The stage still projected far
into the pit in front of the curtain. The actors and actresses spoke
in the centre of the house, so that, as Colley Cibber put it, "the
most distant ear had scarce the least doubt or difficulty in hearing
what fell from the weakest utterance ... nor was the minutest motion
of a feature, properly changing with the passion or humour it suited,
ever lost, as they frequently must be, in the obscurity of too great a
distance." The platform-stage, with which Shakespeare was familiar,
suffered no curtailment in the English theatres till the eighteenth
century, when the fore-edge of the boards was for the first time made
to run level with the proscenium.
III
One of the obvious results of the long suppression of the theatres
during the Civil Wars and Commonwealth was the temporary extinction of
play-writing in England. On the sudden reopening of the playhouses at
the Restoration, the managers had mainly to rely for sustenance on the
drama of a long-past age. Of the one hundred and forty-five separate
plays which Pepys witnessed, fully half belonged to the great period
of dramatic activity in England, which covered the reigns of
Elizabeth, James I.
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