[Illustration: THE BANKSIDE AND ITS THEATERS 1. The Swan Theater. 3. The Hope Theater. 5. Old St. Paul's. 2. The Bear Gardens. 4. The Globe Theater. 6. The Temple.] III. The audiences did not attend merely for relaxation or amusement. They often came for information and education, and they were probably glad to learn about alchemy from one of Ben Jonson's plays. The audience doubtless welcomed long monologues if they were well delivered and presented ideas of worth. The theater took the place of lectures, newspapers, magazines, and, to a certain extent, of books. We know that in 1608 the Blackfriars Theater acted the part of a newspaper in presenting a scandal about the French king and that at another time it gave some humorous information concerning the English monarch's newly discovered silver mine in Scotland. IV. The Elizabethans loved good poetry for its imaginative appeal. Shakespeare was a poet before he was a dramatist. Beautiful poetry presenting high ideals must have met with vigorous appreciation, or Shakespeare could not have continued to produce such great work. V. The Elizabethans also demanded story and incident. Modern critics have often noticed that the characterization in Shakespeare's fourth acts, _e.g._, in _Macbeth_, does not equal that in the preceding part of the play; but the fourth act of _Macbeth_ interested the Elizabethans because there was progress in the complicated story. To modern theatergoers this fourth act seems to drag because they have acquired through novel reading a liking for analysis and dissection. Shakespeare succeeded in interesting the Elizabethans by embodying in story and incident his portrayal of character. Because of admiration for the revelation of character in his greatest plays, modern readers forget their moving incidents,--for instance, the almost blood-curdling appearances of a ghost, the actions of a crazed woman, the killing of an eavesdropper on the stage, two men fighting at an open grave, the skull and bones of a human being dug from a grave in full view of the audience, the fighting to the death on the stage, which is ghastly with corpses at the close. When we add to this the roar of cannon whenever the king drinks, as well as when there is some more noteworthy action, and remember that the very last words of _Hamlet_ are: "Go, bid the soldiers shoot," we shall realize that there was not much danger of going to sleep even during a performance of _Hamlet_. Scenery.--The conditions under which early Elizabethan plays were sometimes produced are thus described by Sir Philip Sidney:--