How a change of scene was notified, if indeed any change was made, nothing definitely is known. The most likely plan adopted lacking painted scenery, would be by what is technically known as locality boards, something resembling the device employed by the modern music hall artist engaged in character sketches. A board is placed in a prominent position of the stage in full view of the audience with the name of the character assumed by the performer, the board being changed on each separate occasion when a different character is assumed. Apply this method in the changing of the scene in an Elizabethan theatre and then you can better understand Shakespeare’s exhortation in his prologues of “Henry V” when he urges the audience that their imagination must fill up the void caused by want of necessary scenery. To our modern notions the number of scenes in a Shakespearean play is quite bewildering; the very number precludes the idea that the scene was changed at all. The question is such a difficult one, and of such an intricate and technical nature that further discussion at our present state of knowledge would only confuse the reader without providing him with a key for its solution.
The primitive device of locality boards was sarcastically alluded to by Sir Philip Sidney in his “Defence of Poesie”: “What childe is there that coming to a Play, and seeing Thebes written in great letters on an olde doore, doth believe that it is Thebes. You shall have Asia on the one side and Africa on the other and so many other under Kingdoms that the player when he cometh in must even begin with telling where he is or else the tale will not be conceived. Now ye shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and by we have news of a shipwreck in the same place, and then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock. Upon the back of that comes out a hideous monster with fire and smoke, and then the miserable beholders are bound to take it for a cave. While in the meantime two armies fly in represented with four swords and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field.”
In reading the above paragraph the reader must bear in mind that this ironical criticism was penned many years before Shakespeare commenced his dramatic career. During the long interval several improvements may have taken place in stage effects, so that a Shakesperean play may have been produced under more promising conditions than Sidney’s statement would allow.