lity of production. The
playwrights had, nevertheless, one great advantage over ours. Since
the performances were given in the afternoon, and since theaters like
the Globe were open to the weather, these men wrote for audiences which
were fresh and wide-awake, ready to receive the best which the
dramatist had to give.

It was under such conditions as these that Shakespeare worked. He
wrote for all classes of people, men bound together, nevertheless, by a
common enthusiasm for England's past and a common confidence in
England's future; men who were constantly coming in contact with
persons from all parts of Europe, with sailors and travelers who had
seen the wonders of the New World and the Old; men so stimulated by new
discoveries, by new achievements of every sort, that hardly anything,
even the supernatural, seemed for them impossible. Outside of ancient
Athens, no dramatist has had a more favorable environment.

The best books on this subject for the general reader: Sir Walter
Besant, _London in the Time of the Tudors_ (London, 1904); H. T.
Stephenson, _Shakespeare's London_ (Henry Holt, 1905); T. F. Ordish,
_Shakespeare's London_ (The Temple Shakespeare Manuals, 1897).

{60}

CHAPTER V

SHAKESPEARE'S NONDRAMATIC WORKS

We shall later trace Shakespeare's development as a writer of plays.
We must first, however, turn back to discuss some early productions of
his, which were composed before most of his dramas, and which are
wholly distinct from these in character.

Every young author who mixes with men notices what kinds of work other
writers are producing, and is tempted to try his hand at every kind in
turn. Later he learns that he is fitted for one particular kind of
work; and, leaving other forms of writing to other men, devotes the
rest of his life to his chosen field. So it was with Shakespeare.
While a young man, he tried several different forms of poetry in
imitation of contemporary versifiers, and thus produced the poems which
we are to discuss in this chapter. Later he came to realize that his
special genius was in the field of the drama, and abandoned other types
of poetry to turn his whole energy toward the production of plays.
Although unquestionably inferior to the author's greatest comedies and
tragedies, these early poems are, in their kind, masterpieces of
literature.

+Venus and Adonis+.--The first of these poems, a verse narrative of
some 1204 lines, called _Venus and Adonis