The stage was a platform, projecting into the yard, with a tiring-house at the rear, and a balcony overhead. The details of the stage, no doubt, were subject to alteration as experience suggested, for its materials were of wood, and histrionic and dramatic art were both undergoing rapid development.[66] The furnishings and decorations, as in the case of modern playhouses, seem to have been ornate. Thus T[homas] W[hite], in _A Sermon Preached at Pawles Crosse, on Sunday the Thirde of November, 1577_, exclaims: "Behold the sumptuous Theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality"; John Stockwood, in _A Sermon Preached at Paules Cross, 1578_, refers to it as "the gorgeous playing place erected in the Fields"; and Gabriel Harvey could think of no more appropriate epithet for it than "painted"--"painted theatres," "painted stage." [Footnote 66: There is no reason whatever to suppose, with Ordish, Mantzius, Lawrence, and others, that the stage of the Theatre was removable; for although the building was frequently used by fencers, tumblers, etc., it was never, so far as I can discover, used for animal-baiting.] The building was doubtless used for dramatic performances in the autumn of 1576, although it was not completed until later; John Grigges, one of the carpenters, deposed that Burbage and Brayne "finished the same with the help of the profits that grew by plays used there before it was fully finished."[67] Access to the playhouse was had chiefly by way of Finsbury Field and a passage made by Burbage through the brick wall mentioned in the lease.[68] [Footnote 67: Wallace, _op. cit._, p. 135.] [Footnote 68: For depositions to this effect see Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 350 ff.] The terms under which the owners let it to the actors were simple: the actors retained as their share the pennies paid at the outer doors for general admission, and the proprietors received as their share the money paid for seats or standings in the galleries.[69] Cuthbert Burbage states in 1635: "The players that lived in those first times had only the profits arising from the doors, but now the players receive all the comings in at the doors to themselves, and half the galleries."[70] [Footnote 69: I suspect that the same terms were made with the actors by the proprietors of the inn-playhouses.] [Footnote 70: Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines_, I, 317.]