It was a rough school in which Shakespeare found himself in the years of his apprenticeship; the profession he chose, although associated in our minds, when we recall his time, with some of the gentlest as well as the most ardent and gifted spirits, was not yet reputable; the society into which he was thrown by it was bohemian, if not worse; and the atmosphere in which he worked, but which he seemed not to breathe, was full of passion, intrigue, and license. No occupation is so open to moral peril as that which constantly stimulates the great passions and evokes the great emotions; and in Shakespeare's time the stage hardly felt the steadying force of public opinion. Lying under a social ban, it paid small attention to the standards and tastes of serious-minded men and women. The theatre of Shakespeare's time owed its immense productiveness to the closeness of its relations with English life and the English people, but that very closeness of touch charged it with perilous forces; the stage was the scene of tumultuous passions, of fierce emotions whose tidal volume and intensity swept everything before them; of violence, cruelty, and bloodshedding. The intense vitality which gave the age its creative energy in statesmanship, in adventure, in organization, and in literature, showed itself in perilous excesses of thought and conduct; the people, although morally sound, were coarse in speech; the vices of the Italian Renaissance did not seriously taint the English people, but they were familiar on the English stage; the actor was not received as a member of society; he was still a social outcast. Under such conditions

the tragic fate of Shakespeare's immediate predecessors seems almost inevitable; and it is a matter of surprise that Shakespeare's friends in his profession were men, on the whole, of orderly life.

There was ground, in the atmosphere which surrounded the stage in Shakespeare's youth, for the growing opposition of the Puritan element in London to the theatre; but fortunately for the free expression of English genius, Elizabeth was of another mind. She, rather than her Puritan subjects, represented the temper and spirit of the people. She loved the play and was the enthusiastic patron of the player. In 1574, twelve years before Shakespeare came to London, the Queen had given a Royal Patent, or license, empowering Lord Leicester's servants to "use, exercise, and occupy the art and faculty of playing Comedies, Tragedies, Interludes, Stage-plays . . . as well for the recreation of our loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall think good to see them." Lord Leicester's company had appeared at Court on many occasions; henceforth they called themselves "The Queen's Majesty's Poor Players." They were given the privilege of playing, not only in London, but throughout England; but the plays they presented were in all cases to pass under the eye of the Master of the Revels, and no performance was to be given "in the time of Common Prayer, or in the time of great and common Plague in our said City of London." Such a license was rendered necessary by an Act of Parliament adopted three years earlier; without it the players might have been apprehended as vagabonds.

The Earl of Leicester's company of players bore his name and secured their privileges through his influence, but were not subsidized by him. Two years after receiving the royal license, they occupied in Shoreditch the first public theatre erected in London; so widespread was the popular interest, and so ripe the moment for the development of the drama, that at the death of Elizabeth London had no less than fifteen or eighteen playhouses. When Shakespeare arrived on the scene, two theatres had been built and several companies of actors regularly organized. Choir-boys frequently gave performances, and the choirs of St. Paul's, the Chapel Royal, and the school at Westminster were organized into companies, furnished players for women's parts, and practically served as trainingschools for the stage. Of these companies, that which bore the name of Lord Leicester soon secured a foremost place; became, in the time of Elizabeth's successor, the King's Players; included among its members Richard Burbage, the greatest tragedian of his time, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who laid posterity for all time under lasting obligations by editing the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays in 1623, and Augustus Phillips-all Shakespeare's intimate and lifelong friends. With probably not more than two exceptions, his plays were first brought out by this company. With this company Shakespeare cast in his fortunes soon after his arrival in London, when it was performing in The Theatre, with the Curtain as its only rival; and he kept up his connection with it until his final retirement to Stratford.

The first theatres were rude in structure and bore evidence of the earlier conditions under which plays had been presented. The courtyard of the old English inn, with its open space surrounded on three sides by galleries, reappeared with modifications in the earliest London theatres. These structures were built of wood, and the majority of the audience sat in the open space which is now known as the orchestra but was then called the "yard" and later the pit, under the open sky. The Globe, which was the most famous theatre of Shakespeare's time, and with which his own fortunes were closely identified, was shaped like a hexagon; the stage was covered, but the private boxes, which encircled the central space or yard, were not roofed. The Fortune, which stood in Cripplegate and was one of the results of the great success of the Globe, was a square of eighty feet on each side. The stage was nearly forty-five feet in depth; three tiers of boxes encircled the yard. The stage stood upon pillars and was protected by a roof. The greater part of the audience sat in the "yard" and were called "groundlings"; those who were able to pay a larger fee found places in the boxes or galleries; the men of fashion, with the patrons of the drama, sat on the stage itself.

The audience in the yard was made up of citizens of London, apprentices, grooms, boys, and a more dissolute and boisterous element who paid two or three pennies for admission. If it rained, they were wet; if the sun shone, they were warm; they criticised the actors and ridiculed the dandies on the stage; they ate and drank and occasionally fought one another,

after the fashion of the time. They were sometimes riotous. When the air of the yard became disagreeable, juniper was burned to purify it. The nobles and men of fashion paid sixpence or a shilling for a threelegged stool on the stage. These gentlemen, who were dressed, as a rule, in the extreme of the prevailing mode, were scornful of the people in the yard, and often made themselves obnoxious to the actors, with whose exits and entrances they sometimes interfered, and upon whose performances they made audible and often insulting comments. There were no women on the stage, and few, and those usually not of the best, in the boxes.

The performances were given at three o'clock in the afternoon, and were announced by the hoisting of flags and the blowing of custom which has been revived in our time at Bayreuth. Playbills of a rude kind were distributed; if a tragedy was to be presented, these bills were printed in red letters. In place of the modern ushers were boys who sold tobacco, nuts, and various edibles, without much attention to the performance or the performers. The stage was strewn with rushes, and partially concealed by a curtain. When the trumpets had been blown for the third time, this curtain was drawn aside and an actor, clad in a mantle of black velvet and wearing a crown of bays over a capacious wig, came forward to recite the Prologue. This speech was often interrupted and sometimes ended by the violence of the "groundlings" or the late arrival of some rakish gentleman upon the stage. The people in the yard were, as a