uickly dance their last dance, one by one getting into the Palace.
Then the Star vanishes, the day breaks, and while the last song is sung
the 'machine closes'--i.e. the Palace becomes a wall of the room and the
show is over. This is the pretty song which ends the Masque:

O yet how early and before her time,
The envious morning up doth climb,
Though she not love her bed!
What haste the jealous sun doth make
His fiery horses up to take
And once more show his head!
Lest, taken with the brightness of this night,
The world should wish it last and never miss his light.

49. PLAYS AND PAGEANTS.

PART IV.

Through the Religious Drama, the Pageant, the Masque, we work our way to
the Play itself. The first beginnings of the modern Drama must here be
passed over: there were the rough and unformed comedies such as 'Gammer
Gurton's Needle,' performed in a college hall: or the tragedy played on
boards spread over a waggon in the courtyard of an inn. Let us suppose
that we are past the beginnings and are in Shakespeare's time--i.e. the
end of Queen Elizabeth and the whole reign of James I.

The first theatre was built in 1570. Thirty years after there were
seven. The Queen had companies of children to play before her. They were
the boys of the choirs of St. Paul's, Westminster, Whitehall, and
Windsor. The actors called themselves the servants of some great lord.
Lord Leicester, Lord Warwick, Lord Pembroke, Lord Howard, the Earl of
Essex, and others all had their company of actors--not all at the same
time. The principal Houses were those at Southwark, and especially at
Bank Side, where there were three, including the famous Globe: the
Blackfriars Playhouse: the Fortune in Golden Lane, and the Curtain at
Shoreditch. If you will look at the map you will observe that not one of
these theatres is within the City--that at Blackfriars was in the former
precinct of the Dominicans and outside the City. No theatre was allowed
in the City. Thus early sprang up the prejudice against actors. Probably
this was of old standing, and first belonged to the time when the
minstrel and the tumbler, the musician and the dancing girl, the buffoon
and the contortionist, wandered about the country free of rule and
discipline, leading careless and lawless lives.

The theatre was octagonal in shape but circular within. What we call the
pit was called the 'yarde.' The stage projec