1. This research has involved invaluable collaboration with two colleagues in the English Department at the University of Sydney, Penny Gay and Anthony Miller.

2. Rutter, Carol, Documents of the Rose Playhouse (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 91Google Scholar; see also pp. 22–4 for more general figures relating to Henslowe's companies.

3. Smith, I., ‘Their Exits and Reentrances,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 18 (1967), pp. 7–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomson, Peter, Shakespeare's Theatre, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 136–60.Google Scholar

4. Beckerman, Bernard, ‘Theatrical Plots and Elizabethan Stage Practice’, in Shakespeare and Dramatic Tradition, eds Elton, W. R. and Long, William B. (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), pp. 109–24.Google Scholar

5. Mariko Ichikawa, ‘Entrances and exits in Shakespeare's plays: The usage of the upstage doors’.

6. Eccles, Christine, The Rose Theatre (London: Nick Hern Books, 1990)Google Scholar; Hildy, Franklin J. (ed.), New Issues in the Reconstruction of Shakespeare's Theatre (New York: P. Lang, 1991).Google Scholar

7. King, Thomas J., Shakespearian Staging 1599–1642 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hosley, Richard, in The Revels History of Drama in English, Vol. III (London: Methuen, 1975)Google Scholar; Berry, Herbert, The Boar's Head Playhouse (Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1986).Google Scholar

8. Gurr, Andrew, The Shakespearian Stage 1574–1642, 3rd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp. 172–211.Google Scholar

9. Gurr, Andrew, ‘Staging at the Globe’, in Shakespeare's Globe Rebuilt, eds. Mulryne, J. R. and Shewring, Margaret (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 159–68.Google Scholar

10. Bradley, David, From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre: Preparing the Play for the Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 32–3.Google Scholar

11. Fitzpatrick, Tim, ‘The Fortune Contract and Hollar's Original Drawing of Southwark: Some Indications of a Smaller First Globe’, Shakespeare Bulletin 14, no. 4 (Fall 1996), pp. 5–10.Google Scholar

12. Fitzpatrick, Tim, ‘Shakespeare's Exploitation of a Two-door Stage: Macbeth, Theatre Research International 20, no. 3 (Autumn 1995), pp. 207–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Analyses in these terms of some brief sections of text have been done, for example, by: Bradley, David, in From Text to Performance in the Elizabethan Theatre, pp. 32–3 (a section of Richard II)Google Scholar; Orrell, John, ‘The Polarity of the Globe's Stage’Google Scholar (a paper given at the Easter 1995 Bankside Conference: the opening scene of Hamlet); and Brian Gibbons, ‘The Question of Place’ (a paper given at the same conference: Ben Jonson's Every Man In His Humour).

14. Dessen, Alan, Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Recovering Shakespeare's Theatrical Vocabulary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

15. Unless otherwise specified, line numbers for Shakespeare's plays refer to the Arden editions.

16. These include Barnes, Barnabe, The Devil's CharterGoogle Scholar, Jonson, Ben, The Alchemist and VolpaneGoogle Scholar; Webster, John, The Duchess of MalfiGoogle Scholar; Middleton, Thomas, The Revenger's Tragedy and The Atheist's Tragedy.Google Scholar

17. 1 Henry VI, II.i.40, the Folio reads: ‘Enter, several ways… half ready and half unready.’

18. Smith, W., Shakespeare's Playhouse Practice (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1975).Google Scholar

19. Gurr, Andrew (‘Staging at the Globe’, p. 161–2)Google Scholar argues that such scenes would issue from the central opening. If there was a central opening this might have been the case, but the need for symmetry is not a proof that such an opening existed (and indeed may merely betray an unconscious proscenium arch perspective: what of the majority of spectators, well to the side, for whom such a perspective would be meaningless?). The courts-from-inwards pattern is not, however, universal. There are a number of instances in which the Lords are treated as ‘disposable extras’ as if their only function is to establish a ‘court scene’ (perhaps in cases where, for whatever reasons, the court enters from outwards); once it is established they are then dispensed with, sometimes in the space of a couple of lines: 1 Henry IV, III.ii; The Two Gentlemen of Verona, III.i; Pericles, I.ii.

20. In Macbeth the opposition between the kitchens (‘outwards’) and the banquet hall (‘inwards’) in I.vii is set up in I.V.37, where Lady Macbeth sends the servant back outwards to give refreshment to the exhausted messenger (‘give him tending’). In The Taming of the Shrew, IV.i, iii Petruchio's servants' quarters and kitchens are outwards in contrast to Petruchio's and Katherina's bedchamber. In Romeo and Juliet, IV.ii, iv the Capulet kitchens are clearly contrasted to Juliet's bedroom, and in 2 Henry IV, II.iv the banquet at the Boar's Head Tavern is clearly inwards, and the kitchens outwards.

21. Pericles, V.i; Coriolanus, V.ii–iii; Love's Labour's Lost, V.

22. See Thomson, Peter, Shakespeare's Theatre, pp. 39, 41.Google Scholar

23. Other examples of this ‘shifting’ of the onstage space occur in the ‘Jerusalem Room’ scenes in 2 Henry IV, IV.iv, v; in the council scene in Henry VIII, V.ii; and in Julius Caesar, rv.ii, Brutus's tent.

24. Mostly battles seem to follow the triangulation pattern, with the battlefield off outwards, and the inwards door leading to the tents and pavilions of the combatants, or the town: Julius Caesar, V.i–ii; 3 Henry VI, V.i–iii; 1 Henry VI, III.ii; IV.v–vii; 1 Henry IV, V.i; Coriolanus, I.iv. Other battles are explicitly binary in pattern rather than triangulated, and in such cases the two armies face off against each other or are portrayed as being respectively behind the two doors: Antony and Cleopatra, III.viii–x; IV.vii; Cymbeline, V.ii; Richard III, V.iii; 2 Henry IV, IV.i; King John, II.i.280ff.

25. In Macbeth, I.v–vi, the arrival of the messenger, followed by Macbeth and then Duncan and company, is a typical pattern; so too then the arrival of Macduff in II.iii at ‘the south entry’. Mention has been made already of the arrival from the port in Othello, II. Those being led off to execution are quite explicitly ‘on the way out’: 1 Henry VI, V.iv, Richard III, III.iii.

26. In Julius Caesar, II.i, set in Brutus's orchard, the visitors arrive from ‘outwards’, clearly differentiated from the ‘inwards’ or private offstage space of the house. However in Much Ado About Nothing, III.v.50, the Messenger comes out of house announcing the arrival (into the house) of the wedding party; in 2 Henry IV, V.iii, the scene is set in the orchard and the messenger arrives at the ‘door’ (inwards), not at the gate.

27. In As You Like It, I.iii, the ladies decide to dress as men and go ‘out’; in Macbeth, Lady Macbeth's use of inwards and outwards doors early in play gives way to a more restricted ‘inwards’ pattern in Act IV.

28. The Folio's final speech has Armado stage manage the exits: ‘You that way: we this way’. It has been suggested that this might be an addition by the stage manager to ensure a tidy Exeunt, and this may be the case. But if it is, what are the two groups, since there are three obvious groupings on the stage: the ladies, the men, the clowns? If this scene is at the tents as suggested above, then one would expect the King's group to exit outwards back to the court; so too Armado and company. But the Princess and ladies? Do they go outwards too (to return home), or retire inwards to their tents to prepare for their departure? A naturalistic logic (and the final Folio line) would suggest the latter, particularly as Boyet has already been sent off (presumably inwards) to prepare their things: PRIN. Boyet, prepare: I will away to-night. (719) However this is contradicted further on: Princess. Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave.

KING. No, madam; we will bring you on you way. (864–5)

This would seem to suggest that the ladies and men are to leave the stage together, but if that is the case they must leave via the inwards door back towards the tents (it would make no sense if the double exit were the other way around, with ladies and men leaving outwards, and then clowns inwards towards the tents). The previous sending of Boyet off to the tents to pack the bags thus becomes a crucial marker: if he has gone that way, then it is logical for the ladies too (and the men with them) to do the same—with the understanding they will take their partings at, and leave from, the tents. This has two added advantages: first it avoids the necessity for formal leave-taking by each couple on the stage (surely required if these two groups are to exit separately), and secondly it foreshadows in its physical pattern the deferred happy ending that the audience is expecting to take place after the year of mourning, when the ladies will definitively take the men once they have proved their constancy.

29. Gurr, Andrew, ‘Staging at the Globe’, pp. 161–2. See note 19.Google Scholar

30. Fitzpatrick, Tim, ‘The Fortune Contract and Hollar's Original Drawing of Southwark: Some Indications of a Smaller First Globe’, p. 6.Google Scholar

31. There is a similar metatheatrical play with supernatural forces in Richard III, V.iii. 209: Ratcliffe enters to wake Richard, and provokes a startled reaction (Zounds, who is there?), presumably because he enters from the same door as the immediately preceding series of apparitions.

32. 3 Henry VI, V.i has perhaps the quaintest instance: as King Edward and his forces stand before the walls of Coventry (Warwick is ‘upon the walls’ in the gallery above the stage), the rebel forces in the city are reinforced by the arrival of three armies: those of Montague, Somerset and George, respectively at lines 66, 71, 75. In other words four or five lines of dialogue by the onstage observers are provided for each army to cross the stage from the outwards door and enter the ‘gates’—and then for the soldiers to cross backstage (possibly changing helmets?) and re-enter as the next army under their next commander.

33. Ewans, Michael, ed., The Oresteia (London: J.M. Dent, Everyman, 1995), p. xxxviiiGoogle Scholar: ‘Reflecting the actual topography of Athens, these [the parodoi] represented entry either from the downtown district of the place in which the action is located (skene-leit), or from the country and from other cities (skene-right).’

34. Lothian, J. M. and Craik, T. W., eds, Twelfth Night (London: Methuen, 1975), p. 82.Google Scholar This passage also struck Hotson, who believed it to be a reference to the orientation of the stage doors—though he was talking about Olivia's and Orsino's ‘houses’ in the great hall at Whitehall, where he believed the play was first performed: Hotson, Leslie, The First Night of ‘Twelfth Night’ (London & New York, 1954), p. 139.Google Scholar

35. Julius Caesar, IIi. 101 has Casca locate the Capitol to the east of the stage, deliberately drawing with his sword a heliological map, which would line up the ‘high east’ with the Capitol (an ‘inwards’ location):

CASCA. You shall confess that you are both deceived.

Here, as I point my sword, the sun arises,

Which is a great way growing on the south,

Weighing the youthful season of the year.

Some two months hence, up higher toward the north

He first presents his fire, and the high east

Stands as the Capitol, directly here.

Romeo and Juliet, I.i.122, n.II.1–4. These two references are somewhat conjectural, since this is not a Globe play (did the stage at the Theatre face north too?): first Benvolio, reporting to the Montagues that he has seen Romeo before dawn, specifies the location:

Benvolio. Madam, an hour before the worshipped sun

Peered forth the golden window of the East,

A troubled mind drive me to walk abroad;

Where, underneath the grove of sycamore

That westward rooteth from this city side,

So early walking did I see your son.

Romeo is here associated with ‘outwards’ (being outside the city walls) and ‘westwards’; this is pertinent insofar as Benvolio's second line (‘the golden window of the East’) sets up Romeo's subsequent rising sun/window metaphor for his ‘opposite number’, Juliet:

Romeo. He jests at scars that never felt a wound.

Enter Juliet above

But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the East, and Juliet is the sun!

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon…

This equivalence of Juliet at the window with the rising sun makes sense if the suggestion is accepted that the part of the gallery used for window scenes is the bay directly above the door into the house (cf. the contemporary Italian theatre practice of the Commedia dell'Arte). The east-west alignment would be perfect here if we assume that Romeo, to offset Juliet's stage-right position on the balcony, is looking up at her from downstage left of centre.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, V.iii.8–10, like As You Like It, also equates the innermost part of the wood (here the ‘thicket’) with the eastern door. Outlaws enter, having captured Silvia in the depths of the wood (i.e. inwards); one of them is then instructed to take her outwards to their Captain, Valentine, while the others go back inwards into the thicket to try once more to capture her companion:

3rd Outlaw. Go thou with her to the west end of the wood,

There is our captain. We'll follow him that's fled;

The thicket is beset, he cannot ‘scape.

There are a number of less persuasive examples: 2 Henry IV, IV.i.19 involves a group of characters (Archbishop of York, Mowbray, Hastings, Lord Bardolph etc.) in Gaultree Forest. A messenger enters to them (presumably from ‘outwards’), to report: ‘West of this forest, scarcely off a mile, In goodly form comes on the enemy.’ This would again align ‘west’ and ‘outwards’, though it could well be argued that there need be no necessary cross-reference between the orientation of a forest in Yorkshire and a stage space in London. In Richard III, IV.iv.433 Ratcliffe enters with news, presumably from outwards, and reports what has been happening in the west: ‘Most mighty sovereign, on the western coast Rideth a puissant navy…’ In A Midsummer Night's Dream, II.i.169, 175 Oberen sends Puck outwards (‘I'Il; put a girdle round about the earth’) for the magic potion: Cupid's bolt ‘fell upon a little western flower’. In King John, II.i.400 troops attack Angiers (assuming the city gates are represented by the inwards, eastern door) from ‘west, north and south’.

36. Orrell, John, ‘The Polarity of the Globe's Stage’.Google Scholar

37. 27 of the 28 scene breaks in Macbeth exhibit alternation patterns if this system is applied. The corresponding figures for other plays are: Much Ado About Nothing 12/16, Othello 12/14, Romeo and Juliet 20/26, The Winter's Tale 11/14, and The Taming of the Shrew 12/13.