e produced by daylight, under the sun of
afternoon; and the stage could not be darkened, even when it was necessary
for Macbeth to perpetrate a midnight murder.

In order to succeed in a theatre such as this, the drama was necessarily
forced to be a Drama of Rhetoric. From 1576, when James Burbage built the
first play-house in London, until 1642, when the theatres were formally
closed by act of Parliament, the drama dealt with stately speeches and with
high astounding terms. It was played upon a platform, and had to appeal
more to the ears of the audience than to their eyes. Spectacular elements
it had to some extent,--gaudy, though inappropriate, costumes, and stately
processions across the stage; but no careful imitation of the actual facts
of life, no illusion of reality in the representment, could possibly be
effected.

The absence of scenery forced the dramatists of the time to introduce
poetic passages to suggest the atmosphere of their scenes. Lorenzo and
Jessica opened the last act of _The Merchant of Venice_ with a pretty
dialogue descriptive of a moonlit evening, and the banished duke in _As You
Like It_ discoursed at length upon the pleasures of life in the forest. The
stage could not be darkened in _Macbeth_; but the hero was made to say,
"Light thickens, and the crew makes wing to the rooky wood." Sometimes,
when the scene was supposed to change from one country to another, a chorus
was sent forth, as in _Henry V_, to ask the audience frankly to transfer
their imaginations overseas.

The fact that the stage was surrounded on three sides by standing
spectators forced the actor to emulate the platform orator. Set speeches
were introduced bodily into the text of a play, although they impeded the
progress of the action. Jacques reined a comedy to a standstill while he
discoursed at length upon the seven ages of man. Soliloquies were common,
and formal dialogues prevailed. By convention, all characters, regardless
of their education or station in life, were considered capable of talking
not only verse, but poetry. The untutored sea-captain in _Twelfth Night_
spoke of "Arion on the dolphin's back," and in another play the sapheads
Salanio and Salarino discoursed most eloquent music.

In New York at the present day a singular similarity to Elizabethan
conventions may be noted in the Chinese theatre in Doyer Street. Here we
have a platform drama in all its nakedness. There is no curtain, and the
stage is bare of