performed without painted scenery of any kind,
we find the word "scene" used in a third sense,
as an indication of the entrances and exits of
the characters. For this arrangement the words
"enter" and "exit'' are now used, but every first
appearance or disappearance is considered a
change of scene. Suppose, for instance, we have
the following heads to the dialogue: "Scene I.,
Brown, Jones; Scene II., Jones; Scene III.,
Jones, Robinson." By these heads we simply
mean that Brown and Jones are first seen
together; that Brown presently goes off, and
leaves Jones to soliloquise, and that afterwards
Jones is joined by Robinson. "Scene" is, in
fact, a mere equivalent for "combination."

This third use of the word is perfectly familiar
to classical scholars, as it is the one adopted in
all current editions of the Latin comedies, and
also to the readers of French plays, in which
"scène" is never used in another sense. The
picture is by the French called a "decoration," and
if—which is not very often the case—it is
changed in the course of an act, in presence of the
audience, we are informed bv the book that a
"change of decoration" takes place.
Generally, a change in presence of an audience is
avoided by a subdivision of acts into so-called
"tableaux." But, however detailed the stage
directions, the appearance or disappearance of a
personage is always held to constitute a change
of "scene," as in the Latin plays, where there
are no stage directions whatever.

It seems that the old English dramatists,
who wrote before the general introduction of
painted scenery, were not altogether at their
ease in the use of the word scene. Ben Jonson,
indeed, as the especially classical man, followed
the third or Latin sense; yet in at least one
edition of his Fall of Sejanus, though the Latin
mode of division is adopted, the word "scene"
does not occur at all. In some old plays the
heading, "Act I., Scene I.," is placed at the
beginning merely, it would seem, because that was
deemed the proper sort of thing to do; for people
come in and go out, and changes of place occur,
which would now require so many changes of
picture, and yet we never come to Scene II.
The word "scene" here has no more
signification than a printer's ornament

The plan adopted in the modern editions of
Shakespeare and others, of dividing plays
according to the present English fashion, using the
word "scene" to denote a change of place, and
indicating the place by a stage direction, does not
belong to the Elizabethan days, but is the work
of modern editors. The divisions are, indeed,
mere conjectures as to the places of action which
the author intended to arise before the
imagination of his audience; though they now serve as
practical directions to the stage-manager.

Strange as it may appear, the modern
English usage, according to which "scene"
means the painted picture on the stage, though
contrary to the plan generally deemed classical,
seerns most to accord with the habit of the
Greeks. The works of the great Athenian
tragedans have come down to us without any
divisions into scenes, or any indication of entrance
or exit;* and the student, if he is numerically
inclined, may, by watching the introduction of the
chorus, at different intervals, make out his figure
for himself, checking his result by the protests
against plays containing more or less than five
acts by the precept in Horace's Art of Poetry,
which was doubtless based on Greek authority.
            Neve minor neu sit quinto productior acta
            Patula.

* If I remember right, Beck, an old-fashioned
and now disregarded editor of Euripedes, adopts the
Latin mode of Division: but, if so, this is a mere
exceptional case, and merely shows the editor's
view.

Not to the tragedies, but to the records of the
structure of the old Greek stage, must we look
for the word "scene," applied in a technical
sense. According to these the ?????, which is
exactly our " scene" written in Greek letters
was a wall which closed the stage at the back,
and represented the place, commonly the front
of a royal palace, in which the actions was going
on. How this "scene" was changed we do not
exactly know, but that it was changed
sometimes is certain; though the Frenchmen under
Louis the Fourteenth fancied themselves so
extremely Greek when they made the whole action
of a tragedy take place on the same imaginary
spot. The change, however, is nothing to our
purpose here. We have enough to show that
the Greek used the word "scene" in a
technical sense, which would have been perfectly
intelligible to any stage-carpenter from the
corner of Pall Mall to the New-cut.
Sometimes, we read, it denoted the stage itself on
which the actors stood; but this use was
evidently less technical, for the stage we properly
called the ??????????, or proscenium, a word
which we now apply to the external framework
on the stage, but which the Greeks understood to
signify the portion of the theatrical edifice
immediately in front of the wall (probably movable),
on which was depicted the place of action. In
another non-technical sense, the word ?????
seems to have meant the portion of the dialogue
spoken by the principal actors, as distinguished
from the chorus; and here we have, perhaps, a
clue to the Latin usage, I may remark that the
Greek scene, technically so called, were some
times not pictorial, but architectural. Shall
we venture to say that in this case, they were
very heavy "sets"?

Though we find that the present use of the
word "scene" in English exactly corresponds to
the Greek original, it is, as I have shown, equally
clear that in Elizabethan days, the word,
when marking the division of a play, was either
used in the Latin sense, or meant nothing at
all. Scenes in the present sense, it is now
supposed, were first introduced upon a public
stage by Sir William Davenant, shortly after the
Restoration, Before the time of the Commonwealth
they were confined, it is said, to the
masques privately performed before the court
and at the residences of the great nobility,
That they were common enough in these
exhibitions, even during the reign of Elizabeth, is a