h Ado About Nothing_, or Mr. Wilson
Barrett's setting of his _Hamlet_. Would he take pleasure in the glory
of the scenery and the marvel of the colour? Would he be interested in
the Cathedral of Messina, and the battlements of Elsinore? Or would he
be indifferent, and say the play, and the play only, is the thing?

Speculations like these are always pleasurable, and in the present case
happen to be profitable also. For it is not difficult to see what
Shakespeare's attitude would be; not difficult, that is to say, if one
reads Shakespeare himself, instead of reading merely what is written
about him.

Speaking, for instance, directly, as the manager of a London theatre,
through the lips of the chorus in _Henry V._, he complains of the
smallness of the stage on which he has to produce the pageant of a big
historical play, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out
many of its most picturesque incidents, apologises for the scanty number
of supers who had to play the soldiers, and for the shabbiness of the
properties, and, finally, expresses his regret at being unable to bring
on real horses.

In the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, again, he gives us a most amusing
picture of the straits to which theatrical managers of his day were
reduced by the want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to read
him without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two
special limitations of the Elizabethan stage--the lack of suitable
scenery, and the fashion of men playing women's parts, just as he
protests against other difficulties with which managers of theatres have
still to contend, such as actors who do not understand their words;
actors who miss their cues; actors who overact their parts; actors who
mouth; actors who gag; actors who play to the gallery, and amateur
actors.

And, indeed, a great dramatist, as he was, could not but have felt very
much hampered at being obliged continually to interrupt the progress of a
play in order to send on some one to explain to the audience that the
scene was to be changed to a particular place on the entrance of a
particular character, and after his exit to somewhere else; that the
stage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior of
a Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of which
inartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amply
apologizes. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two other
subst