with Venus and Adonis in his pocket, and with
not much else, began London life as a sort of
representative of the man who now is so eager
to call cab or carriage for anybody who comes
out of the theatre with the expectation of a
sixpence in the pocket. But we don't mean
to speculate on Shakespeare's history outside
the playhouse.

In an old list of actors Shakespeare's name
stands fifth. First but one, is that of Richard
Burbage, the Kemble of that day. To him the
best part of every play was assigned, and his
skill in acting joined to Shakespeare's power as
a playwright soon filled the Blackfriars Theatre
to overflowing. Two measures became needful.
The old building was enlarged, and a new one
erected. Peter Street, the carpenter, being set
to work in 1594, The Globe Theatre, lodged in
Bankside, was the speedy result of his labour.
The body of which Shakespeare was the soul,
and which was known sometimes as my Lord
Chancellor's Company, sometimes as the Queen's,
used both the houses, one in summer the other
in winter.

The Globe was the first playhouse that could
make any pretensions to architectural importance;
and, certainly, it was small enough. It
and its rival, The Fortune, in Golden-lane,
Cripplegate, built five years later by my Lord
Admiral's Company (till then content with the
Little Curtain at Shoreditch), were constructed
by the same carpenter and on the same plan,
with one great difference: the Globe was round
and the Fortune was square. Of the Fortune,
each side measured eighty feet, and the
circumference of the Globe—the Globe, for "all the
world's a stage"—was about two hundred and
fifty feet. The stage of each was forty-three
feet wide, and projected twenty-seven feet and
a half. A space of twelve feet and a half all
round the remainder of the structure was taken
up with boxes, galleries, tiring-rooms, and
passages, so that the enclosed yard measured
something like fifty-five feet by forty. The
walls, moreover, fashioned not of stone, but of
lath, plaster, and timber, may have been two-
and-thirty feet high. Not a very imposing
building for Hamlet to be represented in, with
Shakespeare himself to speak the solemn address
of the Ghost.

The Globe and The Fortune were public, or
summer theatres; that is, they had in the centre
for their pit a yard open to the sky, in which
the audience had to stand, the stage being
sheltered from sun and rain by an overhanging roof
of thatch. The smaller and private playhouses,
such as The Blackfriars and The Curtain, had a
complete covering. The pit, roofed in and furnished
with benches, took the place of the yard,
and, as these houses were used chiefly as winter
theatres, the performance was generally held by
candle-light. Three o'clock appears to have
been the usual time for performance to commence
—a very suitable hour when people dined
at eleven or twelve in the forenoon and supped
at five or six.

Playhouse prices varied. One old writer
talks of "the stickards in the penny gallery of
a theatre yawning upon the players;" but the
lowest charge could seldom have been less than
twopence. The yard must have been no more
aristocratic than the gallery, and twopence was
often the cost of admission; but it frequently
rose to sixpence in the private buildings. Yet,
at best, the "groundlings" were held to be
neither respectable nor wisely critical. The
moneyed playgoer never mixed with them. At a
charge of one or two shillings he took his seat
in one of the " gentlemen's rooms," corresponding
to our modern boxes. Often he hired his
room for the season, and kept the key in his
own pocket. Special accommodation was
provided for the dandies who could afford to pay
for it. They went to neither gallery, pit, nor
boxes, but stood, or sat, or lounged upon the
stage itself. Fitzdollrell, in Dekker's Devil, is
an Ass, and gives an amusing suggestion of their
motive for choosing so conspicuous a place:

Here is a cloak cost fifty pounds, wife,
Which I can sell for thirty, when I have seen
All London in it, and all London has seen me.
To-day I go to the Blackfriars Playhouse,
Sit in the view, salute all my acquaintance,
Rise up between the acts, let fall my cloak,
Publish a handsome man and a rich suit,
And that's the special end why we go thither,
All that pretend to stand for't on the stage;
The ladies ask, "Who's that?" for they do come
To see us, love, as we do to see them.'

It is Dekker, too, who, in his Gull's Horn-book,
satirically advises that " our gallant, having
paid the rent, presently advance to the throne
of the stage, I mean not the lords' room, which
is now but the stage's suburbs, but on the very
rushes where the comedy is to dance, yea, and
under the state of Cambyses himself must our
feathered ostrich, like a piece of ordnance, be
planted valiantly, because impudently, beating
down the mews and hisses of the opposed
rascality." We need not wonder at the rascality
of the pit being opposed to a custom which
must have seriously interfered with their own
view of the performance.

For a long time there was no attempt at
proper scenery. A board would be stuck
conspicuously on the stage to inform the audience
that the plot was laid in London, or Rome,
or wherever the place might be. Or the
stage directions told them what they were to
fancy. When a Mussulman hero was being
buried, the instruction was, " Suppose the
Temple of Mahomet." When one cottager
asked another to visit him, the spectators were
to know that the offer was taken, and that the
two were entering the cottage from the order,
"Here a dog barks," and the scenic effect was
left to the unseen actor who barked best. At
other times there was nothing to guide the
public but the inference drawn from the course
of the dialogue. In Greene's Pinner of Wakefield,
Jenkins challenges the shoemaker to go a
mile or two and have a fight. He of the last
accedes, and is eager to do battle at once:
"Come, sir, will you come to the town's-end
now?" Then Jenkins replies, " Ay, sir, come.