1913. " " Stratford-on-Avon Festival. SHAKESPEARE AT EARL'S COURT.[17] The obsolete but picturesque phrase "Ye Olde" has perhaps something fascinating in it to the modern aesthetic temperament, but it would be just as well if those responsible for educating public opinion at Earl's Court about matters relating to the Elizabethan stage did not misapply the words. To the Elizabethan the Globe was a new building; there was nothing "olde" about it. What, then, the authorities mean is the Old Globe Playhouse, a definition that can mislead no one. There are some merits attached to the design, but also several errors, notably, on the stage, in the position of the traverse, in that of the staircases, and in the use made of the side boxes as approaches to the stage. These are details which are not of interest to the general public, and it is not necessary now to dwell upon them, though exception might be taken to the movement of the costumed figures who are supposed to impersonate the "groundlings." The programme tells us that the vagaries of the groundlings are drawn from Dekker's "The Guls Horn-Booke," a satirical pamphlet published in Shakespeare's time, which can no more be seriously accepted as criticism than can a description in _Punch_ of a modern theatrical performance. The evidence of foreigners visiting London in the seventeenth century gives a very different impression to that which Dekker chose to admit; and we are told of the staid and decorous attitude of those playgoers frequenting the Fortune, and of the stately dignity of the representations given at the Blackfriars. The handling of these incidents in the auditorium at Earl's Court have the appearance of being planned by one who is only superficially acquainted with the period and not in sympathy with the conditions of theatrical representation then in vogue--a circumstance to be regretted at an exhibition which was ostensibly organized to raise funds for a memorial to Shakespeare. Apparently it is forgotten that between 1590 and 1610 the finest dramatic literature which the world perhaps ever has known was being written in London, a coincidence which is inconceivable were the staging so crude and unintelligent as that which is shown us at Earl's Court. Everything there appears to have been done on the assumption that 300 years ago there was a less amount of brain power existing among dramatists, actors, and audience than there is found among them to-day, while the reverse argument is nearer to the truth, for a Shakespearian performance at the Globe on Bankside was then a far more stimulating and intellectual achievement than it is on the modern stage to-day.