Both 'Ralph Roister Doister' and 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' were probably written for performance by college boys, and they have not a little of the brisk heartiness and of the broad horse-play to which we are accustomed in the college pieces of to-day. It was for performance at court that Lyly wrote the most of his plays, which lack the vivacity and the liveliness distinguishing the two college comic dramas, but which yet reveal a far better understanding of the drama than was possessed by the authors of 'Gorboduc.' Lyly again is careful to divide his plays into five acts. But his contemporaries Greene and Peele, writing solely for the professional playhouses, were bound by none of the rules which might be expected in college or at court. Whatever their own scholarly equipment, when they wrote for the professional players, they followed unhesitatingly the traditions of the contemporary theater. As playwrights they were the direct heirs of the anonymous and ignorant devisers of the medieval drama. They had a story to set on the stage; they chose a succession of more or less effective episodes, and they carelessly cast these into dialog, with little thought of form or of construction. Never do their plays contain matter enough for five full acts; and we may be certain that no such framework was ever in the mind of either of these dramatic poets. In the original editions of their pieces we find no separation into acts and scenes; and if this needless and misleading subdivision is found in later editions it is the doing of misguided editors. In what is accepted as the earliest edition of Kyd's 'Spanish Tragedy,' the most widely popular of all the pre-Shaksperian plays, the text is actually divided into four acts. But this division is not structural; it is almost accidental, as tho it was an afterthought, inserted at the last moment into the copy intended for the printer, and never in the mind of the playwright himself when he was preparing the prompt-book for the actors; and Shakspere, who followed Kyd in more ways than one, apparently followed him in this also. In the folio edition of his plays, published after his death, a division into five acts has been made; but the task has not been accomplished any too skilfully--for example, the second act of 'King John' has but eighty lines, and here the division is into four acts only. The suggestion has been proffered that it was, perhaps, left to the printers to do, the influence of Ben Jonson having been powerful enough to establish the theory that a self-respecting dramatist would never fail to cast his tragedies in the five-act form. It is to be noted also that no division into acts is to be found in the quarto editions published in Shakspere's lifetime; and this is very significant since these quartos seem to have been piratical copies from shorthand notes taken surreptitiously in the theater, thus recording the actual conditions of performance.