Also ye menstrelles doth your diligence
    Afore our depertying geve us a daunce.

The Elizabethan stage relied greatly upon the aid of trumpets, cornets, &c., for the “soundings” which announced the commencement of the prologue, and for the “alarums” and “flourishes” which occurred in the course of the representation.  Malone was of opinion that the band consisted of some eight or ten musicians stationed in “an upper balcony over what is now called the stage-box.”  Collier, however, shows that the musicians were often divided into two bands, and quotes a stage direction in Marston’s “Antonio’s Revenge,” 1602:  “While the measure is dancing, Andrugio’s ghost is placed betwixt the music houses.”  In a play of later date, Middleton’s “Chaste Maid in Cheapside,” 1630, appears the direction:  “While the company seem to weep and mourn, there is a sad song in the music-room.”  Boxes were then often called rooms, and one was evidently set apart for the use of the musicians.  In certain of Shakespeare’s plays the musicians are clearly required to quit their room for awhile, and appear upon the stage among the dramatis personae.

The practice of playing music between the acts is of long standing, the frequent inappropriateness of these interludes having been repeatedly commented on, however.  A writer in the last century expressly complains that at the end of every act, the audience, “carried away by a jig of Vivaldi’s, or a concerto of Giardini’s, lose every warm impression relative to the piece, and begin again cool and unconcerned as at the commencement of the representation.”  He advocates the introduction of music adapted to the subject:  “The music after an act should commence in the tone of the preceding passion, and be gradually varied till it accords with the tone of the passion that is to succeed in the next act,” so that “cheerful, tender, melancholy, or animated impressions” may be inspired, as the occasion may need.  At the conclusion of the second act of “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” 1566, Diccon, addressing himself to the musicians, says simply:  “In the meantime, fellows, pipe up your fiddles.”  But in a later play, the “Two Italian Gentlemen,” by Anthony Munday, printed about 1584, the different kinds of music to be played after each act are stated, whether a “pleasant galliard,” a “solemn dump,” or a “pleasant allemaigne.”  So Marston in his “Sophonisba,” 1606, indicates particularly the instruments he would have played during the pauses between the acts.  After act one, “the cornets and organs playing loud full of music;” after act two, “organs mixed with recorders;” after act three, “organs, viols, and voices;” with “a base lute and a treble viol” after act four.  In the course of this play, moreover, musical accompaniments of a descriptive kind were introduced, the stage direction on two occasions informing us that “infernal music plays softly.”  Nabbes, in the prologue to his “Hannibal and Scipio,” 1637, alludes at once to the change of the place of action of the drama, and to the performance of music between the acts: