doors for
such entrances to the front stage as could not properly be made through
the curtains. This part of the stage was used for such scenes as the
caves in _Cymbeline_ or _The Tempest_, for the tomb in _Romeo and
Juliet_, and for scenes in which characters concealed themselves behind
the arras, as in _I Henry IV_ or _Hamlet_. Since the front stage could
not be concealed from the spectators, most heavy properties were placed
on the back stage, so that this part of the stage was generally used
for scenes which required such properties. For many of these scenes,
however, both parts of the stage were used, the actors spreading out
over the front stage soon after the beginning of the scene.

The space between the top of the back stage and the {42} heavens formed
a balcony, like the balcony already described as part of the stage as
arranged in the inn-yards. This balcony could also be curtained off
when occasion required. To the right and left of it, over the doors
leading to the front stage, some of the theaters had window-like
openings, which were probably not in line with the balcony, but, like
the doors below them, projected at an oblique angle. At one of these
windows Jessica appeared in the second act of _The Merchant of Venice_;
from the balcony Romeo took leave of Juliet. Thus the Elizabethan
dramatist had three fields of action--a front, rear, and upper
stage--which he could use singly, together, or in various combinations.

+Settings and Costumes+.--In order to understand the way in which this
stage was utilized, the student must dismiss from his mind two
widespread errors. The Elizabethan stage was by no means a bare,
unfurnished platform, nor did the managers substitute for a setting
placards reading "This is a Forest," or "This is a Bedroom." The
difference between that age and this is not one between no settings and
good ones; it is even possible to doubt whether Shakespeare's plays
were not put on more effectively then than in most of our modern
theaters. The difference is one of principle, and even this difference
may easily be exaggerated. When we say that Elizabethan stagings were
'symbolic,' whereas ours are pictorial, we mean that on the former the
presence of a few selected objects suggested to the mind of the
spectator all the others which go to make up the kind of scene
presented. When a few trees were placed upon the stage, the audience
supplied in {43} imagination the other objects th