the nation
was dramatic. Ever since the Reformation, the Palace, the Inns of Court,
and the University had been vying with one another in the production of
plays; and so early was their popularity that even under Henry the
Eighth it was found necessary to create a "Master of the Revels" to
supervise them. Every progress of Elizabeth from shire to shire was a
succession of shows and interludes. Dian with her nymphs met the Queen
as she returned from hunting; Love presented her with his golden arrow
as she passed through the gates of Norwich. From the earlier years of
her reign the new spirit of the Renascence had been pouring itself into
the rough mould of the Mystery Plays, whose allegorical virtues and
vices, or scriptural heroes and heroines, had handed on the spirit of
the drama through the Middle Ages. Adaptations from classical pieces
began to alternate with the purely religious "Moralities"; and an
attempt at a livelier style of expression and invention appeared in the
popular comedy of "Gammer Gurton's Needle"; while Sackville, Lord
Dorset, in his tragedy of "Gorbudoc" made a bold effort at sublimity of
diction, and introduced the use of blank verse as the vehicle of
dramatic dialogue.

[Sidenote: The theatre and the people.]

But it was not to these tentative efforts of scholars and nobles that
the English stage was really indebted for the amazing outburst of genius
which dates from the year 1576, when "the Earl of Leicester's servants"
erected the first public theatre in Blackfriars. It was the people
itself that created its Stage. The theatre indeed was commonly only the
courtyard of an inn, or a mere booth such as is still seen at a country
fair. The bulk of the audience sate beneath the open sky in the "pit" or
yard; a few covered seats in the galleries which ran round it formed the
boxes of the wealthier spectators, while patrons and nobles found seats
upon the actual boards. All the appliances were of the roughest sort: a
few flowers served to indicate a garden, crowds and armies were
represented by a dozen scene-shifters with swords and bucklers, heroes
rode in and out on hobby-horses, and a scroll on a post told whether the
scene was at Athens or London. There were no female actors, and the
grossness which startles us in words which fell from women's lips took
a different colour when every woman's part was acted by a boy. But
difficulties such as these were more than compensated by the popular
characte