William Shakespeare, Critical Commentary of The Tragedie of Coriolanus
Horace Howard Furness, Jr., A. B.; Litt. D., Ed.

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Scene III. Miss C. Porter (First Folio Sh.): This scene was set in the rearstage, whose compartment-like semi-separation from the fore-stage could simulate, without interruption for stage-setting, an interior somewhat removed from the outdoor turmoil of the preceding part of the action. There could conveniently be placed the two lowe stooles where Volumnia and Virgilia set them downe and sewed. Possibly when Volumnia and Valeria made their exeunt ‘over the threshold,’ which Virgilia declared she would not pass, nor turn her solemnesse out a doore as Valeria begged her to do, the effect for the audience was that she was still at home in Rome, as the curtains, with which the rear-stage seems to have been furnished in Shakespeare's plays, closed her from view, after the other ladies were seen to pass through the central door in the rear-stage into the ‘tyring-room.’— Rhodes (The Stagery of Sh., p. 40): The setting of properties upon the after-stage in no way precluded, but usually demanded the action—at least in part—taking place upon the fore-stage. Indeed, in very few scenes was the action confined to the after-stage. . . . Again, because ‘moveables’ were used in a scene, it does not always follow that they were discovered on the after-stage. (Note, p. 98: In The Taming of the Shrew, as revived for continuous performance in full text by Sir John Martin Harvey, in 1913, the stage properties, such as chairs, tables, and so on, were placed in position, in full view of the audience, by the servants dressed ‘in the period.’ This method was perhaps due to his adviser, Mr William Poel, who has always been enamoured with it; but there is no reason to suppose that on the stage of Shakespeare it was the general practice or anything but an expediency. Moreover, where the men appeared, to move properties, it is usually clear that they appeared in the dramatic character of household servants. Sometimes, however, it was otherwise. As Mr Puff said to the scenemen in The Critic (1779): ‘It is always awkward, in a tragedy, to have you fellows coming on in your playhouse liveries to remove things. I wish it could be managed better.’) In Coriolanus, Act I, sc. iii, whose initial direction is: ‘They set them downe on two lowe stooles and sowe,’ was played on the fore-stage, since the after-stage could not be used ‘with set movables’ in two successive scenes, and it was needed for the next scene, which is before the Gates of Corioli. This is the only direction in Shakespeare which points to the early origin of ‘Two chairs to the front. It's a custom in our profession,’ as it is styled in Robertson's David Garrick (1864). [Who shall decide when two such critics disagree? Miss Porter's descriptive arrangement—be it said nowise in disparagement—is evidently based on a theoretic knowledge of the Elizabethan stage, while that of Rhodes is, just as evidently, based on the pragmatic. His illustrations of the actual working out of other scenes inclines me to favour his view of the present case.—Ed.]