d his crafts on the oceans whence many
predecessors had returned treasure-laden. This is no place to relate the
various circumstances that placed the men of the sixteenth century in a
fortunate position for Romance, or to indicate the long development of
romantic-comedy in which Shakspere played so great a part. But surely
the interview between the dramatist and the sailor would have had very
different results if the Elizabethan theater had not been accustomed to
the union of the laughable and the romantic, the comic and the
marvellous. Such a union is not a common one. There are no
romantic-comedies in the literature of antiquity, and very few in modern
literature since Shakspere's death. He found a stage that was already
the home of romance, used to fantasy and medley, and used also to fill
out a three hours entertainment with sentiment and fun, music and
monsters, idealized heroines and puns.

Romance had found its readiest entrance to the stage thru the shows and
spectacles which delighted the courts of the Tudors. Venus and Diana, or
Loyalty and Sedition, or Red Cross Knight and Fairy Princess, or whoever
else, if sumptuously arrayed and bejeweled and sufficiently attended,
might be wheeled in on a huge car representing castle or garden or
island, decorated with flowers and spangles, begin with a tableau and
end with a dance. Along with all this splendor, it would not be thought
inappropriate to have a clown dance a jig or mimic the antics of a
drunken man. Such spectacles soon became the joy of the public as well
as of the court, and were imitated by many a rustic Holofernes or
Bottom. Nymphs and fairies, the Nine Worthies, or the Golden Age might
find representation by almost any village pedagog and his school
children.

Out of such entertainments there soon developt a kind of comedy, at
first the peculiar property of the children of the royal choirs who
performed at court, but soon adapting itself to the adult companies and
public theaters. This comedy availed itself of any stories that might
come to hand, so they were strange, unusual, marvelous, impossible
enough, and accompanied them with music, dancing, and spectacle, and
with lively jests in the mouth of the smallest boys, dressed as pages.

Endymion in love with the moon, the judgment of Paris, Pandora and her
varied actions under the seven planets, the rival magic of Friars Bacon
and Bungay, Jack the Giant Killer, Alexander the Great in love with
Campa