One of the chief fallacies in connection with the modern notion of the Elizabethan stage is that of its poverty in colour and setting through the absence of scenery--a notion that is at variance with every contemporary record of the theatre and of its puritanical opponents, whose incessant taunts were, "Behold the sumptuous theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly." The interior of an Elizabethan playhouse must have presented an unusually picturesque scene, with its mass of colouring in the costume of the spectators; while the actors, moving, as it were, on the same plane as the audience, and having attention so closely and exclusively directed to them, were of necessity appropriately and brilliantly attired. We hear much from the superficial student about the "board being hung up chalked with the words, 'This is a wood,' when the action of the play took place in a forest." But this is an impression apparently founded upon Sir Philip Sidney's words in his "Apology of Poetry," written about 1583: "What child is there that, coming to a play and seeing Thebes written in great letters on an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes?" And whether these words were "chalked" upon the outside door of the building admitting to the auditorium, or whether they appeared exhibited to the eye of the audience on the stage-door of the tiring-room is not made clear, but this is certain, that there is no direct evidence yet forthcoming to prove that boards were ever used in any of Shakespeare's dramas or in those of Ben Jonson; and, with some other dramatists, there is evidence of the name of the play and its locality being shown in writing, either by the prologue, or hung up on one of the posts of the auditorium. Shakespeare himself considered it to be the business of the dramatist to describe the scene, and to call the attention of the audience to each change in locality, and moreover he does this so skilfully as to make his scenic descriptions appear as part of the natural dialogue of the play. The naked action was assisted by the poetry; and much that now seems superfluous in the descriptive passages was needed to excite imagination. With reference to this question, Halliwell Phillipps very justly remarks: "There can be no doubt that Shakespeare, in the composition of most of his plays, could not have contemplated the introduction of scenic accessories. It is fortunate that this should have been one of the conditions of his work, for otherwise many a speech of power and beauty, many an effective situation, would have been lost. All kinds of elaborate attempts at stage illusion tend, moreover, to divert a careful observance of the acting, while they are of no real service to the imagination of the spectator, unless the author renders them necessary for the full elucidation of his meaning. That Shakespeare himself ridiculed the idea of a power to meet such a necessity, when he was writing for