littleness and inward greatness of old London,
were the Shakespearean playhouses and their
fittings. Playhouse history begins with Shakespeare,
he being already twelve years old when
our first known theatre was built. Long before
that day plays, of one sort or another, had been
acted, as miracle-plays and religious mysteries,
with priests or church-boys for actors.
These were performed either within consecrated
walls, or on temporary stages set up, in holiday-
time, at street-corners. After the Reformation,
it came to be thought that secular plays were
less innocent and more interesting. At last,
regular comedies and tragedies were written, to
be acted at court by noblemen and their
retainers,and in the market-places by a class of
amateurs represented, as well as caricatured, by
Bottom the weaver, Snug the joiner, and Flute
the bellows-mender.

It was fashionable for every nobleman to have
his own body of players, and often, if he had
himself any brains at all, to write the pieces
they performed. Lord Buckhurst's Gorbodue,
or Ferrex and Ponex, is remembered as the
oldest regular tragedy in our language. And
tragedy it is, with its kill, kill, kill. Ferrex and
Ponex, two sons of King Gorbodue, having the
kingdom divided between them by their father,
come to blows. The younger kills the elder.
The mother, for revenge, kills the younger. The
people rebel and kill father and mother. The
nobility unite and kill the rebels. After which
they quarrel over succession to the vacant
throne, and so kill one another. The Earl of
Oxford's plays have deservedly been forgotten.
He has better claim to be mentioned for the
company of players he employed. The players
of my Lord of Leicester's were the most famous.
The king of courtiers would be outdone by no
one. Wisely abstaining from authorship on his
own account, he procured the best plays, and
assigned them to the best actors that money
could engage. His sovereign preferred this
company; so that its members came to be known
distinctively as the Queen's Players; James
Burbage, father of Shakespeare's friend, Richard
Burbage, having been one of the number.
Richard Langham was another. They acted
several new plays every year, and, after her
majesty had enjoyed the first hearing, it was
common for them to lodge themselves in some
hired room, or oftener in some suitable yard;
and there, day after day, to repeat their
performance for the entertainment of the public.

In this way the true theatre began; but its
progress might have been slow if a little
wholesome persecution had not been administered.
A notable feud arose. The Queen and court
thought it no sin, after decent church-going
in the forenoon, to close their Sundays with
hearing of a play, and anxious for the amusement
of the humbler classes, they encouraged
among them the same habit. The Puritans,
on the other hand, resisted this custom
as being utterly profane. "I say nothing,"
shouted the Reverend John Stockwood, while
preaching at Paul's Cross—" I say nothing of
divers other abuses which do carry away thousands
and drown them in the pernicious vanities
of the world. Look but upon the common
plays in London and see the multitude that
flocketh to them and followeth them. Behold
the sumptuous theatre-houses, a continual
monument of London's prodigality and folly."
Then, after a fierce description of the horrors of
play-acting, he connected with them the distemper
which raged nearly every year, and wound
up with a syllogism, perfect in all save its
premises: " The cause of plagues is sin, and the
cause of sin are plays; therefore, the cause of
plagues are plays."

Of the same mind were the lord mayor and
aldermen of London. In an elaborate document,
published in 1575, they affirmed that to
play in plague-time was to spread infection, and
to play out of plague-time was to breed it. It
was consequently ordained that the players—who,
"if they were not her majesty's servants, should
by profession be rogues"—must perform only at
weddings and private festivals, and only act in
London during the very healthiest season—the
test of health being that not more than fifty
townspeople a week had died in the three weeks
previous to the performance. They were never
to act on the Sabbath, never on holidays until
after evening prayers; the performance never
must be offered at such times " but as any of the
auditory may return to their dwellings in London
before sunset, or, at least, before it be dark."

That was as near to an entire prohibition as
loyal citizens could venture upon in the teeth of
the Queen. So the players grumbled, and the
people quizzed the aldermen, singing:

They 'stablish as a rule
No one shall play the fool
But they, a worthy school!
Without a pipe and tabour
They only mean to labour
To teach each ox-hide neighbour.
This is the cause and reason,
At every time and season,
That plays are worse than treason.

Thus shut out of the city the players gave up
the old plan of desultory acting at any chance
place and began to set up, not exactly the
"sumptuous theatre-houses " of which Stockwood
preached, but substantial and permanent
buildings in the outskirts. Within the very next
year, 1576, at least three were finished. One
called emphatically The Theatre, and therefore,
probably, the earliest, and another, known as The
Curtain, were in Shoreditch. A third, named
from its locality The Blackfriars, was constructed
by James Burbage, almost on the site of the old
monastery. Against all the opposition, and
partly because of it, these playhouses flourished
amazingly. In later years at least three more
were built—the Newington Theatre, The Rose,
and The Hope.

But the Blackfriars was Shakespeare's first
playhouse. Thither it is pretty certain that he
came in or near the year 1586, and entered
himself as a " servitore." Perhaps there is truth in
the tradition that the young man of Stratford,