racter in his greatest plays, modern readers
forget their moving incidents,--for instance, the almost
blood-curdling appearances of a ghost, the actions of a crazed woman,
the killing of an eavesdropper on the stage, two men fighting at an
open grave, the skull and bones of a human being dug from a grave in
full view of the audience, the fighting to the death on the stage,
which is ghastly with corpses at the close. When we add to this the
roar of cannon whenever the king drinks, as well as when there is some
more noteworthy action, and remember that the very last words of
_Hamlet_ are: "Go, bid the soldiers shoot," we shall realize that
there was not much danger of going to sleep even during a performance
of _Hamlet_.

Scenery.--The conditions under which early Elizabethan plays were
sometimes produced are thus described by Sir Philip Sidney:--

"You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa of the other, and
so many other under-kingdoms, that the player when he comes in, must
ever begin with telling you where he is, or else the tale will not
be conceived. Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather
flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden. By and
by we hear news of a shipwreck in the same place, then we are to
blame if we accept it not for a rock."

[Illustration: CONTEMPORARY DRAWING OF INTERIOR OF AN ELIZABETHAN
THEATER[15].]

Those who remember this well-known quotation too often forget that
Sidney wrote before Shakespeare's plays were produced. We do not know
whether Sidney was describing a private or a public stage, but the
private theaters had the greater amount of scenery.

Modern research has shown that the manner of presenting plays did not
remain stationary while the drama was rapidly evolving. Before
Shakespeare died, there were such stage properties as beds, tables,
chairs, dishes, fetters, shop wares, and perhaps also some artificial
trees, mossy banks, and rocks. A theatrical manager in an inventory of
stage properties (1598) mentions "the sittie of Rome," which was
perhaps a cloth so painted as to present a perspective of the city. He
also speaks of a "cloth of the Sone and Mone." The use of such painted
cloths was an important step toward modern scenery. We may, however,
conclude that the scenery of any Elizabethan theater would have seemed
scant to one accustomed to the detailed setting of the modern stage.

The comparatively little scenery in Elizabethan th