The Origins of the So-called Elizabethan Multiple Stage

Abstract

The so-called Elizabethan multiple stage is perhaps best illustrated in the reconstruction by John Cranford Adams. This consists of the following elements: an “outer stage,” an “inner stage” or “study,” obliquely set tiring-house doors (one on either side of the inner stage), obliquely set second-story “window-stages” (one above each of the tiring-house doors), an “upper stage” or “chamber” directly above the inner stage, a “tarras” or balcony running in front of the upper-stage curtains, a third-story musicroom directly above the upper stage, and a system of six traps set in the outer and inner stages. At one time or another (one supposes) most students of the Elizabethan stage have accepted this complex combination of separate playing-areas as more or less “Elizabethan“; and most of them have also, in time, come to be more or less disillusioned with the conception.