Hark! Do you hear the gentle grating, the jingling, the rustling of woollen? Without the slightest premonitory symptoms there has been a rupture of the curtain, and the mysteries it so securely hid are most unexpectedly revealed. Seated upon wooden stools or reclining upon the rushes with which the stage is strewn, are a number of individuals composedly smoking long pipes, whom the unsophisticated might take for actors. Far from it; they are the perpetual bane of actors--wits and gallants, who delight in nothing so much as in exhibiting themselves for the public to admire, or confusing the actors by their pleasantries and disturbing the progress of the play. Protruding from the further wall of the stage is a balcony, supported on wooden pillars, and flanked by a pair of boxes in which those who rejoiced in being singular or who could not afford the full price of admission were accommodated. The balcony was used by the actors. It served as the rostrum when a large company was to be addressed; it was the throne of kings and princes, the grand judgment-seat of mighty umpires, and in cases of necessity was convenient as the first-story window of an imaginary dwelling-house. For this latter purpose it was particularly useful in the garden scene between Romeo and Juliet. But while we have been delaying in description, the rushes upon the boards have rustled, the actors have made their appearance, and the business of the play has commenced. For the purpose of illustrating the manner in which performances were conducted, we select the "As You Like It," of Shakespeare, as being most familiar to the general reader, and also peculiarly adapted to our purpose. Orlando and Adam make their appearance, and a signboard nailed to one of the side entrance communicates the altogether unsuspected fact that we are gazing upon an orchard. We see nothing which in any way favors the agreeable illusion: there are the rushes, the smoking fops, the balcony and a maze of pine boards, but nothing that looks like trees. Still, let not these things move you to that degree of uncharitableness or presumption that you doubt whether there be an orchard; does not the infallible board with its painted letters positively affirm, "This be an orchard?" Other _dramatis personæ_ soon enter, and the hypothetical orchard becomes the scene of a most animated and interesting colloquy--the assembled company receiving no intimation that the fruit trees are no more, until the curtain falls, or rather is drawn, upon the first act.