mind of the dramatist can be seen. Shakespeare read that Richard did go to Flint; and “go to Flint Castle,” coming where it does, gives just that effect of the wretched king being driven from pillar to post which he wants to give. But he bothered no more about it, for the next effect he wanted lay in Bolingbroke’s
Go to the rude ribs of that ancient castle,
and it no longer mattered to him whether it was Flint or another.
He paints a little verbal scenery when he needs it. But, again, it is more for effect than exactitude:
I am a stranger here in Gloucestershire,
These high wild winds and rough uneven ways. …
The whole speech is upon travelling and its tediousness, the scattering and gathering of men. And it is the sense of this the actors have to convey; the fact that they are in Gloucestershire is the least important thing about it.[1] Nor would anything an Elizabethan stage-manager could do help us to realise either the locality or the high hills. We may presume an inner stage (though Richard II. can be played without one), and that, for this scene, its curtains would be better closed than open. Let so much be conceded. An inner stage did by use and wont suggest an interior of some sort, for it was the convenient place to set furniture in, or from which to bring it forth; and why distract the audience’s attention to the empty place uselessly? But there would always be the upper stage, plain to be seen, or equally to be ignored.
Nor is this cavalier treatment of background to be attributed to undeveloped stagecraft. In Antony and Cleopatra Shakespeare is at the height of his powers, his technical ability is at full stretch, he is opulent in his use of it. And now, in one respect, locality is of great importance to his scheme. The whole import of the play’s action lies in the contrast and clash of Egypt and Rome. To emphasise even the more that there are world affairs in hand, a scene in Parthia is added. Marlowe’s crude methods of marking
- ↑ For a masterly piece of such painting see Macbeth III. iii.:
The west yet glimmers with some streaks of day;
Now spurs the ’lated traveller apace
To gain the timely inn. …But where is the care for locality here? As well look for it in a piece of music. And a hundred such instances could be quoted.
