e first
tier.

In the methods of representation, Pepys's period of playgoing was
coeval with many most important innovations, which seriously affected
the presentation of Shakespeare on the stage. The chief was the
desirable substitution of women for boys in the female roles. During
the first few months of Pepys's theatrical experience, boys were still
taking the women's parts. That the practice survived in the first days
of Charles II.'s reign we know from the well-worn anecdote that when
the King sent behind the scenes to inquire why the play of _Hamlet_,
which he had come to see, was so late in commencing, he was answered
that the Queen was not yet shaved. But in the opening month of 1661,
within five months of Pepys's first visit to a theatre, the reign of
the boys ended. On January 3rd of that year, Pepys writes that he
"first saw women come upon the stage." Next night he makes entry of a
boy's performance of a woman's part, and that is the final record of
boys masquerading as women in the English theatre. I believe the
practice now survives nowhere except in Japan. This mode of
representation has always been a great puzzle to students of
Elizabethan drama.[17] Before, however, Pepys saw Shakespeare's work
on the stage, the usurpation of the boys was over.

[Footnote 17: For a fuller description of this theatrical practice,
see pages 41-3 _supra_.]

It was after the Restoration, too, that scenery, rich costume, and
scenic machinery became, to Pepys's delight, regular features of the
theatre. When the diarist saw _Hamlet_ "done with scenes" for the
first time, he was most favourably impressed. Musical accompaniment
was known to pre-Restoration days; but the orchestra was now for the
first time placed on the floor of the house in front of the stage,
instead of in a side gallery, or on the stage itself. The musical
accompaniment of plays developed very rapidly, and the methods of
opera were soon applied to many of Shakespeare's pieces, notably to
_The Tempest_ and _Macbeth_.

Yet at the side of these innovations, one very important feature of
the old playhouses, which gravely concerned both actors and auditors,
survived throughout Pepys's lifetime. The stage still projected far
into the pit in front of the curtain. The actors and actresses spoke
in the centre of the house, so that, as Colley Cibber put it, "the
most distant ear had scarce the least doubt or difficulty in hearing
what fell from the weakest uttera