Multiple Setting

Multiple Setting, term applied to the stage décor of the medieval play (known in France as décor simultané and in Germany as Standortor Simultanbühne), inherited from the liturgical drama with its ‘mansions’ or ‘houses’ disposed about the church. When biblical dramas were first performed out of doors, the ‘mansions’ were disposed on three sides of an unlocalized platea or acting space, but by the 16th century, at any rate in France, they were set in a straight line or on a very slight curve. In England the different scenes of a mystery play were on perambulating pageants, and the multiple setting was not needed. It continued in France, and possibly in Germany, for a long time, and was still in use at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris in the early 17th century. It is even possible that Corneille's early plays, produced at the Marais, were staged in a multiple setting, which was finally ousted by the development of the single set used for classical tragedy, as in the plays of Racine. The Elizabethan public stages such as the Globe Theatre did not employ multiple settings, though something of the kind may have been used in the early days of the private roofed playhouse (see BLACKFRIARS) and was certainly a feature of the elaborate Court masque. The modern equivalent of the multiple setting is the composite setting.