in its primary sense, denoted a theatre, or the place where dramatic pieces and other public shows were exhibited; for it does not appear that the ancient poets were at all acquainted with the modern way of changing the scenes in the different parts of the play, in order to raise the idea of the persons represented by the actors being in different places.

The original scene for acting of plays was as simple as the representations themselves: it consisted only of a plain plot of ground proper for the occasion, which was in some degree shaded by the neighbouring trees, whose branches were made to meet together, and their vacancies supplied with boards, sticks, and the like; and to complete the shelter, these were sometimes covered with skins, and sometimes with only the branches of other trees newly cut down, and full of leaves. Afterwards more artificial scenes, or scenaical representations, were introduced, and paintings used instead of the objects themselves. Scenes were then of three sorts; tragic, comic, and satyric. The tragic scene represented stately magnificent edifices, with decorations of pillars, statues, and other things suitable to the palaces of kings; the comic exhibited private houses with balconies and windows, in imitation of common buildings; and the satyric was the representation of groves, mountains, dens, and other rural appearances; and these decorations either turned on pivots, or slid along grooves, as those in our theatres.

To keep close to nature and probability, the scene should never be shifted from place to place in the course of the play: the ancients were pretty severe in this respect, particularly Terence, in some of whose plays the scene never shifts at all, but the whole is transacted at the door of some old man's house, whether with inimitable art he occasionally brings the actors. The French are pretty strict with respect to this rule; but the English pay very little regard to it.

Scene is also a part or division of a dramatic poem. Thus plays are divided into acts, and acts are again subdivided into scenes; in which sense the scene is properly the persons present at or concerned in the action on the stage at such a time: whenever, therefore, a new actor appears, or an old one disappears, the action is changed into other hands; and therefore a new scene then commences.

It is one of the laws of the stage, that the scenes be well connected; that is, that one succeed another in such a manner as that the stage be never quite empty till the end of the act. See POETRY.