The sixteenth-century prospettiva, of which there were many later examples, is the type of scenery so fully described and illustrated by the architect Sebastiano Serlio in the Second Book of his Architettura (1551). Serlio had himself been the designer of a theatre at Vicenza, and had also been familiar at Rome with Baldassarre Peruzzi, whose notes had passed into his possession. He was therefore well in the movement.[28] At the time of the publication of the Architettura he was resident in France, where he was employed, like other Italians, by Francis I upon the palace of Fontainebleau. Extracts from Serlio’s treatise will be found in an appendix and I need therefore only briefly summarize here the system of staging which it sets out.[29] This is a combination of the more or less solid ‘case’ with flat cloths painted in perspective. The proscenium is long and comparatively shallow, with an entrance at each end, and flat. But from the line of the scena wall the level of the stage slopes slightly upwards and backwards, and on this slope stand to right and left the ‘case’ of boards or laths covered with canvas, while in the centre is a large aperture, disclosing a space across which the flat cloths are drawn, a large one at the back and smaller ones on frames projecting by increasing degrees from behind the ‘case’. Out of these elements is constructed, by the art of perspective, a consistent scene with architectural perspectives facing the audience, and broken in the centre by a symmetrical vista. For the sake of variety, the action can use practicable doors and windows in the façades, and to some extent also within the central aperture, on the lower part of the slope. It was possible to arrange for interior action by discovering a space within the ‘case’ behind the façades, but this does not seem to have been regarded as a very effective device.[30] Nor is there anything to suggest that Serlio contemplated any substantial amount of action within his central recess, for which, indeed, the slope required by his principles of perspective made it hardly suitable. As a matter of fact the action of the Italian commedia sostenuta, following here the tradition of its Latin models, is essentially exterior action before contiguous houses, and some amusing conventions, as Creizenach notes, follow from this fact; such as that it is reasonable to come out-of-doors in order to communicate secrets, that the street is a good place in which to bury treasure, and that you do not know who lives in the next house until you are told.[31] In discussing the decoration of the stage, Serlio is careful to distinguish between the kinds of scenery appropriate for tragedy, comedy, and the satyric play or pastoral, respectively, herein clearly indicating his debt and that of his school to the doctrine of Vitruvius.

It must not be supposed that Serlio said the last word on Italian Renaissance staging. He has mainly temporary theatres in his mind, and when theatres became permanent it was possible to replace laths and painted cloths by a more solid architectural scena in relief. Of this type was the famous Teatro Olympico of Vicenza begun by Andrea Palladio about 1565 and finished by Vincenzo Scamozzi about 1584.[32] It closely followed the indications of Vitruvius, with its porta regia in the middle of the scena, its portae minores to right and left, and its proscenium doors in versurae under balconies for spectators. And it did not leave room for much variety in decoration, as between play and play.[33] It appears, indeed, to have been used only for tragedy. A more important tendency was really just in the opposite direction, towards change rather than uniformity of scenic effect. Even the perspectives, however beautiful, of the comedies did not prove quite as amusing, as the opening heavens and hells and other ingeniously varied backgrounds of the mediaeval plays had been, and by the end of the sixteenth century devices were being tried for movable scenes, which ultimately led to the complete elimination of the comparatively solid and not very manageable ‘case’.[34]

It is difficult to say how far the Italian perspective scene made its way westwards. Mediaeval drama--on the one hand the miracle-play, on the other the morality and the farce--still retained an unbounded vitality in sixteenth-century France. The miracle-play had its own elaborate and traditional system of staging. The morality and the farce required very little staging at all, and could be content at need with nothing more than a bare platform, backed by a semicircle or hollow square of suspended curtains, through the interstices of which the actors might come and go.[35] But from the beginning of the century there is observable in educated circles an infiltration of the humanist interest in the classical drama; and this, in course of time, was reinforced through two distinct channels. One of these was the educational influence, coming indirectly through Germany and the Netherlands, of the ‘Christian Terence’, which led about 1540 to the academic Latin tragedies of Buchanan and Muretus at Bordeaux.[36] The other was the direct contact with humanist civilization, which followed upon the Italian adventures of Charles VIII and Louis XII, and dominated the reigns of François I and his house, notably after the marriage of Catherine de’ Medici to the future Henri II in 1533. In 1541 came Sebastiano Serlio with his comprehensive knowledge of stage-craft; and the translation of his Architettura, shortly after its publication in 1545, by Jean Martin, a friend of Ronsard, may be taken as evidence of its vogue. In 1548 the French Court may be said to have been in immediate touch with the nidus of Italian scenic art at Ferrara, for when Henri and Catherine visited Lyons it was Cardinal Hippolyte d’Este who provided entertainment for them with a magnificent performance of Bibbiena’s famous Calandra. This was ‘nella gran sala di San Gianni’ and was certainly staged in the full Italian manner, with perspective by Andrea Nannoccio and a range of terra-cotta statues by one Zanobi.[37] Henceforward it is possible to trace the existence of a Court drama in France. The Italian influence persisted. It is not, indeed, until 1571 that we find regular companies of Italian actors settling in Paris, and these, when they came, probably played, mainly if not entirely, commedie dell’ arte.[38] But Court performances in 1555 and 1556 of the Lucidi of Firenzuola and the Flora of Luigi Alamanni show that the commedia sostenuta was already established in favour at a much earlier date.[39] More important, however, is the outcrop of vernacular tragedy and comedy, on classical and Italian models, which was one of the literary activities of the Pléiade. The pioneer in both genres was Étienne Jodelle, whose tragedy of Cléopâtre Captive was produced before Henri II by the author and his friends at the Hôtel de Reims early in 1553, and subsequently repeated at the Collège de Boncour, where it was accompanied by his comedy of La Rencontre, probably identical with the extant Eugène, which is believed to date from 1552. Jodelle had several successors: in tragedy, Mellin de Saint-Gelais, Jacques and Jean de la Taille, Jacques Grévin, Robert Garnier, Antoine de Montchrestien; and in comedy, Rémy Belleau, Jean de Baïf, Jean de la Taille, Jacques Grévin, and Pierre Larivey. So far as tragedy was concerned, the Court representations soon came to an end. Catherine de’ Medici, always superstitious, believed that the Sophonisbe of Mellin de Saint-Gelais in 1556 had brought ill luck, and would have no more.[40] The academies may have continued to find hospitality for a few, but the best critical opinion appears to be that most of the tragedies of Garnier and his fellows were for the printing-press only, and that their scenic indications, divorced from the actualities of representation, can hardly be regarded as evidence on any system of staging.[41] Probably this is also true of many of the literary comedies, although Court performances of comedies, apart from those of the professional players, continue to be traceable throughout the century. Unfortunately archaeological research has not succeeded in exhuming from the archives of the French royal households anything that throws much light on the details of staging, and very possibly little material of this kind exists. Cléopâtre is said to have been produced ‘in Henrici II aula ... magnifico veteris scenae apparatu’.[42] The prologue of Eugène, again, apologizes for the meagreness of an academic setting:

Quand au théâtre, encore qu’il ne soit En demi-rond, comme on le compassoit, Et qu’on ne l’ait ordonné de la sorte Que l’on faisoit, il faut qu’on le supporte: Veu que l’exquis de ce vieil ornement Ores se voue aux Princes seulement.

Hangings round the stage probably sufficed for the colleges, and possibly even on some occasions for royal châteaux.[43] But Jodelle evidently envisaged something more splendid as possible at Court, and a notice, on the occasion of some comedies given before Charles IX at Bayonne in 1565, of ‘la bravade et magnificence de la dite scène ou théâtre, et des feux ou verres de couleur, desquelles elle etait allumée et enrichie’ at once recalls a device dear to Serlio, and suggests a probability that the whole method of staging, which Serlio expounds, may at least have been tried.[44] Of an actual theatre ‘en demi-rond’ at any French palace we have no clear proof. Philibert de l’Orme built a salle de spectacle for Catherine in the Tuileries, on a site afterwards occupied by the grand staircase, but its shape and dimensions are not on record.[45] There was another in the pleasure-house, which he planned for Henri II in the grounds of Saint-Germain, and which was completed by Guillaume Marchand under Henri IV. This seems, from the extant plan, to have been designed as a parallelogram.[46] The hall of the Hôtel de Bourbon, hard by the Louvre, in which plays were sometimes given, is shown by the engravings of the Balet Comique, which was danced there in 1581, to have been, in the main, of similar shape. But it had an apse ‘en demi-rond’ at one end.[47] It may be that the Terence illustrations come again to our help, and that the new engravings which appear, side by side with others of the older tradition, in the Terence published by Jean de Roigny in 1552 give some notion of the kind of stage which Jodelle and his friends used.[48] The view is from the auditorium. The stage is a platform, about 3½ ft. high, with three shallow steps at the back, on which actors are sitting, while a prologue declaims. There are no hangings or scenes. Pillars divide the back of the stage from a gallery which runs behind and in which stand spectators. Obviously this is not on Italian lines, but it might preserve the memory of some type of academic stage.