f has apologised to the spectator for the heavy overdraft on his
imagination, and we have but to consider some of the most striking
moments in our poet's work to realise what they must have lost under the
Elizabethan tradition. How could bare boards conjure up a vision of
Juliet's garden, of the wood "outside Athens" in which Titania and
Oberon met, of Prospero's island, of the Forest of Arden? How could any
boy, however smoothly spoken, present a Rosalind, a Juliet, a Miranda,
or Cordelia? While we wonder at these things, it is well to remember
that to those who have never eaten wheat, acorns may prove very
satisfactory fare. The tradition of the theatre being so strictly
circumscribed, nobody could imagine anything better than bare boards,
boy heroines, and modern costumes. There are many sound judges of stage
matters to-day who are very strongly of the opinion that we have
travelled too far in the opposite direction, that by reason of costly
mounting, extravagant costumes, alluring music, and the rest, we are no
longer able to maintain that "the play's the thing." Doubtless the need
for the finest possible expression of thought, and the knowledge that
his words must carry the full burden of success, stimulated not only
Shakespeare, but every dramatist of the great Elizabethan age.

There was one special advantage attaching to the limitation of stage
equipment--touring was a simple matter. When we remember that three or
even four days were required to travel on horseback from London to
Stratford-on-Avon, owing to the bad tracks that enjoyed the courtesy
title of roads, and the fords that must be crossed out of flood time, it
is easy to see that no part of the cumbersome equipment of the modern
stage could have been taken far out of London without vast and
unremunerative labour. But the Elizabethan actor travelled light, and as
soon as the fine weather came he would leave London for the country, and
tour in all manner of unexpected places until autumn warned him home,
because it was no longer possible to pass from town to town.

To turn up the old touring list of the Elizabethan companies is to find
special attention given to towns of which no town is on the first
touring list to-day. Saffron Walden (the quaint market-town in Essex,
that opposed the coming of the Great Eastern Railway, and is now served
by a little branch line), Rye in Sussex (then probably a seaport of some
dimensions), Marlborough, Coventry, Oxford,