The most striking difference between Elizabethan and modern theaters was in the position of the stage, which was not back of a great proscenium frame, but was built out as a platform into the middle of the yard. At the Fortune, the stage was forty-three feet wide,--wider, that is, than most modern stages.[2] Jutting out from the level of the top gallery, and extending perhaps ten feet over the stage, was a square structure called the 'hut,' which rose above the level of the outside walls. Built out from the bottom of this, a roof, or 'shadow,' extended forward over a large part of the stage. The front of this 'shadow' was borne, in the better theaters, on two columns. The shadow and the hut, taken together, are often referred to as the 'heavens.' +The Stage+.--When we turn from these general features of the theaters to the stage, we shall find it convenient to speak of a front and a rear stage, but this does not imply any permanent line of demarcation between the two, or that they were not often used together as a single field of action. The rear stage is simply that part of the stage which could be shut off from the spectators by curtains; the other, that part which lay in front of the curtains. In other words, the front stage is that portion of the stage which was built out into the yard, for the curtains continued the line made around the rest of the house by the front {41} of the galleries. In both front and rear stages were traps out of which ghosts or apparitions could rise and into which such properties as the caldron in _Macbeth_ could sink. From the 'heavens,' actors representing gods or spirits--as Jupiter in _Cymbeline_ or Ariel in _The Tempest_--could be lowered by means of a mechanical contrivance. ====================================================================== [Illustration: TIMON OF ATHENS, v, 4. OUTER SCENE. _Trumpets sound. Enter Alcibiades with his Powers before Athens._ _Alc_. "Sound to this Coward, and lascivious Towne. Our terrible approach." _Sounds a parly. The Senators appeare upon the Wals._ Reproduced from _The Shakespearean Stage_, by V. E. Albright, through the courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia University Press.] ======================================================================