ot result in very severe measures. We seem to
read a certain concealed sympathy in the writ of the great lords, and we
cannot help suspecting that it was the Puritan citizens who felt
themselves hit and who brought the complaint. If the lords had been the
butt of the mockery, no doubt the proceeding of the actors would have
appeared to them much worse than "rashe and indiscreete."

Until the Globe theatre was built, the Burbages most likely possessed a
share in The Curtain. At any rate, their company used that building
alternately with their own; no doubt, for instance, during the period
between the pulling down of The Theatre and the building of the Globe.
During this period they played (as "The Lord Chamberlain's Men"), among
other things, no less famous a piece than Ben Jonson's _Every Man in
His Humour_, which, according to old tradition, was accepted on the
recommendation of Shakespeare, after having been put aside contemptuously
by the other leading actors. This splendid play had an enormous success.
Of Shakespeare's plays, _Much Ado about Nothing_ and _The Second Part of
King Henry IV_ were acted.

There is scarcely any reason for assuming, with Halliwell-Phillipps and
Ordish, that the first performance of _Henry V_ took place at The
Curtain. At the appearance of this play, in 1599, the Globe theatre was
built, and we cannot doubt that it was here that this popular play saw
the light. So the frequently mentioned "wooden O" in the prologue does
not allude to The Curtain, but to the Globe.

The outward shape of The Curtain we must imagine to have been, like that
of The Theatre, circular, and unroofed in the centre. It is generally
supposed to have been somewhat smaller than Burbage's first theatre.

The last period of the existence of The Curtain is enveloped in
obscurity. But there is no reason to suppose that it did not continue to
exist till all playhouses were put down, during the civil war,
1642-1647. If The Curtain was preserved as long as that, its life was
longer than that of any other playhouse of the Shakespearean period.

COSSACK CONQUEST OF SIBERIA

A.D. 1581

NIKOLAI M. KARAMZIN[1]

Siberia, the northern home of the Tartars, was little known, even to
the Russians, until the latter part of the sixteenth century. The
Cossack conquest of the western portion of the region now called
Siberia opened tha