looked. The
Elizabethan stage was without scenery. The bare boards, a curtain at the
back, a table and inkstand to represent a court of justice, two or three
ragged foils to disgrace the name of Agincourt, and the imagination of
the audience did the rest. All the gorgeousness of the modern
_mise-en-scene_; all the painting, mechanical contrivances, and
elaborate furnishing, were wanting. There was none of that modern
realism, which consists in driving a real train across a painted country
or eating real sandwiches under a property tree. To a great extent all
this elaborate staging has been the death of dramatic art. Among the
Elizabethans, the interest depended solely on the action and the acting,
on the piece and its language. All these must be excellent. They were
not yet considered inferior to those of optical effect. The Elizabethans
listened with their minds, not solely with their eyes.

Thus, from his teaching at school, from his wide reading, from bright
and varied conversation, from assiduous exercise, Shakespeare derived
perpetual education. If, as Bacon declares, "reading maketh a full man,
conference a ready man, and writing an exact man," then Shakespeare was
trebly well equipped.

But there was another element in his training, which, for the dramatist,
was worth all the rest. This was his habit of observation, an
observation shrewd but sympathetic, of all sorts and conditions of men.
The experience lying between his youthful escapades at Stratford and his
sober retirement thither was doubtless a wonderful polychrome. He had
plodded his way among many peculiar folk as he passed from Warwickshire
to London by way of Banbury or Oxford. He had stopped at inns in strange
company of fools and knaves, pedlars, roisterers and swashbucklers. He
had hobnobbed with dull-pated village constables. He had consorted with

Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece,
And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernel.

In London he had foregathered with Mrs. Quickly and haply with Doll
Tearsheet. All the whimsical miscellany of the Bohemians must have been
known to him. We need not doubt that he had sowed wild oats. Doubtless,
if he lived the same life now, he would be looked upon askance by good
people who knew nothing of his temptations. But he was no neurotic; no
genius of the first rank ever is or was. He never lost control of
himself, and so did not, like some of his brilliant contemporaries,
tread the primrose path which leads d