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modern arrangement of curtain, lighting, and scenery could be of the slightest assistance in presenting the play. It is essential in reading the plays of Shakespeare to know the theater, stage, and audience for which he wrote. See The Elizabethan Play-House, INTRODUCTION, page xx.

The Importance of the Audience. A story may be written with no reader in mind, but a play cannot be presented without stage and audience. No drama can be truly said to be a drama which does not take the audience into consideration, first and last. The influence of the audience is shown in the following stage conventions:

Length of the Play. No audience is willing to sit in the play-house for days at a time, witnessing a performance of indefinite length; and on the other hand most people expect more than a few moments' entertainment in return for their admission fee. The length which has been found most desirable for a play is that which requires from two to three hours for performance.

Act and Scene Division. Since no auditor can expect to give undivided attention to any one matter even for two or three hours, it has long been customary to divide plays into acts or scenes, with waits between for the changing of scenery. Shakespeare's theater, however, had no painted scenery, and the necessary relief was provided by music and comic diversions on the stage rather than by waits between scenes.

Centralizing of Interest. Because the audience is on the whole a thoughtless group, in the playhouse rather to be amused than instructed, the story told must be a simple one, focussed about the fortunes of a single person, the hero. It is fatal to deceive the audience in any essential particular, and impossible to hold it in

suspense for any great length of time. Equally important is it to avoid anything that will confuse, disappoint, or divide its sympathies. A good play usually makes the spectators desire one thing warmly, and in the last act brings the desired end to pass.

Introducing Characters. Since the audience, except for applause and laughter, is a silent factor in the play, it follows that all characters must introduce themselves, or be named by other characters in such a way and with such frequency as to place their identity beyond doubt. Similarly, since the audience can ask no questions, it is impossible for an important character to leave the stage without assigning a reason for the departure or in some way informing us where he is going.

Illusions. In order that we shall gain an illusion of reality from the happenings on the stage, many devices are employed to hide the fact that the play has been written primarily with the audience in mind. If a certain piece of information is to be given, some character inquires about it, and is informed by another character on the stage; if a particular person is needed later on in the scene, he is brought on under some pretext which we accept without question at the time of his appearance. Only by bearing the audience constantly in mind can the student learn the numerous devices which make play-writing an art quite different from any other form of narration.

III. THE ELIZABETHAN PLAY-HOUSE

Origin. Aside from the entertainments of travelling singers, jugglers, and acrobats, who doubtless contrib

uted their share to the lighter side of the art of acting, the drama in England had its origin in the church. It was the habit of the priests at the Christmas or Easter mass to impersonate various characters in the Bible stories, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, Herod, the angel at the tomb of Christ; and to act out a modified or dramatic service, first in Latin, but later in English. The object was to inform the people who could not read-and that meant nearly everyone in those daysof the true Bible narrative. These special services proved extraordinarily popular, and the practice was extended. In this way many Scriptural stories, both from the new and from the old testaments, came to be put into dramatic form by the rude poets of the people, and were acted both in the churches and out of doors as a part of the public entertainment on festival days.

Secular Themes. The people took warmly to these Mystery plays, as they have since been called; and after exhausting all the available stories in the Scriptures and the lives of the saints began to draw on French and Italian sources for their entertainment, importing first the Morality play of abstract virtue and vice from France, and later the Italian comedy of masks, based in part on classical themes.

Traveling Companies. Hitherto all the plays had been amateur plays and the actors amateur actors, priests, choir boys, or members of some guild, or tradeunion; but now companies of professional actors began to spring up, who attached themselves to an obliging earl or nobleman and travelled over rural England, calling themselves, let us say, the Earl of Leicester's Servants. Their art was naturally an improvement on the old holiday entertainments, and they were enabled to charge an admission and make a fair living in this

way. Such travelling companies were familiar sights in Stratford when Shakespeare was a boy, playing dramas for the most part taken from the Greek and Latin poets rather than from the Bible.

The Inn Yards. The inn yards of the day afforded convenient enclosures for the performance; they were, moreover, centers of the social life of the smaller towns, attracting crowds of tradesmen, farmers, travellers,

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gentlemen of quality, village hangers-on, and, we can be sure, the usual fringe of small boys, who somehow managed to get in without paying for the privilege. Women were in the minority, for the crowd was boisterous and the plays frequently vulgar. Built around four sides of a hollow square, with the stables at the rear serving as dressing-rooms for the performers, and a platform set up to act as a stage, the average English inn yard provided the best playhouse that could be had in the smaller towns. Gentlemen with rooms in the inn could of course witness the play from their windows; so the landlord might derive a small income for himself by renting this balcony or gallery space for the afternoon. Other spectators were admitted to standing room in the yard for a smaller fee.

London Theaters. In 1576 James Burbage built the first permanent theater in the metropolis, calling it simply "The Theater." This and the "Curtain" which followed it the next year were modelled on the lines of an inn yard, with their open courts, movable stages, and balconies of "stalls" around three sides of the enclosure. Even to this day the London theaters show traces of their humble origin, although they have long since been roofed and provided with artificial lighting. The yard, or "pit," which was originally the ground space in front of and around the stage, is still the region of cheap seats; while the balcony-boxes, which undoubtedly took their origin in the more select inn windows, have become the British "stalls," with seats commanding the highest prices.

The Bankside. The first permanent theaters brought into the city a frivolous and rowdy population which had much to do with discrediting them in the eyes of serious-minded townspeople. The Puritans, then a

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