On either side of the stage sat the young noblemen, the poetasters, and the shorthand writers who worked for private publishers. In the boxes--priced up to half-a-crown (about £1 of our present money) were various aristocratic and wealthy patrons of the play. The "groundlings" obtained standing room in the pit for a penny (say 6d.) and were vociferous in their applause of the sanguinary scenes, of the Gravediggers, and of the grosser jests. Everyone who could afford it, smoked: the "classes," rich authentic tobacco, and the "masses," men and women alike, an adulterated mixture of coltsfoot and other "hot" herbs. As for the middle classes, the merchant-folk, tradesmen, and _bourgeoisie_ in general, they were chiefly conspicuous by their absence. Strongly pervaded by a growing flavour of Puritanism, and having a wholesome decent horror of "play-acting" as something undoubtedly congruous with all dissolute ways and ill-living, the middle classes avoided Bankside like the pestilence. Had they been present, they would have been sorely put to it to understand what in the world Mr. Shakespeare, through the mouth of Hamlet, was gibing at. Was he decrying actors? Was he contemning audiences? Was he scorching, with bitter disdain, all who wrote for, or acted in, or crowded into playhouses?... The young gallants, uncomfortable and uncertain, were glad when the Play-scene was over, and one arrived at more familiar matters of battle, murder, and sudden death. Too much metaphysics about this Hamlet fellow, so they held. A dramatist should stick to his last, and not drag his hearers into deep waters of conjecture, where a man might well flounder for ever....