elisium

Updated: May 18, 2025

The proscenium was very narrow, and instead of a drop scene was the elisium, a house, narrow, with a kind of bow window front in the centre, and a door on each side: for Pollux says that a house with two stories formed part of the stage, whence old women and panders used to look down and peep about them. Within the house were apartments. Around the back of the stage was a porticus.

R. J. Broadbent - A History of Pantomime