This was called preserving the unities of time and place, and no Greek drama which did not observe them would have been thought good.  In Gorboduc there are several scenes, and the action, although we are not told how long, must last over several months at least.  So that although Gorboduc owed something to the New Learning, which had made men study Greek, it owed as much to the old English Miracle plays.  Later on when you come to read more about the history of our drama you will learn a great deal about what we owe to the Greeks, but here I will not trouble you with it.

You remember that in the Morality plays there was no scenery.  And still, although in the new plays which were now being written the scene was supposed to change from place to place, there was no attempt to make the stage look like these places.  The stage was merely a plain platform, and when the scene changed a board was hung up with “This is a Palace” or “This is a Street” and the imagination of the audience had to do the rest.

That some people felt the absurdity of this we learn from a book by Sir Philip Sidney.  In it he says, “You shall have Asia of the one side, and Affrick of the other, and so many other under kingdoms, that the Player, when he cometh in, must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived.  Now you shall have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden.  By and by, we hear news of 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!"*

An Apologie for Poetrie, published 1595.

If the actors of the Elizabethan time had no scenery they made up for the lack of it by splendid and gorgeous dressing.  But it was the dressing of the day.  The play might be supposed to take place in Greece or Rome or Ancient Britain, it mattered not.  The actors dressed after the fashion of their own day.  And neither actors nor audience saw anything funny in it.  To them it was not funny that an ancient British king should wear doublet and hose, nor that his soldiers should discharge firearms in a scene supposed to take place hundreds of years before gunpowder had been invented.  But we must remember that in those days dress meant much more than it does now.  Dress helped to tell the story.  Men then might not dress according to their likes and dislikes, they were obliged to dress according to their rank.  Therefore it helped the Elizabethan onlooker to understand the play when he saw a king, a courtier, or a butcher come on to the stage dressed as he knew a king, a courtier, or a butcher dressed.  Had he seen a man of the sixth century dressed as a man of the sixth century he would not have known to what class he belonged and would not have understood the play nearly so well.