Doctor Albright, in “The Shakespearean Stage” (pages 122_ff._) condemns with sarcasm (which seems well merited) the theory of Brodmeier, who holds that the entire stage in Shakespeare’s theater was curtained from view. But I should like to question whether or not his own judgments would have been quite the same if he had known the Chinese stage before he wrote his estimable thesis. A Chinese actor walks once around the stage in full view of the audience, and in conformity with the ruling conventions he has traveled miles, or hundreds of miles, as the plot requires. Doctor Albright, arguing backwards from the Restoration staging, comes to the conclusion that there was in the Elizabethan theater a regular changing from inner to outer scenes, and vice versa, and that the few pieces of furniture which constituted the stage setting were always carefully shut off from the view of the audience. He quotes an example with his comment from a play called “Pinner of Wakefield”, Act IV, Scenes 3-4. “Jenkins enters a shoemaker’s shop, and dares the owner to meet him at ‘the towne’s end.’ The challenge is accepted, and after a certain amount of stage business, _during which the curtains must have been closed_ [italics mine], Jenkins says, ‘Now we are at the towne’s end, what say you now?’” However, I should add that in his concluding paragraph Doctor Albright is by no means dogmatic, but gives this merely as his theory, stating that there is absolutely no way of proving it. With all the striking similarities in the Shakespearean and the Chinese theater there are of course also vast differences, especially in the background of the two. So far as I know there has never existed in China a manner of staging which could in any way be compared to the medieval system of mansions. Likewise the evolution of the platform stage into the picture-frame stage of the present day makes it seem that even on the projecting stage the feeling for the need of the curtain for the sake of the illusion increased as time went on. I repeat that I have not the slightest intention of arguing from certain conventions on the Chinese stage that they must have been identical in Elizabethan times. My point is simply that scholars ought not to assert that certain primitive conventions are “against the nature of the stage” or “contrary to human nature”, for this point of view is based on the current conventions with which the particular writer is acquainted. I should like to quote the concluding words of Doctor Albright’s thesis, spoken out of the depth of his experience of wrestling for years with the problems we are discussing. He calls an article by William Archer “one of the most original and enlightening articles on the Shakespearean stage that has yet appeared.” He says further about this writer, “As a learned dramatic critic of to-day, he approaches the Elizabethan stage with that special insight and ability which a closet student cannot hope to have. The stage