scenery. The musicians sit upon the stage, and the actors
enter through an arras at the right or at the left of the rear wall. The
costumes are elaborate, and the players frequently parade around the stage.
Long speeches and set colloquies are common. Only the crudest properties
are used. Two candlesticks and a small image on a table are taken to
represent a temple; a man seated upon an overturned chair is supposed to be
a general on a charger; and when a character is obliged to cross a river,
he walks the length of the stage trailing an oar behind him. The audience
does not seem to notice that these conventions are unnatural,--any more
than did the 'prentices in the pit, when Burbage, with the sun shining full
upon his face, announced that it was then the very witching time of night.

The Drama of Rhetoric which was demanded by the physical conditions of the
Elizabethan stage survived the Restoration and did not die until the day of
Addison's _Cato_. Imitations of it have even struggled on the stage within
the nineteenth century. The _Virginius_ of Sheridan Knowles and the
_Richelieu_ of Bulwer-Lytton were both framed upon the Elizabethan model,
and carried the platform drama down to recent times. But though traces of
the platform drama still exist, the period of its pristine vigor terminated
with the closing of the theatres in 1642.

When the drama was resumed in 1660, the physical conditions of the theatre
underwent a material change. At this time two great play-houses were
chartered,--the King's Theatre in Drury Lane, and the Duke of York's
Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Thomas Killigrew, the manager of the
Theatre Royal, was the first to introduce women actors on the stage; and
parts which formerly had been played by boys were soon performed by
actresses as moving as the great Elizabeth Barry. To William Davenant, the
manager of the Duke's Theatre, belongs the credit for a still more
important innovation. During the eighteen years when public dramatic
performances had been prohibited, he had secured permission now and then to
produce an opera upon a private stage. For these musical entertainments he
took as a model the masques, or court celebrations, which had been the most
popular form of private theatricals in the days of Elizabeth and James. It
is well known that masques had been produced with elaborate scenic
appointments even at a time when the professional stage was bare of
scenery. While the theatres had b