What is loosely called the Elizabethan drama, consists of the plays written, performed, or printed in England between the accession of the queen in 1558 and the closing of the theatres by the Long Parliament at the breaking out of the civil war in 1642. But if we are looking for work of literary and artistic value, we need hardly go back of 1576, the date of the building of the first London playhouse. This was soon followed by others and by the formation of permanent stock companies. Heretofore there had been bands of strolling players, under the patronage of various noblemen, exhibiting sometimes at court, sometimes in innyards, bear-baiting houses, and cockpits, and even in churches. Plays of an academic character both in Latin and English had also been performed at the universities and the inns of court. But now the drama had obtained a local habitation and a certain professional independence. Actors and playwriters could make a living—some of them, indeed, like Burbage, Alleyn, and Shakespeare made a very substantial living, or even became rich and endowed colleges (Dulwich College, e.g.). One Henslow, an owner and manager, had at one time three theatres going and a long list of dramatic authors on his payroll; was, in short, a kind of Elizabethan theatrical syndicate, and from Henslow’s diary we learn most of what we know about the business side of the old drama. In those days London was a walled town of not more than 125,000 inhabitants. As five theatre companies, and sometimes seven, counting the children of Paul’s and of the Queen’s Chapel, were all playing at the same time, a public of that size was fairly well served. You have doubtless read descriptions, or seen pictures, of these old playhouses, The Theatre, The Curtain, The Rose, The Swan, The Fortune, The Globe, The Belle Savage, The Red Bull, The Black Friars. They varied somewhat in details of structure and arrangement, and some points about them are still uncertain, but their general features are well ascertained. They were built commonly outside the walls, at Shoreditch or on the Bankside across the Thames, in order to be outside the jurisdiction of the mayor and council, who were mostly Puritan and were continually trying to stop the show business. They were of wood, octagonal on the outside, circular on the inside, with two or three tiers of galleries, partitioned off in boxes. The stage and the galleries were roofed, but the pit, or yard, was unroofed and unpaved; the ordinary, twopenny spectators unaccommodated with seats but _standing_ on the bare ground and being liable to a wetting if it rained. The most curious feature of the old playhouse to a modern reader is the stage. This was not, as in our theatres, a recessed or picture frame stage, but a platform stage, which projected boldly out into the auditorium. The “groundlings” or yard spectators, surrounded it on three sides, and it was about on a level with their shoulders.