s are a curtained space at the
rear, and a gallery above. Trap-doors were also provided, and the hut
overhead supplied the machinery for ascents and descents of gods and
goddesses.

[Page Heading: The Fortune Theater]

Our diagram for the ground floor of the Fortune shows a square-cornered
stage with doors flat on the rear, while the perspective drawing from
Dr. Albright's _Shaksperian Stage_ shows a tapering stage, as in the
_Messalina_ picture, with doors on the bias. Some stages may have had
rounded corners with doors in the side. The pillars were not necessary
in the private theaters; or in some public houses where other means were
found for supporting the roof.

[Illustration: GROUND PLAN OF THE FORTUNE THEATER

Dimensions: 80 ft. square on the outside; 55 ft. square on the inside,
the stage 43 ft. wide and extending to the middle of the pit.]

The performance of a play differed in many ways from one to-day. There
was no scenery and there were no women actors. Though scenes were used
in court performances as early as 1604, they do not seem to have been
employed by the professional companies to any extent until after the
Restoration. Female parts were taken by boys, and, except in plays acted
by the children's companies, there were rarely more than two important
female characters in a play. Though without scenery, the Elizabethan
stage was by no means devoid of spectacle. Processions, battles, all
kinds of mythological beings, ascents to heaven, descents to hell,
fire-works, and elaborate properties, were employed. Numerous
contemporary plays indicate that neither the fairyland of _A
Midsummer-Night's Dream_, nor the magnificent court of _Henry VIII_, was
devised without an eye to the resources of the stage. Large sums of
money were lavished on costumes, the cost of a coat often exceeding the
price paid an author for a play. Costume was anachronistic; Cleopatra
was impersonated by a boy in stays and farthingale; and Caesar, probably
by Burbage, in a costume much like that worn by the Earl of Essex. Some
attention, however, was paid to appropriateness. Shepherds were clothed
in white, hunters in green; and doubtless mermaids, fairies, Venuses,
and satyrs were given as appropriate a dress as fancy could devise. The
action of a play seems usually to have been completed in two hours.
There was sometimes music between the acts, but there were no long
waits, and little stage business.

[Page Heading: Stage Presenta