growing power in the city, could scarcely be expected to tolerate in their midst such loose amusements as the drama, wherein, contrary to Biblical injunction, men dressed in women's clothes and enacted women's parts; and when the time came for new theaters the Corporation of London outlawed them entirely. All of the later theaters of the period were built outside the city proper, many of them across the Thames in the region known as Southwark, or more particularly that part of it known as the Bankside. Here were found the "Bull-pen" and the "Bear Garden," arenas for fighting bulls and bears with troops of dogs; here arose the "Hope" theater, the "Swan," the "Rose," and finally in 1599 the "Globe" theater, so named from its circular or octagonal shape. The disreputable and motley population of London flocked to the Bankside, outlaws, thieves, sharpers, and pickpockets; here also of an afternoon came dandies from the city, playwrights, and barristers from the inns of temple to occupy the "gentlemen's rooms," or the even more expensive stoolseats on the corners of the stage itself.

The "Fortune." We have no really satisfactory drawings of any of these theaters made when they were in existence. Some time ago, however, there was discovered in London the original carpenter's contract for building the Fortune theater just north of the city. This contract contains accurate specifications for most of the structure, and we are consequently enabled to make a good guess as to its appearance. (See the drawing on page xxv.) The stage of this theater must have been very much like that of the "Globe," for the contract repeatedly specifies that the builders are to imitate the "late erected play-house on the Bancke," especially in regard to "stadge" and "stearcases."

(Fortune sketch)-From a sketch by J. E. Griffith

The platform itself was forty-three feet in width by twenty-eight in depth, extending to the middle of the enclosure. The rear half was covered for the protection of the players on rainy days, the roof projecting from a height of twenty-three feet, just over the stage balcony. There were two entrances at the sides, probably double doors set at an angle. A third method of entrance and exit was afforded by the inner stage, a recess about ten by twenty feet curtained off from the

main platform, and open to the dressing-rooms at the sides. This could be used to represent the interior of a house, a room in a palace, a closet, a tomb, a cemetery, the cave of a hermit, or the inside of a tent; and formed a very important part of the Globe theater equipment, as is repeatedly shown in Shakespeare's plays. If the curtains were drawn a change of properties could be made within this space while the performance was going on in front, thus effecting a considerable saving of time. In general the inner stage was used for interior scenes, while the main platform represented outdoors, an open place, or a street. Aside from such decorations as could be placed in the inner stage no painted scenery was used. The "properties" mostly demanded were chairs, tables, beds, benches and rocks, tree-stumps, branches of trees, etc., to represent sea-coast or forest

scenes.

The "Globe." The editor's reconstruction of the Globe theater is given on page xxvii. It is based in part on the implied similarity between this and the Fortune playhouse, as shown in the builder's contract just referred to, but more upon a comparative study of the staging of the plays known to have been performed in the theater which has always been primarily associated with Shakespeare's name.

It will be observed that there were three sets of curtains at the balcony level, as well as the large double "arras" used to hide the inner stage from view. Over the two side entrances were curtained baywindows, projecting far enough to afford a view of the inner stage when the curtains were parted below. The shape of the building as a whole was doubtless, for practical reasons, octagonal rather than circular, a circumstance which may have originally given rise to

the diagonal placing of the entrance doors common to most Elizabethan theaters. The principal balcony room was situated behind a ledge and was furnished not only with convenient curtains, but with doors and a grating to give the illusion of a cell.

The Performance. The performance took place in the afternoon, never at night, since no effective artificial lighting methods had been devised. Acted in the Elizabethan fashion, without waits between scenes, it

has been found that even the longest of Shakespeare's plays can be given in from two and a half to three hours. The tall, open building, and the disorderly character of the average audience, made loud speaking on the part of the actors a necessity; and, as might be expected from the fact that spectators crowded three sides of the stage, long, declamatory speeches are found in almost every scene.

The Audience. Shakespeare was undoubtedly put to it to hold an audience of the kind that assembled at his Bankside playhouse, made up as it was of the extremes of London society,-nobles, scholars and university men, occasional veiled ladies of fashion, escorted by their cavaliers, rival poets and playwrights, tradesmen from the country, tapsters, loafers, venders of refreshments, even thieves and pickpockets, if we are to believe contemporary accounts. He employed various devices to hold the attention of these noisy spectators, prologues to explain the play, trumpets, drums, orchestral music and singing, mobs on the stage, one of whose duties seems to have been to out-shout the mob in the "pit," clowns, dancers, pantomimes, spectacles of witchcraft and necromancy,-these and other eye-catching and ear-splitting devices calculated to heighten the interest natural to the story of the drama. Murders, battles, and sword-play, ghosts, gorgeous costumes, processions of kings and princes to delight the heart and stir the patriotism of the average Englishman,—all these had their part in making Shakespeare's plays successful and his name famous throughout England.

Women's Roles. It is generally supposed that there were no woman actors in Elizabethan times, the women's parts being taken in all the public theaters