dless injunction, as Mr. Collier
remarks, if there had existed the means of exhibiting the edifice in
question to the eyes of the spectators. But the demands upon the
audience to abet the work of theatrical illusion, and with their
thoughts to piece out the imperfections of the dramatists, are
frequently to be met with in the old plays. Of the poverty of the
early stage, in the matter of scenic decorations, there is abundant
evidence. Fleckno, in his "Short Discourse of the Stage," 1664, by
which time movable scenery had been introduced, writes: "Now for the
difference between our theatres and those of former times; they were
but plain and simple, with no other scenes nor decorations of the
stages but only old tapestry, and the stage strewed with rushes."

The simple expedient of writing up the names of the different places,
where the scene was laid in the progress of a play, or affixing a
placard to that effect upon the tapestry at the back of the stage,
sufficed to convey to the spectators the intentions of the author.
"What child is there," asks Sir Philip Sidney, "that, coming to a play
and seeing Thebes written in great letters on an old door, doth
believe that it is Thebes?" Oftentimes, too, opportunity was found in
the play itself, or in its prologue, to inform the audience of the
place in which the action of the story is supposed to be laid. "Our
scene is Rhodes," says old Hieronymo in Kyd's "Spanish Tragedy," 1588.
And the title of the play was also exhibited in the same way, so that
the audience did not lack instruction as to the purport of the
entertainment set before them.

The introduction of movable scenes upon the stage has been usually
attributed to Sir William Davenant, who, in 1658, evading the
ordinance of 1647, by which the theatres were peremptorily closed,
produced, at the Cockpit in Drury Lane, an entertainment rather than a
play, entitled "The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, expressed by
vocal and instrumental music, and by art of perspective in scenes:" an
exhibition which Cromwell is generally supposed to have permitted,
more from his hatred of the Spaniards than by reason of his tolerance
of dramatic performances. The author of "Historia Histrionica," a
tract written in 1699, also expressly states that "after the
Restoration, the king's players acted publicly at the Red Bull for
some time, and then removed to a new-built playhouse in Vere Street,
by Clare Market; there they continued for a