German, in 1598, "possesses several theatres in which English actors play, almost every day, comedies and tragedies before a considerable number of spectators."

From the midst of the small houses with pointed roofs, emerged those large buildings thirty-two feet high; such were the measurements of the Globe and the Fortune. Contrary to continental playhouses, and with the single exception of the square-shaped Fortune, the English theatres were circular, most of them with a polygonal exterior. Drayton, alluding to his own early dramas, speaks of the time when he:

and received the applause of "the proud round." 3 "This these words: "Cujus [the Swan theatre] quidem formam, quod Romani operis umbram videatur exprimere supra adpinxi." But in the last sentence Buchell obviously speaks himself and sums up some other notes of his friend's: "Narrabat idem se vidisse in Brittania," etc. Text and drawing have been often published and commented upon, e.g. by Gaedertz himself, Bremen, 1888, by H. B. Wheatley, "Transactions of the New Shakspere Soc.," November 9, 1888, etc. Numerous efforts have been made of late to find how the text of sixteenth-century English plays might agree with what we know of the stage and scenery of the period. See e.g. C. Brodmeier, "Die Shakespeare Bühne," Wiemar, 1904 (an exposé of the inacceptable "alternation theory"; scenes must, according to it, have succeeded each other in regular alternance, one on the fore-stage, with no properties, and one on the rear part of the platform, with properties); G. F. Reynolds, "Some Principles of Elizabethan Staging," Chicago, 1905; V. E. Albright, "The Shakespearean Stage," N.Y., 1909; Lawrence, "The Elizabethan Playhouse," 1912; Chambers, "Elizab. Stage," III.; J. G. Adams, "Shakespearean Playhouses," n.d.

"Sunt porro Londini extra urbem theatra aliquot, in quibus histriones angli comoedias et tragœdias singulis fere diebus, in magna hominum frequentia agunt, quas variis etiam saltationibus, suavissima adhibita musica, magno cum populi applausu finire solent."-"Itinerarium Germaniæ . . . Angliæ," Nurenberg, 1612, 4to, p. 131. Hentzner's visit to England is of 1598.

"Everye waie square without and... square everye waie within."-Building contract of Peter Street, carpenter, 1600; Greg, "Henslowe Papers," p. 4; see W. H. Godfrey and W. Archer's clever attempt to show, from this contract, what the Fortune was like, New Shakespeareana, Oct., 1908. The square shape proved unsatisfactory, and when the Fortune was destroyed by fire in 1621, it was rebuilt circular (and in bricks instead of wood).—Warner, "MSS. at Dulwich," p. xxxi.

"Idea," Sonnet xlvii. On him as a dramatist, see Whitaker, Publ. Mod, Lang. Assn. xviii, 378.

wooden O," says Shakespeare; "this thronged round," says Jonson; "those publique circuits," says Drayton again. The "Royal game" of bull and bear baiting had early accustomed the public to this shape, well adapted to circus performances, where the exhibition is interesting from every side; Burbage, moreover, and most of his imitators after him, wanted their theatres to be available for all sorts of performances, and not solely for dramatic ones: fencing matches (a new art, of foreign origin and in immense vogue), dances, tumblings, feats on the rope, and even, at the Hope, baiting exhibitions. In such a playhouse as the latter, the stage consisted of a movable floor on tressels: "A stage to be carryed or taken awaie and to stande uppon tressells."2 Such theatres thus combined the entertainments which we find to-day at the circus, the plaza de toros, the music hall, the fencing school and the "Comédie Française."

At the door stood the gatherer with his money-box, a position of trust often misused.3 He asked a penny

"Henry V." chorus of act i.; "Every Man out of his Humour," Induction. The maps and views of London of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries confirm the accuracy of these terms. See for example Norden's map of 1593, reproduced in Harrison's "Description of Britaine," ed. Furnivall, 1877, and Visscher's map of the beginning of the seventeenth century: the part showing the Globe and the Bear Garden, the exterior being polygonal, is reproduced, eg., in my "Shakespeare in France," p. 37.

* Contract for the building of the Hope.-Warner, “ MSS. . . . at Dulwich,” p. 240. Henslowe has the Bear Garden pulled down in 1613 and rebuilt in three months as a "plaiehouse fitt and convenient in all thinges, bothe for players to playe in, and for the game of beares and bulls to be bayted in the same," with "a stage to be carried or taken awaie, and to stande uppon tressells," the new house to be modelled on the "plaiehouse called the Swan."—Greg, "Henslowe Papers," p. 19.

3 Complaint against a gatherer who, the comedians said, had proved "falce to us": he should be forbidden ever again "to take the box." As he was, however, a protégé of Alleyn's, the players offer to entrust him with the care of mending their worn-out costumes.-Greg, "Henslowe Papers," p. 85. The wife of an actor is recommended for the position of gatherer on account of her "upright dealing in that nature," 1612; see also & complaint of Henslowe's players that they have to salary too many gatherers, ibid. pp. 65, 87.

for the pit (same price as at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in Paris); a supplement from one penny to threepence was required for the galleries, according to the place or the story, and according sometimes to the appearance of the visitors: "Lanthorne. Look to your gathering there, good man

Filcher.

"Filcher. I warrant you, sir.

"Lanthorne. An there come any gentle folks, take two pence a piece, Sharkwell.

"Sharkwell. I warrant you, sir, 3 pence an we can." 1 The most favoured, a favour any one could get for his money, sat on the stage and paid sixpence; but gentlemen were to be found in numbers at the twopenny places: "Slothe himselfe will come," writes Dekker, " and sit in the two-pennie galleries, amongst the gentlemen." 2

People walked in and found themselves in a circular yard, with no benches, open to the weather, and surrounded with three stories of wooden galleries; this was the pit. Staircases leading from this yard gave access to the galleries. The stage, raised to man's height, was "paled in belowe with good stronge and sufficyent newe oken bourdes," and "extended to the middle of the yard."3 A trap in the floor permitted the appearance and disappearance of supernatural beings: "Envy arises in the midst of the stage. . . . Descends slowly." 4 Backed up against

Ben Jonson, "Bartholomew Fair,” v. I. "Seven Deadly Sinnes," 1606, chap. iv. Allusion to ambassadors visiting the playhouses and to the crowds drawn by their presence. Cf. Baskervill, "Sitting on the Stage," "Mod. Philol.,” viii. 581 ; above, II. 549.

3 Contract for the building of the Fortune, January 8, 1600, giving inferential information concerning the Globe, which is to be imitated in most respects.Greg, "Henslowe Papers," p. 5. The scaffolds erected at fairs for tumblers, quacks, etc., time out of mind, seem to have been the model thus followed. Tabarin's stage was similarly arranged, being erected to man's height, without fencings, and with a piece of arras for a background. See frontispiece of the "Inventaire général des ŒŒuvres de Tabarin," Paris, 1622.

4 Ben Jonson's "Poetaster."

the circuit wall, the stage, sometimes without any fencings or balusters, advanced into the area, leaving, not only in front but also on the sides, an empty space for the standing spectators of the pit. Other spectators, seated on the rear of the stage, in a sort of box called "the lords' room," above the common dressing hall or "'tiring house" of the comedians ("mimorum ædes" in the drawing of John de Witt), saw the players from behind. These places were none the less considered most desirable; the occupants were by themselves and had not to fear the contact of unpleasant chance neighbours. Players were thus surrounded by spectators on every side.1

When it rained the pit got wet, a mishap of little import; people were accustomed to that; large hats and thick cloaks did duty for umbrellas. "They are greedie of wickednes," wrote a censor, "and wil let no time, nor spare for anie weather (so great is their devotion to make their pilgrimage) to offer their penie to the Divel."2 When the weather was exceptionally bad, however, the receipts fell: "This winter," says Histrio in Jonson's "Poetaster," "has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes; nobody comes at us; not a gentleman." 3 The stage had a roof,

Similar boxes existing in sixteenth-century French theatres are very visible in the cut preceding each comedy in "P. Terentii . . . Comœdiæ," Paris, 1552, fol. Something of a like arrangement survives in certain opera-houses, in the Paris one, for instance, with its boxes on the very stage, the occupants of which find themselves behind the curtain when it drops, and see the actors from behind when they sing on the fore-part of the stage. These boxes in the old English playhouses have of late been described as the "balcony," the place for Juliet to speak to Romeo, or for besieged citizens to appear "on the walls." Schelling ("Elizabethan Drama," 1908, i. 179) goes even so far as to suggest that the strolling players' tragedy in "Hamlet" was performed there. But the few drawings or engravings which have come down to us leave no doubt that that place was occupied by spectators.

"A second and third Blast of retrait from Plaies," by Anglo-phile Eutheo, 1580, in Hazlitt, "English Drama and Stage," 1869, p. 131.

3 "Poetaster," iii. 1. Histrio personifies the players of the Southwark theatres, all of which were open to the sky. In these so-called summer play

"

heavens," that covered it, partly, as at the Swan, sometimes completely, or nearly so, as at the Globe and the Fortune, with "a sufficient gutter of leade to carrie and convey the water from the coveringe of the said stage to fall backwards."I But for such a precaution the water would have dripped on the heads of the spectators, an unwarranted aggravation of their discomforts. The galleries, too, had a roof, usually thatched at first, and tiled later, when the destruction of the Globe had shown the danger of thatch, and the building had been burnt down in an instant, 29th June, 1613:

"

Now, King Henry" (in, as it seems, Shakespeare's "Henry VIII."), "making a masque at the Cardinal Wolsey's house, and certain chambers (pieces of ordnance) being shot off at his entry, some of the paper, or other stuff, wherewith one of them was stopped did light on the thatch, where, being thought at first but an idle smoke, and their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole house to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of this virtuous fabric, wherein yet nothing did perish but wood and straw and a few forsaken cloaks "2-to say nothing of,

houses performances took place even in winter, but they were less frequent and not so well attended. Webster attributes the bad success of his "White Divel" to the fact that it had been given "in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and black a theatre." It had been performed at the Curtain. Some players write to Alleyn in 1617: "We stood the intemperate weather till more intemperate Mr. Meade thrust us over.""Henslowe Papers," 93.

' Contract for the building of the Fortune, the Globe being chosen as model; both are provided " with a shadowe or cover over the saide stadge.' * Sir H. Wotton to Sir Edm. Bacon, July 2, 1613, "Life and Letters of Sir H. Wotton," by L. P. Smith, Oxford, 1907, 2 vols., vol. ii. p. 32; cf. below, p. 266, note. The danger or inconvenience of such roofs was obvious and had been noticed before that catastrophe; the contract for the building of the Fortune, dated 1600, and in which the Globe is constantly named as the example to be followed, makes an exception in this respect: all the roofed parts "to be covered with tyle."