There is yet another peculiarity that is special to this play, and it is one which seems to have escaped the notice of the critics. The stage-directions in it are unlike those of any other play published in the first folio. In no other play are they so full, and so carefully detailed. With the exception of "Henry VIII.," the stage-directions in the folio are so few in number and so abbreviated that they appear to have been written solely for the author's convenience. It is very rare that any reference is made to movement, more than to indicate the entrance or exit of characters, or to note that they fight or that they die. Sometimes the characters are not so much as named, and the direction is simply, "Enter the French Power and the English Lords"; at other times the directions are so concise as to be almost incomprehensible to the modern reader, for example, "Enter Hermione (like a statue)," "Enter Imogene (in her bed)"! The legitimate inference, therefore, is that Shakespeare considered it to be no part of his business to be explicit in these matters. It is startling, then, to find, in the play of "Henry VIII.," a stage-direction so elaborate as the following: "The Queen makes no answer, rises out of her chair, goes about the Court, comes to the King, and kneels at his feet, then speaks." No doubt in Elizabeth's time all stage movement was of the simplest kind, and of a conventional order, so as to be applicable to a great variety of plays, and what was special to any particular play in the way of movement would, in Shakespeare's dramas, be explained at rehearsal by the author. So that the detailed and minute stage-directions that in the first folio are special to "Henry VIII." would seem to suggest that the play was written at a time when the author was absent from the theatre. To the actor, however, who is experienced in the technicalities of the stage, these elaborate directions show that the author was not only very familiar with what in theatrical parlance is known as stage "business," but that he regarded the minute description of the actors' movements as forming an essential part of the dramatist's duty. In fact, the story of the play is made subservient to the "business" or to pageant throughout. A dramatic incident, then a procession, another dramatic incident, and then another procession. This seems to be the sort of effect aimed at. Towards the year 1610 the taste for spectacle created by the genius of Inigo Jones spread from the Court to the public theatre. Perhaps this may account for Shakespeare's early retirement. He wrote plays and not masques, and his genius lay in portraying the drama of human life. Unlike Ben Jonson, he never devoted his talents to the service of the stage carpenter. Seeing the altered condition of the public taste, there would be nothing unnatural in his yielding his place silently and without bitterness to others who were willing to supply the theatrical market with the desired commodity.