The Restoration stage, it is clear from Killigrew's folio, is not a new starting point for the English theatre; it merely elaborates upon the earlier private playhouse, combining with it the arrangement of wings and back-shutters evolved by Inigo Jones for the court masque.

Notes

1. The acquisition is recorded by C. H. Wilkinson in “The Library of Worcester College,” Oxford Bibliographical Society Proceedings and Papers, i (1926), p. 276.

2. “Thomas Killigrew Prepares His Plays for Production,” John Quincy Adams Memorial Studies, ed. James McManaway et al. (Washington, D.C., 1948), pp. 803-808.

3. “Production Notes for Three Plays by Thomas Killigrew,” Theatre Survey, X (1969), 105-113.

4. See Thomas Killigrew, Cavalier Dramatist, 1612-83 (Philadelphia, 1930), pp. 191-3.

5. p. 217. All references to Killigrew's plays and to his annotations on his plays are to the page, or to act, scene, and page of the Comedies and Tragedies, (London, 1664), with Killigrew's manuscript annotations, in the library of Worcester College, Oxford.

6. G. E. Bentley, with reference to Bellamira, cites Harbage's remark that “though the play is clearly closet drama, the stage directions anticipate Restoration methods” (The Jacobean and Caroline Stage [Oxford, 1956], IV, 697). This, surely, is to give Killigrew supernatural prescience. It seems more likely that the changes were made immediately before publication.

7. Irwin Smith in Shakespeare's Blackfriars Playhouse (New York, 1964) uses The Parson's Wedding, IV, vi as evidence for the existence of the controversial “inner stage” at the second Blackfriars. That such a discovery area existed and that it was substantial seems to me to be indisputable. T. J. King in Shakespearean Staging, 1599-1642 (Cambridge, 1971) challenges Smith's use of The Parson's Wedding as evidence for the existence of this “inner stage.” He argues that:

   although allusions in the text of The Parson's Wedding suggest the author may have originally intended that this play be performed at Blackfriars, the work was not printed until 1663 and its title page states: “Written at Basil in Switzerland” … In his Diary, Pepys (11 October 1664) refers to this play as being acted by the King's company. Since Killigrew, the author of the play, was manager of this company at the time the work was printed, it seems more than likely that the first edition reflects stage conditions of the Restoration playhouse rather than of Blackfriars over twenty years earlier.

   (p. 126)

   King leaves out of account the fact that playwrights do not write in a vacuum, they write with a theatre in mind, and that even in Switzerland the theatre that Killigrew was likely to have had in mind was the theatre for which he had previously written. Killigrew's reference to the “Tyring-Room” and his suggestion that the scene may be played “above,” can scarcely be taken to reflect “stage conditions of the Restoration Playhouse.”

8. Smith, p. 323.

9. Smith, pp. 380-1.

10. Smith, p. 359.

11. Cited Smith, pp. 359-60.

12. For an account of this convention on the Restoration stage see C. Visser, “The Anatomy of the Early Restoration Stage: The Adventures of Five Hours and John Dryden's ‘Spanish’ Comedies,” Theatre Notebook, XXIX (1975), 56-69, 114-119.

13. Killigrew's annotations are notoriously difficult to read: the script has faded, and his spelling is eccentric. Van Lennep remarks, “according to the epilogue to The Parson's Wedding (p. 154), Killigrew had trouble reading his own hand. He was an uneducated man, and his spelling, as is evident, was most uncertain.” (op. cit., p. 806). Of the stage directions in Act V, Van Lennep says merely: “In the last act Killigrew has added to the stage directions, particularly a direction on the use of the galley he has introduced into the scene …” (p. 806).