The most useful general histories of this period are: F. E. Schelling, _Elizabethan Drama_ (Houghton Mifflin, 1908); E. K. Chambers, _The Mediaeval Stage_ (Oxford, 1903); and Creizenach, _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_ (Halle, 1893-1909, and not yet complete). Some of the best Miracles, Moralities, and Interludes are easily accessible in _Everyman with other Interludes_ (Everyman's Library) and J. M. Manly's _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_ (Ginn & Co., 1897). [1] An extract from the Concordia Regularis, a tenth-century appendix to the monastic "rule" of St. Benedict, describes this ceremony. "While the third respond is chanted, let the remaining three follow [one of the brethren, vested in an alb, had before this quietly taken his place at the sepulcher], and let them all, vested in copes, and bearing in their hands thuribles with incense, and stepping delicately, as those who seek something, approach the sepulcher. These things are done in imitation of the angel sitting in the monument, and the women with spices coming to anoint the body of Jesus." [2] The three unities of action, place, and time are usually believed to have been formulated by Aristotle, who is supposed to have said that a tragedy should have but a single plot and that the action should be confined to a single day and a single place. As a matter of fact, Aristotle is responsible for only the first of these, and this he presented as an observation on the actual condition which prevailed in Greek tragedy rather than as a dramatic principle for all time. The other principles, which were later deduced from the general practice of the Greeks,--a practice arising from the manner in which their plays were staged,--were, together with the first, elevated by the Romans to the dignity of fixed dramatic laws. [3] The following quotation from Euphues (ed. Bond, i, 289) illustrates this style: "Hee that seeketh ye depth of knowledge is as it were in a Laborinth, in which the farther he goeth, the farther he is from the end: or like the bird in the limebush which the more she striveth to get out, ye faster she sticketh in." With this cf. _Hamlet_, III, iii, 69; _I Henry IV_, II, iv, 441. {35} CHAPTER III THE ELIZABETHAN THEATER In 1575 London had no theaters; that is, no building especially designed for the acting of plays. By 1600 there were at least six, among which were some so large and beautiful as to arouse the unqualified admiration of travelers from the continent. It is the purpose of this chapter to give in outline the history of this rapid development of a new type of building; to describe, as accurately as may be, the general features of these theaters; and to indicate the influence which these features exerted upon the Shakespearean drama. But before doing this it is necessary to point out the causes which made the first Elizabethan theater what it was.