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Excerpt from Shakespeare in the Theatre Tanical opponents, whose incessant taunts were, Behold the sumptuous theatre houses, a continual monument of London's prodigality and folly. The interior of an Elizabethan playhouse must have pre sented an unusually picturesque scene, with its mass of colouring in the costume of the spectators; while the actors, moving, as it were, on the same plane as the audience, and hating attention so closely and exclusively directed to them, were of necessity ap propriately and brilliantly attired. We hear much from the superficial student about the board being hung up chalked with the words, 'this is a waod, ' when the action of the play took place in a But this is an impression apparently founded upon Sir Philip Sidney's words in his Apology of Poetry, written about 1583 What child is there that, coming to a play and seeing Thebes written in great letters on an old door, doth believe that it is Thebes And whether these words were chalked upon the outside door of the building admitting to the auditorium, or whether they appeared ex hibited to the eye of the audience on the stage door of the tiring-room is not made clear, but this is certain, that there is no direct evidence yet forth coming to prove that boards were ever used in any of Shakespeare's dramas or in those of Ben Jonson; and, with some other dramatists, there is evidence of the name of the play and its locality being shown in writing, either by the prologue, or hung up on one of the posts of the auditorium. Shakespeare himself considered it to be the business of the dramatist to describe the scene, and to call the atten tion of the audience to each change in locality, and moreover he does this so skilfully as to make his. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to d