Still they were expressly designed to afford valuable opportunities to the musical composer, to the ballet-dancers, mummers, posture-makers, and costumiers.

The regular dramas, such as the Elizabethan public supported, could boast few attractions of this kind.

It was altogether without movable scenery, although possessed of a balcony or upper stage, used to represent, now the walls of a city, as in "King John," now the top of a tower, as in "Henry VI.", or "Antony and Cleopatra," and now the window to an upper chamber.

Mr.
Payne Collier notes that in one of the oldest historical plays extant, "Selimus, Emperor of the Turks," published in 1594, there is a remarkable stage direction demonstrating the complete absence of scenery, by the appeal made to the simple good faith of the audience.
The hero is represented conveying the body of his father in a solemn funeral procession to the Temple of Mahomet.

The stage direction runs: "Suppose the Temple of Mahomet"-- a needless injunction, as Mr.Collier remarks, if there had existed the means of exhibiting the edifice in question to the eyes of the spectators.