him introduced at least, if not invented, which afforded certainly an
additional beauty to the theatre, tho' some have insinuated, that fine
scenes proved the ruin of acting; but as we are persuaded it will be
an entertaining circumstance to our Readers, to have that matter more
fully explained, we shall take this opportunity of doing it.

In the reign of Charles I, dramatic entertainments were accompanied
with rich scenery, curious machines, and other elegant embellishments,
chiefly condufted by the wonderful dexterity of that celebrated
English, architect Inigo Jones. But these were employed only in
masques at court, and were too expensive for the little theatres in
which plays were then acted. In them there was nothing more than a
ouftain of very coarse stuff, upon the drawing up of which, the stage
appeared either with bare walls on the sides, coarsly matted, or
covered with tapestry; so that for the place originally represented,
and all the successive changes in which the poets of those times
freely indulged themselves, there was nothing to help the spectator's
understanding, or to assist the actor's performance, but bare
imagination. In Shakespear's time so undecorated were the theatres,
that a blanket supplied the place of a curtain; and it was a good
observation of the ingenious Mr. Chitty, a gentleman of acknowledged
taste in dramatic excellence, that the circumstance of the blanket,
suggested to Shakespear that noble image in Macbeth, where the
murderer invokes

Thick night to veil itself in the dunnest smoke of Hell,
Nor Heaven peep thro' the blanket of the dark
To cry hold, hold.

It is true, that while things continued in this situation, there were