theatres like the Curtain or Globe, is apparent from the opening chorus to 'Henry V.' It is obvious that he wished attention to be concentrated on the players and their utterances, and that all surroundings, excepting those which could be indicated by the rude properties of the day, should be idealistic." The dramatist's disregard of time and place was justified by the conditions of the stage, which left all to the intellect; a complete intellectual representation being, in fact, a necessity, in the absence of meretricious support. "The mind," writes John Addington Symonds, "can contemplate the furthest just as easily as more familiar objects, nor need it dread to traverse the longest tract of years, the widest expanse of space, in following the sequence of an action." In fact, the question of the advantage or disadvantage of scenery is well summed up by Collier, whose words are all the more impressive when it is borne in mind that his reasons are supported by an indisputable fact in the history of our dramatic literature. "Our old dramatists luxuriated in passages descriptive of natural or artificial beauty, because they knew their auditors would have nothing before their eyes to contradict the poetry; the hangings of the stage made little pretension to be anything but covering for the walls, and the notion of the plays represented was taken from what was written by the poet, not from what was attempted by the painter. We owe to the absence of painted canvas many of the finest descriptive passages in Shakespeare, his contemporaries, and immediate followers. The introduction, we apprehend, gives the date to the commencement of the decline of our dramatic poetry." Shakespeare could not have failed to recognize that by employing the existing conventions of his stage he could the more readily bring the public to his point of view, since its thoughts were not being constantly diverted and distracted by those outward decorations and subordinate details which in our day so greatly obliterate the main object of dramatic work.