ire for the display of physical
strength, for shallow rhyming tricks and competitions, graceful
exercises of the body, indeed for all that might be included under the
notion of sport and give opportunity for betting.

Therefore, the plays, properly so called, alternated with fights between
animals, in which bears and bulls were baited by great blood-thirsty
bulldogs, or with fencing-matches fought by celebrated English and
foreign fencing-masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic tricks, and
boxing. Even the serious performances ended with a more or less absurd
jig, in which the clown sang endless songs about the events of the day,
and danced interminable morris-dances.

Shakespeare and his contemporaries, whose works are now reckoned among
the first literature--so much so that they are scarcely read any
longer--at the time of which we are speaking were nothing but practical
playwrights, and Shakespeare was so far from dreaming that the time
would come when his plays would be counted among the most precious
treasures of posterity that, as we know, he did not even take the
trouble to have a printed edition of his works published.

The many fighting-scenes in the plays of the time, in Shakespeare's
among the rest, the wrestling-match in _As You Like It_, the duel
between Macduff and Macbeth, the fencing-scene between Hamlet and
Laertes, no doubt afforded opportunities for magnificent displays of
skill in the use of arms and in physical exercises, and we may be sure
that the spectators followed those scenes with an interest which was
perhaps more of a sporting than of a literary nature.

It was according to a well-calculated plan, therefore, that the elder
Burbage erected his playhouse north of the city, in Finsbury Fields,
where from ancient times the people had been accustomed to see and
practise military exercises and other sports, and where the soldiers
were still in the habit of practising archery and musketry.

And it was with equally sound calculation that he gave the theatre its
particular form, which remained essentially the same in all the
playhouses of the Shakespearean period.

Before the establishment of the permanent theatres there had long
existed amphitheatres for the performance of fights between animals, the
so-called "rings." These rings--the auditorium as well as the
arena--were open all round, and the seats, like those of the ancient
Greek theatre, were placed according to the natural formation of th