Many attempts have been made to find out what manner of life the poet lived in London, but the material for a reliable opinion is quite wanting. Some have imagined that he was a free liver and roysterer, after the fashion of his time, that he lived as Robert Greene and Christopher Marlowe and other dissipated writers. There is no more authority for such a suggestion than there is for the statements on the other side telling us that William Shakespeare was the personification of every virtue. We simply do not know; there is no record extant. We grope with dim eyes through the London of Shakespeare's time, glad to find any trace of his presence in some favoured spot, and content to make it a place of pilgrimage for his sake. It is to the history of the stage itself that we must turn in order to piece together some fragmentary record of his life in a city so changed by time and prosperity that if the poet could revisit the glimpses of the moon, and were to be set down in Bishopgate or Southwark to-day, he would not know where to turn, and the metropolis of which we are so proud would be no more to him than "the monstrous fabric of a vision." CHAPTER VI THE STAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S DAY When Shakespeare was at work the women of the plays were represented by men or boys. In the highest society the Elizabethan women might take some part in masques or pageants without rebuke, but the appearance of a woman on the public stage in Shakespeare's day would have aroused something like the emotion that would be caused by the appearance of a Moslem woman unveiled in the chief thoroughfare of a fanatical Mohammedan city, or a suffragist in the House of Commons. Costumes were those of the day. Just as the great painters of Italy dressed the heroes and heroines of Bible story in the contemporary costume, so the actor of Shakespeare's time did no more than wear the best Elizabethan clothes he could assume. Scenery was unknown. The front curtain, opening in the middle, revealed a bare stage with perhaps a balcony at the back. This was sometimes used by the actors, but where the play did not require a balcony, visitors to the play would find their places there, just as at the Queen's Hall, when a piano or violin recital is given, the orchestra is sometimes added to the auditorium. A trumpet flourish warned playgoers that the curtain was about to rise, and between the acts a small company of musicians helped the interval to pass. =GUILD CHAPEL AND SCHOOL=