Westminster, now well within the greater London, was then only the most important suburb. Here was the Hall in which Parliament met, and, not far away, Whitehall, the favorite London residence of the Queen. Attracted by the presence of royalty, many of the great nobles had built their houses in this quarter, so that the north bank of the Thames from Westminster to the City was lined with stately buildings.

The Thames was London's pleasantest highway. It was then a clear, beautiful river spanned by a single bridge. If one wished to go from the City to Westminster, or even eastward or westward within the City itself, one could go most easily by boat. The Queen in her royal barge was often to be seen on the river. The great merchant companies had their splendid barges, in which they made stately progresses. One went by boat to the bear gardens and theaters on the south bank. Below the bridge, the river was crowded with shipping. At one of the wharves lay an object of universal interest, the Golden Hind, the ship in which Drake had made his famous voyage round the world.

Within the city, most of the streets were narrow, poorly paved, and worse lighted. Those who went about by night had their servants carry torches, called "links," before them, or hired boys to light them home. Such sanitation as existed was wretched, so that plagues and other diseases spread rapidly and carried off an appalling number of victims. The ignorance and inefficiency of the police is rather portrayed than satirized in Shakespeare's Dogberry and Verges. Such evils were common to all seventeenth-century cities, but these cities had their compensations in a freedom

and picturesqueness which have disappeared from our modern towns.

The Citizens. In Elizabethan London, as in every city, the men who represented extremes of wealth and poverty, the courtiers and their imitators, the beggars and the sharpers, are those of whom we hear most; but the greater part of the population, that which controlled the city government, was of the middle class, sober, self-respecting tradespeople, inclined towards Puritanism, and jealous of their independence. Such people naturally distrusted and disliked the actors and their class, and used against them, as far as they could, the great authority of the city. In spite of court favor, the actors were compelled by city ordinances to build their theaters outside the city limits or on ground which the city did not control. Several attempts were made to suppress play acting altogether, ostensibly because of the danger that crowded audiences would spread the plague when it became epidemic. In spite of this official opposition, however, the sober citizens formed. a goodly part of theater audiences until after the accession of King James, when the rising tide of Puritanism led to increased austerity. At no time were the majority of the citizens entirely free from a love for worldly pleasures. They swelled the crowds at the taverns, and their wives often vied with the great ladies of court in extravagance of dress.

St. Paul's. The great meeting place of London was, oddly enough, the nave of St. Paul's Cathedral. This superb Gothic church, later destroyed by the Great Fire, was used as a common passageway, as a place for doing business and for meeting friends. In

the late morning hours, the men-about-town promenaded there, displaying their gorgeous clothes and hailing those whom they wished to have known as their acquaintances. If a gallant's cash were at low ebb, he loitered there, hoping for an invitation to dinner. If he had had a dinner, he often came back for another stroll in the afternoon. At one pillar he would find lawyers standing; at another, serving men seeking employment; at still another, public secretaries. Here one could learn anything from the latest fashion to the latest political scandal. Meanwhile, divine worship might be going on in the chancel, unobserved unless some fop wished to make himself conspicuous by joking with the choir boys. Thus St. Paul's was a school of life invaluable to the dramatist. We know that Ben Jonson learned much there, and we can hardly doubt that Shakespeare did likewise.

The Taverns. - Another center of London life was the tavern. The man who would now lunch at his club then dined at an ordinary,' a table d'hôte in some tavern. Men dined at noon, and then sat on over their wine, smoking or playing at cards or dice. In the evening one could always find there music and good company. One tradition of Shakespeare tells of his evenings at the Mermaid tavern. "Many were the wit-combates," writes Fuller, "betwixt him [Shakespeare] and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great gallion, and an English man of War; Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in Learning; Solid, but Slow in his performances. Shake-spear, with the English man-of-War, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides,

Reproduced from The Shakespearean Stage, by V. E. Albright, through the

courtesy of the publishers, the Columbia University Press.