This Blackfriars was at only a little remove down the Thames from that famous Whitefriars region of which there is such melodramatic account in Scott’s story of _Nigel_, where Old Trapbois comes to his wild death. If we went to the Globe Theatre, we should push on down to the river--near to a point where Blackfriars Bridge now spans it--then, a clear stream free from all bridges, save only London Bridge, which would have loomed, with its piles of houses, out of the water on our left. At the water-side we should take wherry (fare only one penny) and be sculled over to Southwark, landing at an open place--Bankside--near which was Paris Garden, where bear-baiting was still carried on with high kingly approval; and thereabout, on a spot now swallowed in a gulf of smoked and blackened houses--just about the locality where at a later day stood Richard Baxter’s Chapel, rose the octagonal walls of the Globe Theatre, in which Mr. Shakespeare was concerned as player and part proprietor. There should be a flag flying aloft and people lounging in, paying their two-pence, their sixpences, their shillings, or even their half-crowns--as they chose the commoner or the better places. Only the stage is roofed over; perhaps also a narrow space all round the walls; from all otherwheres within, one could look up straight into the murky sky of London. There is apple-eating, nut-cracking, and some vender of pamphlets bawling “Buy a new booke;” such a one perhaps as that _Horne Booke of Gulls_--which I told you of, written by Dekker--would have been a favorite for such venders. Or, possibly through urgence of the Court Chamberlain, King James’ _Counterblaste to Tobacco_ may be put on sale there, to mend manners; or Joshua Sylvester’s little poem to the same end, entitled _Tobacco battered and the Pipes shattered about their Eares that idly idolize so base and barbarous a Weed, by a Volley of hot shot, thundered from Mount Helicon_. “How juster will the Heavenly God, Th’ Eternal, punish with infernal rod In Hell’s dark furnace, with black fumes to choak Those that on Earth will still offend in Smoak.” But hot as this sort of shot might have been, we may be sure that some fast fellows, the critics and _æsthetes_ of those days, will have their place on the stage, sprawling there upon the edge, before the actors appear; criticising players and audience and smoking their long pipes; may be taking a hand at cards, and if very “swell,” tossing the cards over to people in the pit when once their game is over--a showy and arrogant largess.