, besides
the Children of the Chapel, two established bodies of actors, directed
by steady and, in the full sense of the word, respectable men. To the
lord chamberlain's company, which, after being settled at "the Theater"
(opened as early as 1576 or 1577), moved to Blackfriars, purchased by
James Burbage, in 1596, and to the Globe on the Bankside in 1599,
Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, the greatest of the Elizabethan actors,
belonged; the lord admiral's was managed by Philip Henslowe, the author
of the _Diary_, and Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, and
was ultimately, in 1600, settled at the Fortune. In these and other
houses were performed the plays of the Elizabethan dramatists, with few
adventitious aids, the performance being crowded into a brief afternoon,
when it is obvious that only the idler sections of the population could
attend. No woman might appear at a playhouse, unless masked; on the
stage, down to the Restoration, women's parts continued to be acted by
boys.

It is futile to take no account of such outward circumstances as these
and many which cannot here be noted in surveying the progress of the
literature of the Elizabethan drama. Like that of the Restoration--and
like that of the present day--it was necessarily influenced in its
method and spirit of treatment by the conditions and restrictions which
governed the place and circumstances of the performance of plays,
including the construction of theatre and stage, as well as by the
social composition of its audiences, which the local accommodation, not
less than the entertainment, provided for them had to take into account.
But to these things a mere allusion must suffice. It may safely be said,
at the same time, that no dramatic literature which has any claim to
rank beside the Elizabethan--not that of Athens nor those of modern
Italy and Spain, nor those of France and Germany in their classic
periods--had to contend against such odds; a mighty inherent strength
alone ensured to it the vitality which it so triumphantly asserted, and
which enabled it to run so unequalled a course.

Lyly.

Kyd.

Marlowe.

Peele.

Greene.

Among Shakespeare's predecessors, John Lyly, whose plays were all
written for the Children of the Chapel and the Children of St Paul's,
holds a position apart in English dramatic literature. The euphuism, to
which his famous romance gave its name, likewise distinguishes his
mythological,[172] quasi