The Bohemian example, at Cesky Krumlov, near Prague, is inside the Schwarzenberg Palace and was reputedly designed by the son of one of the princes, Johannes Schwarzenberg [PI. 80]. It boasts a single gallery with a central box, but most of its decoration, apart from the shallow pilaster strips, is painted in trompe-T’ceil. The surviving sets are fewer than at Drottningholm, mostly rather uninspired work by Johan Wetschel and Leo Merkel.

The emphasis in this chapter has inevitably been on the decorative qualities of the Baroque theatre, but it was also a period of continuous experiment in planning and organization. In Italy, the boxes now commonly projected to give a better view, and the Sighizzi system of ‘stepping’ them howl, the banks of seats rising towards the back to meet the lowest range of boxes, a charming and practical idea rarely imitated. The Manoel Theatre at Valletta, Malta, of 1731, must also be mentioned here simply because it survives unscathed [Pi. Si]. Baroque was indeed the most fitting and fertile of all styles for the theatre of magic. Even its revival in the nineteenth century, though inevitably debased and often sadly lacking in subtlety, still has a kind of persuasive glamour to which only the most austere playgoer

can be entirely immune.