Discovery of new documents revolutionizes our ideas of Shakespeare's methods of production at Court. We know now that his plays were acted completely 'in the round.' No authority exists for the universal assumption that for plays at Court the stage was set against the lower or 'screen' end of the Hall (as it was for the curtained tableaux of scenic masques, pastorals, or 'shows').

These two excellent papers illustrate how data from widely separated and apparently unrelated areas of theatrical activity may combine to help solve a crucial problem: the original method employed in staging Shakespeare's plays. The problem hinges largely upon the nature of the so-called ‘inner stage’ and the extent of its use at such theatres as the Globe. Mr. Nagler's survey reinforces the impression that Renaissance acting, whether on medieval, neo-classical, or ‘mixed' stages was, in the main, pro-scenium acting. Normally the setting did not contain the action as in the modern theatre but simply supplied the actors with access to their playing space and, in some cases, an illustrative background. Such being the tradition of the time, the type of court performance ‘in the round’ suggested by Mr. Hotson's important discovery seems less surprising. And if Shakespearean plays could be per formed at court upon a centrally placed stage surrounded by its audience, presumably these same plays could be performed at the Globe wïthout extensive use of an inner stage.

That there was a possible collaboration between Thomas Morley and Shakespeare has long been a source of speculation and controversy among scholars. The discussion has generally centered on the validity of certain musical evidence, namely, the songs, ‘ It Was a Lover and His Lass’ from As You Like It and ‘O Mistresse mine’ from Twelfth Night, to which Morley may or may not have composed the music for the first performance of the play. It is not the purpose of this article to enter into the controversy, but rather to re-examine the problem of the relation between text and music in the case of the latter song, the chief bone of contention, and perhaps to throw some more light on the question.

A correct understanding of the significance Antiquity held in the Renaissance will depend on two major factors: a precise knowledge of the ancient sources available to the 15 th and 16th centuries; and a careful evaluation of the way these sources were interpreted. With an eye to these problems a number of studies have been under way in recent years along with the Census of Antiques known to the Renaissance, begun at the initiative of a group of scholars by Phyllis Bober under the aegis of the Warburg Institute in London. Ruth Kennedy's study on Titian and the Antique; Phyllis Lehmann's work on Mantegna; and a number of theses at Smith College, Yale, and New York University bear witness to this revival of interest in a never-solved problem.

The Bacchanal is one of the three paintings made by Titian for a room in the palace of Alfonso d'Este at Ferrara. At Alfonso's suggestion the painting followed a description by Philostratus of a painting he had seen which represented the mythical island of Andros. According to Philostratus, Dionysius so charged the earth of Andros with wine ‘that it bursts forth and sends up a river… . the men, crowned with ivy and byrony are singing to their wives and children, some dancing … some reclining. And very likely … this is the theme of their song— … that this river makes men rich, and powerful in the assembly, and helpful to their friends, and beautiful and, instead of short, four cubits tall; for when a man has drunk his fill of it he can assemble all these qualities and in his thought make them his own. This is what you should imagine you hear and what some of them are really singing, though their voices are thick with wine.’

When last year I returned to Florence for a long stretch of work, I was overwhelmed by the amount and completeness of the material preserved in the Archives and in the Libraries, though previous experience should have prepared me for what I would find. One becomes strikingly aware of the spottiness with which the material of the Archives has been used in our histories of the Renaissance, and one begins to feel rather critical of the trend in present Renaissance literature towards basing new theories on reinterpretations of the material which nineteenth century historians discovered, instead of turning to the wealth of unused source material. Hardly a day passes when one does not leave the Archives either complaining about the fact that a fundamental source —on whose deciphering one scholar after the other has to spend precious time—remains unpublished, or filled with suggestions for work which ought to be undertaken.

For French Renaissance architecture no single building occupies a more important position than that of the Chateau du Louvre. This fact long has been recognized and the Louvre has become the example of French architecture of this period in all surveys of architecture. Little attention, however, has been paid to the role of the Louvre in the history of Renaissance architecture generally or to its place in the yet to be written history of the palace type. However, before these latter objectives may be attained a clarification of the problems involved in the actual construction of the Louvre during its initial phases in the Renaissance is necessary.