It is afternoon, a little before three o'clock. Whole fleets of wherries are crossing the Thames, picking their way among the swans and the other boats, to land their passengers on the south bank of the river. Skiff after skiff puts forth from the Blackfriars stair, full of theatre-goers who have delayed a little too long over their dinner and are afraid of being too late; for the flag waving over the Globe Theatre announces that there is a play to-day. The bills upon the street-posts have informed the public that Shakespeare's _Julius Cæsar_ is to be presented, and the play draws a full house. People pay their sixpences and enter; the balconies and the pit are filled. Distinguished and specially favoured spectators take their seats on the stage behind the curtain. Then sound the first, the second, and the third trumpet-blasts, the curtain parts in the middle, and reveals a stage entirely hung with black. Enter the tribunes Flavius and Marullus; they scold the rabble and drive them home because they are loafing about on a week-day without their working-clothes and tools--in contravention of a London police regulation which the public finds so natural that they (and the poet) can conceive it as in force in ancient Rome. At first the audience is somewhat restless. The groundlings talk in undertones as they light their pipes. But the Second Citizen speaks the name of Cæsar. There are cries of "Hush! hush!" and the progress of the play is followed with eager attention. It was received with applause, and soon became very popular. Of this we have contemporary evidence. Leonard Digges, in the poem quoted above (p. 233), vaunts its scenic attractiveness at the expense of Ben Jonson's Roman plays:-- "So have I seene, when Cesar would appeare, And on the Stage at halfe-sword parley were _Brutus and Cassius_: oh how the Audience Were ravish'd, with what new wonder they went thence, When some new day they would not brooke a line Of tedious (though well laboured) _Catiline_." The learned rejoiced in the breath of air from ancient Rome which met them in these scenes, and the populace was entertained and fascinated by the striking events and heroic characters of the drama. A quatrain in John Weever's _Mirror of Martyrs, or The Life and Death of Sir Iohn Oldcastle Knight, Lord Cobham,_ tells how "The many-headed multitude were drawne By _Brutus_ speech, that _Cæsar_ was ambitious, When eloquent _Mark Antonie_ had showne His vertues, who but _Brutus_ then was vicious?"