of scene.
Several scenes, where no heavy properties were required, might succeed
one another on the front stage with the curtains closed; but the opening
of the curtains would reveal a special background and a manifest change
of scene. One instance of this use of the inner stage is seen in the
immediate change from an outdoor to an indoor scene, or _vice versa_.
The scene is in the street, _i.e._, on the front stage; the person
knocks at one of the doors and is admitted to a house; when he
reappears, it is through the inner stage, the curtains of which have
been drawn, disclosing the setting of a room. Or this process is
reversed. In _A Yorkshire Tragedy_, there is an interesting case of such
an alternation from indoors to outdoors, with one character remaining on
the stage all of the time. A more extensive use of this "alternation"
could be employed to indicate marked changes of place. As long as the
action remains in Venice, the bare front stage will do, but a transfer
to Portia's house at Belmont can be made by means of the curtains and
the inner stage. In the later plays at the private theaters this use of
the inner stage, then better lighted, seems to have increased,
especially in the change from a street or general hall to special
apartments.

[Page Heading: Evolution of the Theater]

These uses of the inner stage, together with that of the upper stage or
gallery, gave a chance for considerable variety in the action, and
rendered the rapid succession of scenes less bewildering than one would
at first suppose. Shakespeare's stage was the outcome of the peculiar
conditions of acting by professionals in the sixteenth century, but it
was also a natural step in the evolution from the medieval to the modern
stage. On the medieval stage there was a neutral place or _platea_ and
special localized and propertied places called _sedes_, _domus_, _loca_.
On the Elizabethan stage the front stage is the _platea_, the inner and
upper stages the _domus_ or _loca_. In the Restoration theater the
scenery was placed on the inner stage and shut off from the outer stage
by a curtain. With the use of scenery, the inner stage became more
important, and the projecting apron of the front stage was gradually cut
down. The proscenium doors in front of the curtain long survived their
original use as entrances, but, as a rule, they have now finally
disappeared with the front stage. The modern picture-frame stage of
to-day is the evolution o