ar-off Forest of Arden. Shakespeare
knew that the imagination could traverse the distance. At the
beginning of the play Oliver is an unnatural, brutal brother; but
events change him, so that in the fourth act, when he is asked if he
is the man who tried to kill his brother, Oliver replies:--

"'Twas I; but 'tis not I."

THE PRESENTATION OF ELIZABETHAN PLAYS

[Illustration: THEATER IN INN YARD. _From Columbia University
model._]

The Elizabethan Theater.--Before considering the work of the
Elizabethan dramatists, we should know something of the conditions
which they had to meet in order to produce plays for the contemporary
stage. The courtyard of London inns often served as a playhouse before
sufficient regular theaters were built. The stage was in one end of
the yard, and the unused ground space in front served as the pit. Two
or three tiers of galleries or balconies around the yard afforded
additional space for both actors and spectators. These inn yards
furnished many suggestions which were incorporated in the early
theaters.

The first building in England for the public presentation of plays was
known as The Theater. It was built in London in 1576. In 1598
Shakespeare and his associates, failing to secure a lease of the
ground on which this building stood, pulled it down, carried the
materials across the river, and erected the famous Globe Theater on
the Bankside, as the street running along the south side of the Thames
was called. In late years a careful study of the specifications (1599)
for building the Fortune Theater (see Frontispiece) has thrown much
light on the Globe, which is unusually important from its association
with Shakespeare. Although the Fortune was square, while the Globe was
octagonal, the Fortune was in many essentials modeled after the Globe.
A part of the specifications of the Fortune read as follows:--

"...the frame of the saide howse to be sett square and to conteine
fowerscore foote of lawful assize everye waie square, without, and
fiftie five foote of like assize square, everye waie within ... and
the saide frame to conteine three stories in heigth ... [the] stadge
shall conteine in length fortie and three foote of lawfull assize,
and in breadth to extende to the middle of the yarde of the said
howse: the same stadge to be paled in belowe with goode stronge and
sufficyent new oken boardes... And the said stadge to be in all
other proportions contryved and fas