1. England in Shakspere's Youth.-In the closing years of the sixteenth century the life of England ran high. The revival of learning had enriched the national mind with a store of new ideas and images; the reformation of religion had been accomplished, and its fruits were now secure ; three conspiracies against the Queen's life had recently been foiled, and her rival, the Queen of Scots, had perished on the scaffold; the huge attempt of Spain against the independence of England had been defeated by the gallantry of English seamen, aided by the winds of heaven. English adventurers were exploring untravelled lands and distant oceans; English citizens were growing in wealth and importance; the farmers made the soil give up twice its former yield; the nobility, however fierce their private feuds and rivalries might be, gathered around the Queen as their centre. It was felt that England was a power in the continent of Europe. Men were in a temper to think human life, with its action and its passions, a very important and interesting thing. They did not turn away from this world, and

despise it in comparison with a heavenly country, as did many of the finest souls in the Middle Ages; they did not, like the writers of the age of Queen Anne, care only for "the town:" it was man they cared for, and the whole of manhood—its good and evil, its greatness and grotesqueness, its laughter and its tears.

When men cared thus about human life, their imagination craved living pictures and visions of it. They liked to represent to themselves men and women in all passionate and mirthful aspects and circumstances of life. Sculpture, which the Greeks so loved, would not have satisfied them, for it is too ⚫ simple and too calm; music would not have been sufficient, for it is too purely an expression of feelings, and says too little about actions and events. The art which suited the temper of their imagination was the drama. In the drama they saw men and women, alive, in action, in suffering, changing for ever from mood to mood, from attitude to attitude; they saw these men and women solitary, conversing with their own hearts-in pairs and in groups, acting one upon another; in multitudes, swayed hither and thither by their leaders.

2. Pre-Shaksperian Drama.-The drama had been at first connected with the Church. It represented, both to instruct and to amuse the people, -events of sacred history and of the lives of saints, or threw into the form of a play some moral allegory, enlivened by grotesque incidents. Out of this rude early drama had grown, by the time that Shakspere began to write, three or four divergent branches. (a) Allegorical plays-fashionable at Court--were still written; but the allegories instead of treating a theme from Christian morals were in general founded upon classical mythology, and were often meant as elaborate compliments to the Queen or some great nobles. (4) There were tragedies, and in some of these elements of real tragic grandeur existed; but they were

marred by much crudeness and extravagance, by a revelling in coarse horrors of mere violence and blood. (c) There were comedies, at times not without a portion of true grace and beauty, but often degenerating into vulgar buffoonery and the antics of a clown. (d) There were historical plays, in which some of the patriotic feeling of Englishmen, and their interest in our national annals, embodied themselves; but these too often spread out into a series of loosely connected scenes; they lacked unity of subject and coherence of form. Some of Shakspere's predecessors, or fellow-playwrights, who made their mark earlier than he, had given each some gift of his own to the drama, and helped to bring it forward to the point at which Shakspere took it up; but none of them was able to raise tragedy, comedy, and history out of their crudities and puerilities into truly great and noble forms of art. John Lyly had shown how a bright and lively dialogue can be written in prose. George Peele had produced dramatic verse of a sweet but monotonous melody. A romantic spirit was introduced into English comedy by Robert Greene; over his poetry breathes the fresh air of English meadows; his style is more free, more bright, light, and natural than that of any preceding dramatic poet. Above all, much was due to Christopher Marlowe. His genius was essentially of a tragic cast; from his veins the life-blood of passion had flowed into the drama of England, and forthwith it lost its timidity, and was conscious of strange new force and fire; in his tragedies was first heard upon a public stage that measure which is the express voice in our poetry of dramatic feeling blank verse. (See Mr. Brooke's Primer: English Literature, pp. 74-82.)

3. Theatres and Actors.-The companies of actors sought protection and patronage from the Queen, or from some great noble, and accordingly styled themselves by such names as "the Queen's servants," "the Earl of Leicester's servants," the

Lord Chamberlain's servants." When a command was given they played at Court for a circle of aristocratic spectators. More frequently they played before a mixed audience of high and low in some inn-yard, or in one of the London theatres. Of these the first was built by James Burbage (father of the great actor Richard Burbage, who took the chief part in several of Shakspere's plays), in the year 1576. It was erected "in the fields," in the parish of Shoreditch, and was named "The Theatre." Almost at the same time, and in the same locality, rose a second theatre, known as "The Curtain," from the name of the piece of ground upon which it stood. While the Queen, the Court, and the pleasure-loving part of the populace favoured and supported the stage, it was looked on with hostility by devout Puritans, and by the civic authorities, the Lord Mayor and Corporation of London. The gathering of crowds led to occasional brawls, in which the London apprentices did not fail to display their prowess. Public morality, it was said, suffered through temptations offered by the place and the occasion. times of plague, stricken persons and persons who had but partially recovered, carried infection with them to the theatres, and so spread the sickness. When moved thereto, the players dared to satirise eminent living persons upon the stage. On Sundays folk were enticed away from the congregation of saints to the devil's congregation at the playhouse. So argued the city authorities, and with them some sober-minded men and women of the Puritan way of thinking. a consequence the players were glad to erect their theatres in some easily accessible place just beyond the boundary of the Lord Mayor's jurisdiction. To the theatre "in the fields" the common people could easily walk; gentlefolk could ride, and have their horses held by some theatrical underling at the door while the performance was taking place. To the theatres erected at a later time on the Bankside,

In

As

Southwark, gentlemen would go in one of the boats plied by the Thames watermen; the rest would choose the more circuitous route by London Bridge.

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4. Performance of a Play. Within the theatre a miscellaneous crowd assembled. Most commonly the performance began at three o'clock and lasted from two to three hours. In the public theatres the centre of the building was open to the sky and without seats, only the stage and the gallery being roofed, and admission to the open space, or yard,' cost from one penny or twopence to sixpence, while as much as a shilling, two shillings, or half-a-crown was given to obtain a place in the best parts of the house. The private theatres were fully roofed, and during a performance the interior was lit with torches. Upon the rush-strewn stage sat young gallants, who drank and smoked and joked while they waited for the appearance of the black-robed Prologue. Below, apprentices, tradesmen, sailors, and low women crushed and swayed, cracked nuts, and fought for bitten apples. If ladies appeared in the "rooms," or boxes, it was considered correct that they should conceal their faces behind masks. In due time a flourish of trumpets announced that the play was to begin, and a flag was hung out from the top of the building. Upon the trumpet's third sounding the prologue was delivered, the curtain divided and drew back, and the actors were discovered. They appeared in costumes which were often costly, but which made slight pretension to historical propriety. Of movable scenery there was none. The stage was hung with arras, and overhead a blue canopy represented "the heavens." Sometimes when a tragedy was to be enacted the stagehangings were black. At the back of the stage was a balcony which served for many purposes "it was inner room, upper room, window, balcony, battlements, hill-side, Mount Olympus, any place in fact which was supposed to be separated from and above the scene of the main action." Here Juliet appeared to Romeo,