THE LITERARY AND EARLY STAGE HISTORY of Elizabethan period plays is a fascinating field. Among the reasons are the huge challenges identifying, sorting and making sense of the evidence. There is so much we want to know, yet the evidence is so sparse. Scholars in recent years have added considerably to our knowledge using two principal approaches. Some, like Tiffany Stern, have intensively reexamined documents that were already available, finding evidence there that previously has been overlooked. Others, like David Kathman, Alan Nelson and Eva Griffith, have found in the archives previously overlooked documents.
But a third source of new evidence has also become available to us in recent years. Archeologists have been excavating the foundations of Elizabethan period theaters and other relevant sites. Here we are looking at actual physical artifacts from the time itself. They surely have something to tell us. Let’s look here at three examples, the Rose, the Curtain, and New Place.
As evidence, these artifacts are subject to the same limitations as all other potential sources of evidence. Do we properly understand what they are? Are they in fact evidence or just noise? If they are evidence, how do they fit into the matrix of what we already know, or think we know? Then we need to consider what the archeological evidence tells us. Physical facts are immutable. How we interpret those facts is subject to our malleable imaginations. Caution is, as always, required.
The Rose
The most extensive relevant archeological dig, and by far the most thoroughly documented, is at Henslowe’s Rose theater. That’s a convenient fact for us, as the Rose is also extensively reflected in contemporary documents, especially in Henslowe’s records. We can compare the evidence revealed by the archeology with that reflected in the records. The Diary, for example, thoroughly documents Henslowe’s expenses for the theater’s expansion in 1592. The archeology confirms what the Diary says, and in a more tangible way, laying out exactly how, in physical terms, the theater was expanded.
The Rose’s archeology has much to tell us about the literary and early stage history of the plays that were performed there. Let’s focus here on one topic, the physical topography of the Rose’s post-expansion stage. The foundations reveal a regular trapezoid, except that the long line in the back was a concave curve, bending outward, following the round shape of the theater itself. The trapezoid was thrust out into the auditorium, its front there narrower than its curved back. There were two posts inside the stage, near the front corners. They presumably held up the roof and hut above the stage depicted in the panoramic engraving of London, prepared by John Norden and published in 1600.
The stage’s dimensions are of particular interest. As mentioned, the stage’s back side curves away, but measured as a straight line it was about 35 feet, or 11 meters, long. The front of the stage measured about 26 feet, or 8 meters. The depth of the stage varied, because the back side curved away. At its deepest point, in the center, the stage was about 19 feet, or less than 6 meters. At its narrowest points, at both ends, the stage was about 14 feet, or little more than 4 meters, deep. Even that depth was foreshortened by the presence of the posts near the front corners of the stage.
Let’s pause here for references. The Rose’s dimensions are discussed in Julian Bowsher, Shakespeare’s London Theatreland (2012), Peter Thomson, Shakespeare’s Theatre (2d ed., 1992) and Wickham, Berry and Ingram, English Professional Theatre (2000), among other works. The most extensive publication, with archeological maps and conjectured architectural drawings is Elizabeth Gurr, The Rose (2009). For my own dimensions I rely primarily on the archeological maps at 19 in Gurr and 421 in Wickham, Berry and Ingram. All contemporary drawings of period theaters are usefully collected in R.A. Foakes, Illustrations of the English Stage (1985).
Something about the Rose stage’s topography will surprise almost everyone: its small size. The stage’s average depth, considering both the presence of the posts and that there were two ends and only one center, was about 15 feet, well short of 5 meters. Modern theater stages, in contrast, vary considerably but typically are almost twice that deep, maybe 28 feet. The front of the Rose stage was also surprisingly short at about 28 feet, especially considering that the posts located near the corners effectively foreshortened that length too. Modern stages vary again, but usually are around 35 feet.
When we juxtapose the small size of the Rose stage with the props that we know were used on that stage, we have some serious figuring-out to do. The expanded Rose was used through most of the 1590s by the Lord Admiral’s Company. They performed Marlowe’s Tamburlaine there many times, as we know from Henslowe’s Diary. In Part Two, Tamburlaine enters “drawn in his chariot” by two defeated kings. Now, how in heaven’s name did the Lord Admiral’s accomplish that feat on so narrow a stage? You have to suppose that the chariot was constructed to scaled-down dimensions. Tamburlaine himself was performed by Edward Alleyn, who, as Susan Cerasano has shown, was unusually tall for the time. In a scaled-down chariot, Alleyn as Tamburlaine must have seemed especially imposing.
Tamburlaine’s chariot is not the only prop that will cause us to recalibrate. Any number are contained on Henslowe’s list of Lord Admiral’s properties that he stored at the expanded Rose. I examine this list, its provenance and probable 1599 date in my RES article concerning Peele’s Battle of Alcazar. There we find such props as a “great horse with his leages [legs].” That presumably was a prop used in the lost play “Troy,” production of which is reflected in the Diary. How did the Lord Admiral’s get that on the stage? In order to perform its function, the great horse must have been big enough to hold at least two boy actors.