e rocks, tombs, caves,
trees, tables, chairs, and pasteboard dishes of food. There was at the
outset no music, save flourishes on trumpets at the opening of the
play and between the acts. The scenes within each act were played
continuously without pause. The bare boards of the platform-stage,
which no proscenium nor curtain darkened, projected so far into the
auditorium, that the actors spoke in the very centre of the house.
Trap-doors were in use for the entrance of "ghosts" and other
mysterious personages. At the back of the stage was a raised platform
or balcony, from which often hung loose curtains; through them the
actors passed to the forepart of the stage. The balcony was pressed
into the service when the text of the play indicated that the speakers
were not actually standing on the same level. From the raised platform
Juliet addressed Romeo in the balcony scene, and the citizens of
Angers in _King John_ held colloquy with the English besiegers. This
was, indeed, almost the furthest limit of the Elizabethan
stage-manager's notion of scenic realism. The boards, which were bare
save for the occasional presence of rough properties, were held to
present adequate semblance, as the play demanded, of a king's
throne-room, a chapel, a forest, a ship at sea, a mountainous pass, a
market-place, a battle-field, or a churchyard.

The costumes had no pretensions to fit the period or place of the
action. They were the ordinary dresses of various classes of the day,
but were often of rich material, and in the height of the current
fashion. False hair and beards, crowns and sceptres, mitres and
croziers, armour, helmets, shields, vizors, and weapons of war, hoods,
bands, and cassocks, were mainly relied on to indicate among the
characters differences of rank or profession.

The foreign observer, Thomas Platter of Basle, was impressed by the
splendour of the actors' costumes. He accounted for it in a manner
that negatives any suggestion of dramatic propriety:--

"The players wear the most costly and beautiful dresses, for
it is the custom in England, that when noblemen or knights
die, they leave their finest clothes to their servants, who,
since it would not be fitting for them to wear such splendid
garments, sell them soon afterwards to the players for a
small sum."

The most striking defect in the practice of the Elizabethan playhouse,
according to accepted notions, lies in the allotment of th