t a front curtain opening in the middle
and a balcony or upper platform resting on pillars at the back of the
stage, from which portions of the dialogue were sometimes spoken,
although occasionally the balcony seems to have been occupied by
spectators (cf. a sketch made by a Dutch visitor to London in 1596 of the
stage of the Swan Theatre in _Zur Kenntniss der altenglischen Buhne von
Karl Theodor Gaedertz_. _Mit der ersten authentischen innern Ansicht der
Schwans Theater in London_, Bremen, 1888). Sir Philip Sidney humorously
described the spectator's difficulties in an Elizabethan playhouse,
where, owing to the absence of stage scenery, he had to imagine the bare
boards to present in rapid succession a garden, a rocky coast, a cave,
and a battlefield (_Apologie for Poetrie_, p. 52). Three flourishes on a
trumpet announced the beginning of the performance, but a band of
fiddlers played music between the acts. The scenes of each act were
played without interruption.

{40a} Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps's _Visits of Shakespeare's Company of
Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England_ (privately printed,
1887). From the information there given, occasionally supplemented from
other sources, the following imperfect itinerary is deduced:

1593. Bristol and Shrewsbury.

1594. Marlborough.

1597. Faversham, Bath, Rye, Bristol, Dover and Marlborough.

1603. Richmond (Surrey), Bath, Coventry, Shrewsbury, Mortlake, Wilton
House.

1604. Oxford.

1605. Barnstaple and Oxford.

1606. Leicester, Saffron Walden, Marlborough, Oxford, Dover and
Maidstone.

1607. Oxford.

1608. Coventry and Marlborough.

1609. Hythe, New Romney and Shrewsbury.

1610. Dover, Oxford and Shrewsbury.

1612. New Romney.

1613. Folkestone, Oxford and Shrewsbury.

1614. Coventry.

{40b} Cf. Knight's _Life of Shakespeare_ (1843), p. 41; Fleay, _Stage_,
pp. 135-6.

{41a} The favour bestowed by James VI on these English actors was so
marked as to excite the resentment of the leaders of the Kirk. The
English agent, George Nicolson, in a (hitherto unpublished) despatch
dated from Edinburgh on November 12, 1599, wrote: 'The four Sessions of
this Town (without touch by name of our English players, Fletcher and
Mertyn [_i.e._ Martyn], with their company), and not knowing the King's
ordinances for them to play and be heard, enacted [that] their flocks
[were] to forbear and not to come to or haunt profane games, sports, or