In a moment Betty found herself in a round wooden place, part of which was open to the sky, though the stage facing her, was protected by an overhanging thatched roof. Three galleries, one above the other, ran round the theatre, and these were thronged with people. On the stage, which jutted out into the open-air part of the building, another smaller stage was set with a gallery above it, filled with musicians in funny tall hats trimmed with ribbons. Some young men were sitting actually on the stage itself, while the poorer people stood in the open space in front of it, with nothing but the sky above their heads. There was a perfect babel of noise, for hawkers were moving about calling nuts and ale and apples to sell, the young gallants on the stage were playing at dice and quarrelling, and the whole place seemed in confusion. Then there was a flourish of trumpets from the musicians’ gallery and suddenly everything was quiet. “There have been two trumpet sounds before we came in,” Godmother explained. “This third one means that the play is going to begin.” “I know what it is,” whispered Betty. “I saw some funny little play-bills on the door outside. It’s _Richard the Second_—and that’s all about the very reign we were in when we came to old London last time!” Her eyes were now fixed on the stage, which was hung round with curtains, and strewn with green rushes. There was no scenery except one roughly-painted canvas stretched across the back of the smaller stage, above which, on a board, was written _King Richard’s Palace_. “That was _Westminster_, wasn’t it?” whispered Betty, just as King Richard himself, John of Gaunt and a train of nobles walked on to the stage, and the King began his first speech. “_Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured, Lancaster_——” “But they’re none of them dressed a bit like the people they’re meant to be,” she objected. “They’re wearing the same sort of clothes as the people in the audience have on!” “Yes, the Elizabethans don’t trouble about that,” Godmother replied, “and neither right costume nor proper scenery makes good acting, you know. If we had time to stay and listen, we should hear this play very well acted. Do you notice how breathlessly quiet the audience is?” Betty followed her guide reluctantly out of this strange theatre, looking back at the curtain-hung stage, with the young men in their short velvet cloaks, seated on stools close to the players, at the crowd standing in the open space under the blue sky, and at the circular galleries thronged with people. “So that’s how the theatres we go to now, began, I suppose?” she asked. “Not quite. Even that rough, simple sort of building we’ve just left is an advance upon what the grandfathers of these people saw in the way of stage performances. Till the Globe, and one or two other theatres (which I’ll show you in a minute) were built, a few years ago, the plays were acted in the courtyards of inns. Let us come into the yard of this one, and I’ll explain.”