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Stage properties

Devils leaving Hell mouth.
The original is in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

As in so many things, Henslowe's Diary is a mine of information about stage props used in the theatre:

The inventory of all the properties for my Lord Admiral's Men, the 10 of March 1598

Item, i rock, i cage, i tomb, i Hell mouth... i bedstead.
Item, viii lances, i pair of stairs for Phaethon*.
Item, i globe, & i golden sceptre; iii clubs
Item, i golden fleece, ii racquets, i bay tree.
Item, i lion's skin, i bear's skin; Phaethon's
limbs, & Phaethon's chariot, & Argus's head.
Item, Iris's head, & rainbow; i little altar. . .
i ghost's gown; i crown with a sun*.

Footnotes

  1. A lost play

    Phaethon, a play now lost, was written by Thomas Dekker, and paid for by Henslowe a year earlier. The legend of Phaethon concerns the son of the sun god Apollo, who drives his father's chariot of the sun too close to the earth (creating deserts) and too far from it (creating the Arctic).

    The "crown with a sun" would perhaps have been for Apollo.