Most theaters used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including today, employ proscenium stages. The word proscenium refers to the arch opening that separates the stage from its auditorium. Audiences are also separated from this stage, as it is set higher than where theatergoers sit. While the play takes place, the stage is illuminated and the audience watches in the dark. These steps lend the events of the play the feeling of real life and encourage the audience to take in the play the same way they would a picture. Romantic dramas that take place in proscenium theaters may feel more intimate and genuine.
A thrust is a stage that extends out into where an audience is seated. Proscenium arches may accompany modern-day thrust stages. Spectators at a play on a thrust stage are seated so as to surround the stage on three sides. Amphitheaters served as the prototype for thrust stages of today; ancient Greek theater took place on these round stages of which three-quarters were encircled by the audience. On a thrust stage, romantic dramas may find much of their action located right in the audience, which may help spectators empathize with the love onstage.
Dramas of Elizabethan England (1558-1603) were most frequently set up on apron stages, which sat audiences on three sides, much like a thrust stage. One of the primary differences between an apron stage and a thrust is the location of the stage; thrusts are associated with an indoor theater, whereas apron stages were mounted in the open air. During the Elizabethan age, plays would generally take place during daylight. Actors' text typically made it clear when the action occurred. The audience had to suspend their disbelief during nighttime scenes, and romance dramas may have felt more fantastic and poetical.
Some apron stages during this time were not open-air, but were actually located indoors. The Blackfriar's Theater, a popular place for the Elizabethan elite, was an example of this. Candles were used to light this space and its plays, making it a precursor for the Restoration stage (1660-1685).
English theaters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries employed this type of stage, which were set in a fully enclosed room. Many candles were lit in order to illuminate the stage completely; members of the upper class frequently attended plays and made use of this lighting in order to see and be seen. An ornamental frame decorated the Restoration stage, and the audience was slightly separated from the play's action. Restoration plays did not use realism, but instead opted to create a stylistic quality on stage. Romance in these dramas may not have felt particularly authentic, but were indeed romanticized by the ornate nature of the stage.