While the drama was thus developing toward the point where Shakespeare found it, the instruments for the interpretation of the drama were also in process of evolution. Professional actors had come into existence perhaps a century before Shakespeare's birth; but they were long regarded with scorn by the staid civic authorities. The law indeed ranked them with strollers and "lusty vagabonds." But the pleasure-loving aristocracy took up their cause and invited them to enrol themselves in companies under the patronage of some noblemen. These licensed companies, as they were called, enjoyed a degree of respect which their humbler fellows lacked, and were permitted to give performances about the country, in the suburbs of London, and even in the city itself. They were composed wholly of men and boys; no women belonged to professional companies till after the Restoration.

There were as yet no theatres and for a long time after the formation of these companies, they were obliged to play in the courtyards of inns, in the halls of gentlemen's houses, or on booths erected at town or county fairs. For a private performance they received a fee from the person who had requested their services; after a public performance they passed around the hat. In 1576, however, while Shakespeare was still a boy at Stratford, James Burbage, the father of Shakespeare's friend, hit on the happy thought of erecting a building for theatrical performances by professional actors and of charging a fixed. price for admission. The city authorities refused to allow such a place within the walls of London, so Burbage built

"The Theatre" in one of the suburbs just outside the town limits. It was soon followed by the "Curtain" and the "Rose," and just as the century was closing, the Burbages pulled down "The Theatre" and with its materials erected the most famous of all Elizabethan playhouses, the "Globe." Before Shakespeare's death there were probably ten or twelve theatres in and about the city.

These theatres were, of course, very simple affairs. They were for the most part mere sheds, open to the sky, except for a scaffolding over the stage, and sometimes over the boxes in which the better class of the audience were seated. Performances were always given in the afternoon, so that there was no need of the elaborate devices for the illumination of the stage to which we are accustomed. Scenery was practically unknown, and stage machinery was of the very simplest sort. The stage itself projected forward into the body of the house so that the actors could be seen from three sides. At the rear of the stage there was a recess, before which hung a curtain and over which there projected a balcony. These places served to diversify the action, since they could be used to indicate a change of scene in the play. The recess, for instance, might stand for a royal throne, a lady's bed-chamber, or a magician's study. The balcony might be anything from the deck of a vessel to the walls of a city. There was naturally no attempt at realistic stage-setting; the place of the action was sometimes indicated by a placard hung out to announce that the

scene was laid in Rome, or Athens, or England. It is evident that performances upon such a stage had to rely largely on the imagination of the audience, but the Elizabethan audience was ready of response, and the beautiful descriptive passages in Shakespeare's plays show that he knew that the people for whom he wrote would meet him halfway.

It was into this busy, eager, pleasure-loving world that Shakespeare plunged when he joined Lord Leicester's company. In a very short time he had become one of the busiest men in London. He had, in the first place, his work as an actor, and since there were no long runs in those days, his time must have been fairly well filled with rehearsals and performances alone. His experience as an actor gave him invaluable insight into the methods of dramatic composition and before long his skill as a dramatist began to manifest itself. At first he attempted nothing more than the revision of old plays. There was no law of copyright in those days. When a playwright finished his drama, he sold it for cash to one of the companies and it became their absolute property. They might use it as they pleased, perform it as it came from the author, add various striking scenes and characters to it, or have it written over to suit their taste. It seems certain that in his first historical plays, the three parts of King Henry VI, Shakespeare was in the main revising and strengthening the work of older writers. But it was not long before he attempted original composition; and after he had once begun, he worked steadily for nearly

twenty years, turning out on an average two plays a year. His first editors declared that there was hardly a blot or correction in his manuscripts, and on the strength of this statement it has been believed that Shakespeare was one of the great unconscious artists who do their work without knowing how or why they do it. But there seems to be good evidence that Shakespeare worked hard over his plays, that he revised and corrected, and, in some cases, practically rewrote them before he was satisfied. His dramatic genius, the greatest the world has ever known, did not spring full-grown into life, but was developed and perfected by long years of strenuous effort.

Shakespeare's first unqualified success as a man of letters was attained by the publication of his poems Venus and Adonis, 1593, and The Rape of Lucrece, 1594. Critics who looked down with scorn upon the productions of the common stage welcomed these poems with rapturous applause; and the reading public bought them up as fast as they could be issued from the press. Only two of his plays, Richard III and the first part of King Henry IV, if we may judge by the frequency of contemporary publication, enjoyed anything like a corresponding popularity.

The most noteworthy contemporary testimony to Shakespeare's reputation as a dramatist is that of Francis Meres, a scholar and clergyman, who published, in 1598, a work entitled Palladis Tamia, or The Treasury of Wit. In a very complete review of contemporary literature Meres declared that Shakespeare excelled all others in both

comedy and tragedy, and he cited twelve plays to justify his assertion.

Less than half of these plays had been published when Meres wrote. The actors who held the copyright believed that the publication of a play would lessen its drawing power as a stage performance. But as Shakespeare's reputation increased, the reading public became so eager to obtain his works that unscrupulous publishers resorted to all sorts of devices to satisfy the demand. They sent shorthand writers to the theatre to take notes, they bought parts of plays from needy actors, and sometimes they even persuaded the company to part with a copy of the manuscript. In 1600 there were published no less than six separate plays by Shakespeare. A further testimony to his popularity is borne by the fact that the piratical publishers of the time took to printing other men's plays with his name, or at least his initials, upon the title-page. Seven of such publications appeared during Shakespeare's lifetime.

Shakespeare's reputation as an actor and playwright soon spread from the public theatre to the court of Queen Elizabeth. Probably some of the young noblemen of her intimate circle carried a report of his genius to her. As early as 1594 he was summoned along with Burbage, the tragedian, and Kemp, the famous comic actor, to play before her at Greenwich. His early comedy, Love's Labour's Lost, was rewritten and presented at court by special request in the Christmas holidays of 1597. The Queen, with her strong masculine sense of humour, took