Among the earliest permanent English playhouses were ‘The Theatre’ and ‘The Fortune,’ neither of which, however, possessed a proper drop-curtain. But ‘The Red Bull,’ another old theatre, had a drop-curtain; and when, in the year 1633, that playhouse was demolished, rebuilt, and enlarged, it was decorated in a manner almost in advance of the time, the management particularly priding itself upon ‘a stage-curtain of pure Naples silk.’ It was not until the year 1656 that the first attempt of Sir William Davenant to establish the lyric drama in England brought with it the use of regular painted scenery on our stage. As an introductory venture, and fully aware that the performance of everything of a dramatic tendency had long been prohibited throughout the country, he announced a miscellaneous kind of entertainment, consisting of ‘music and declamation,’ which was duly held at Rutland House in Charterhouse Yard, on the 23d of May. Thus far encouraged, he immediately followed with the first genuine opera, entitled _The Siege of Rhodes_, employing a libretto, music, costumes, and five elaborate scenes. Further representations of opera were always signalised by the use of scenery, and the example was naturally soon followed by the drama, so soon as the altered condition of the times had sufficiently permitted its revival. In place of a drop-curtain of tapestry, silk, or other material, a painted scene also came into fashion, on which was generally shown some incident in the opera about to be enacted. The painted crimson curtain used in _The Siege of Rhodes_ had upon it also a representation of the arms and military trophies of the several nations which took part in this memorable siege. Still, for all that, the green curtain retained its position in all permanent theatres—and even in the puppet-shows, so popular in their day—nor was it until quite recently that the more fashionable houses thought proper to dispense with it altogether. Touching upon stage-curtains of our own time, it will scarcely be necessary to dilate upon the peculiarly constructed proscenium of the present Haymarket Theatre, London, which is nothing more or less than an elaborate picture in its gilt frame. The curtain of course forms the picture, and no orchestra-pew being visible, the frame or proscenium is continued on the lower side without interruption. The footlights are not discovered until the rising of the curtain, and the ‘calls’ are necessarily responded to on the stage itself, for which purpose the curtain is again drawn up. Perhaps the most interesting curtain of the ordinary character is that now in use at New Sadler’s Wells Theatre, which conveys to the eye a very perfect idea of that famous ‘musick-house’ on the banks of the New River in ‘merrie Islington,’ as it appeared rather more than a hundred years ago.