he battlements of Elsinore? Or would he be
indifferent, and say the play, and the play only, is the thing?

Speculations like these are always pleasurable, and in the present case
happen to be profitable also. For it is not difficult to see what
Shakespeare's attitude would be; not difficult, that is to say, if one
reads Shakespeare himself, instead of reading merely what is written
about him.

Speaking, for instance, directly, as the manager of a London theatre,
through the lips of the chorus in Henry V., he complains of the smallness
of the stage on which he has to produce the pageant of a big historical
play, and of the want of scenery which obliges him to cut out many of its
most picturesque incidents, apologises for the scanty number of supers
who had to play the soldiers, and for the shabbiness of the properties,
and, finally, expresses his regret at being unable to bring on real
horses.

In the Midsummer Night's Dream, again, he gives us a most amusing picture
of the straits to which theatrical managers of his day were reduced by
the want of proper scenery. In fact, it is impossible to read him
without seeing that he is constantly protesting against the two special
limitations of the Elizabethan stage--the lack of suitable scenery, and
the fashion of men playing women's parts, just as he protests against
other difficulties with which managers of theatres have still to contend,
such as actors who do not understand their words; actors who miss their
cues; actors who overact their parts; actors who mouth; actors who gag;
actors who play to the gallery, and amateur actors.

And, indeed, a great dramatist, as he was, could not but have felt very
much hampered at being obliged continually to interrupt the progress of a
play in order to send on some one to explain to the audience that the
scene was to be changed to a particular place on the entrance of a
particular character, and after his exit to somewhere else; that the
stage was to represent the deck of a ship in a storm, or the interior of
a Greek temple, or the streets of a certain town, to all of which
inartistic devices Shakespeare is reduced, and for which he always amply
apologises. Besides this clumsy method, Shakespeare had two other
substitutes for scenery--the hanging out of a placard, and his
descriptions. The first of these could hardly have satisfied his passion
for picturesqueness and his feeling for beauty, and certainly did not
satisfy the dr