Dress, Scenes, and Characters. Food. - Parallelisms.
Facts of his Life. A Dozen Dates.
Learning. His Individuality. Allusions to Acting. The Dramatist and Manager. Amateur Acting. - Humiliation of the
Actor. Self-Accusation, Remorse. Mystery of Sonnets. Urging Friend to Marriage. - Love, Poems, and Repentance. Puns on his Name.- Allusions to contemporary Events. - Allusions to Hawking — Bear-Baiting. Love of Music. Aristocratic. - Respect for Popery. - Patriotism. Compliments to Royalty. Origin of his Plays.
THE Elizabethan theatre must be viewed as little better than one of Richardson's shows as far as appliances go: the curtains pull apart, and there is a tapestry representing a town, that is Troy. To make sure of it, there's a board over head with the name written upon it, like a fingerpost. At the back of the stage is a platform and balcony, - that is the city wall, where Helen will see the armies, of eight men each, pass in awful procession-the Greeks a little knook-kneed, the Trojans two of them squinting. The musicians are in a high stage box. The actors enter: Troilus in hose and doublet, and Cressida (a plump boy of fourteen) in fardingale and scarf. A man in a black velvet cloak, heralded by a trumpet, has before this entered as Prologue. Such is Shakspere's stage. On the boards at each side are gallants smoking and laughing. The pit is standing, and the second gallery is cracking nuts and pelting Hector with rotten apples. But in the best boxes