technically called a jig, in which the Clown performed a solo. Jigs were written in rhyme, plentifully interspersed with gag and extempore action.

Entrance prices varied according to the theatre, the seat, and the kind of exhibition. First representations seem to have drawn higher sums, and so did actors of the first celebrity. For the most ordinary shows, three pennies were paid: 'one at the gate, another at the entry of the scaffold, and a third for quiet standing.' In the larger theatres there was a place called the 'twopenny room,' which answered to our gallery, and was probably paid for extra after the entrance fee, which admitted spectators to the yard or cheapest place. Private boxes, or compartments in the 'gentlemen's rooms,' were sold at a higher rate. The doors of these boxes shut with locks, the keys of which were handed over to their lessees. The lowest frequenters of the public theatres, contemptuously alluded to as 'groundlings' and 'stinkards,' stood in the yard beneath the open sky. In the private theatres, the yard was called the pit, and was supplied with benches. Spectators of the more fashionable kind, who frequented theatres to see and be seen, sat on three-legged stools upon the stage. At the private theatres they had the right, it seems, to do so; but at the public houses they took this place by force, in defiance of the hissings and hootings of the groundlings separated from them by the barriers of the stage. For the use of a stool they paid sixpence, which was collected after they had taken their seats. This custom was a great annoyance both to the actors and the audience; for the young gallants, who affected it, showed very little consideration for either. They

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exchanged remarks, and chaffed the players, peeled oranges and threw apples into the yard, puffed tobacco from pipes lighted by their pages, and flirted with the women in the neighbouring boxes. It was found necessary at last to double the price of a 'tripod ; ' but it may be doubted whether this served to check the practice.

Taking various circumstances into consideration, it may be estimated that on a good night at one of the larger theatres, prices varying from sixpence to halfa-crown were paid for a seat.

To form an accurate and lively picture of an Elizabethan stage-performance is not easy from the meagre references which we now possess. Yet something of the sort might be attempted. Let us imagine that the red-lettered play-bill of a new tragedy has been hung out beneath the picture of Dame Fortune. The flag is flying from the roof. The drums have beaten, and the trumpets are sounding for the second time. It is three o'clock upon an afternoon of summer. We pass through the great door, ascend some steps, take our key from the pocket of our trunk-hose, and let ourselves into our private room upon the first or lowest tier. We find ourselves in a low square building, open to the slanting sunlight, built of shabby wood, not unlike a circus; smelling of sawdust and the breath of people. The yard below is crowded with 'sixpenny mechanics,' and prentices in greasy leathern jerkins, servants in blue frieze with their masters' badges on their shoulders, boys and grooms, elbowing each other for bare standing ground and passing coarse jests on their neighbours. A similar crowd is in the

U

twopenny room above our heads, except that here are a few flaunting girls. Not many women of respectability are visible, though two or three have taken a side-box, from which they lean forward to exchange remarks with the gallants on the stage. Five or six young men are already seated there before the curtain, playing cards and cracking nuts to while away the time. A boy goes up and down among them, offering various qualities of tobacco for sale, and furnishing lights for the smokers. The stage itself is strewn with rushes; and from the jutting tiled roof of the shadow, supported by a couple of stout wooden pillars, carved into satyrs at the top, hangs a curtain of tawnycoloured silk. This is drawn when the trumpets have sounded for the third time; and an actor in a black velvet mantle, with a crown of bays upon his flowing wig, struts forward bowing to the audience for attention. He is the Prologue. He has barely broken into the jogtrot of his declamation, when a bustle is heard. behind, and a fine fellow comes shouldering past him from the tire-room followed by a mincing page.

'A stool, boy!' cries our courtier, flinging off his cloak, and displaying a doublet of white satin and hose of blue silk. The Prologue has to stand aside, and falters in his speech. The groundlings hiss, groan, mew like cats, and howl out, 'Filthy! filthy!' It may also happen that an apple is flung upon the stage, to notify the people's disapproval of this interruption. Undisturbed by these discourtesies, however, the new comer twirls his moustachios, fingers his sword-hilt, and nods to his acquaintance. After compliments to the gentlemen already seated, the gallant at last disposes

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himself in a convenient place of observation, and the Prologue ends. The first act now begins. There is nothing but the rudest scenery: a battlemented citywall behind the stage, with a placard hung out upon it, indicating that the scene is Rome. As the play proceeds, this figure of a town makes way for some wooden rocks and a couple of trees, to signify the Hyrcanian forest. A damsel, with a close-shaved chin, wanders alone in this wood, lamenting her sad case. Suddenly a cardboard dragon is thrust from the sides upon the stage, and she takes to flight. The first act closes with a speech from an old gentleman arrayed in antique robes, whose white beard flows down upon his chest. He is the Chorus; and it is his business to explain what has happened to the damsel, and how in the next act her son, a sprightly youth of eighteen years, will conquer kingdoms. During the course of the play, music is made use of for the recreation of the audience with songs and ditties, and much attention is bestowed upon the costly dresses of the principal performers. Meanwhile, a cut-purse has been found plying his trade in the yard. It is a diversion in the interval between the acts, to see him hoisted with many a cuff and kick to the stage. There he is tied tightly to one of the pillars, and left to linger the performance out against his will-literally pilloried-pelted and scoffed at when the audience have nothing else to do. The show concludes with a Prayer for the Queen's Majesty, uttered by the actors on their knees. After this is over, or possibly while it is still in progress, the spectators make their exit. Those who have come for rational amusement, pass criticisms on the piece,

the company, and the poet's wit. Others put up the table-books, to which they have committed memoranda of choice phrases, epigrams, new fangled oaths, and definitions fit to air at social gatherings. Young men, who have scraped acquaintance with some damsel in the galleries or boxes, conduct the fair Amanda to a supper in the private room of an adjacent tavern.

VI.

It is difficult for us to realise the simplicity with which the stage was mounted in the London theatres. Scenery may be said to have been almost wholly absent. Even in Masques performed at Court, on which immense sums of money were lavished, and which employed the ingenuity of men like Inigo Jones, effect was obtained by groupings of figures in dances, by tableaux and processions, gilded chariots, temples, fountains, and the like, far more than by scene-painting. Upon the public stage such expenditure had, of course, to be avoided. Attention was concentrated on the actors, with whose movements, boldly defined against a simple background, nothing interfered. The stage on which they played was narrow, projecting into the yard, surrounded on all sides by spectators. Their action was thus brought into prominent relief, placed close before the eye, deprived of all perspective. It acquired a special kind of realism, which the vast distances and manifold artifices of our modern theatres have rendered unattainable. This was the realism of an actual event, at which the audience assisted; not the realism of a scene to which the audience is trans