Possibly no single stage had every feature mentioned in the above description, which gives, however, a good general idea of a typical stage of the time.  We must remember that no one has the right to assert that different Elizabethan stages did not differ in details.  We are not sure that every stage was so planned as to be divided into two parts by a sliding curtain.  The drawing of the Swan Theater shows no place for such a curtain, although it is possible that the draftsman forgot to include it.  The specifications of the stage of the Fortune Theater make no mention of a railing.

The Play and the Audience.—­It is impossible to criticize Elizabethan plays properly from the point of view of the twentieth-century stage.  Many modern criticisms are shown to be without reason when we understand the wishes of the audience and the manner of presenting the plays.  The conditions of the entry or the reentry of a player might explain some of those lengthy monologues that seem so inartistic to modern dramatists.  The Elizabethan theaters and the tastes of their patrons had certain important characteristics of their own.

I. In the public theaters,[14] the play began in the early afternoon, usually between two and three o’clock, and lasted for about two hours.  The audience was an alert one, neither jaded by a long day’s business nor rendered impatient by waiting for the adjustment of scenery.  The Elizabethans constituted a vigorous audience, eager to meet the dramatist and actors more than half way in interpreting what was presented.

II.  In the case of such public theaters as the Globe and the Fortune, even their roofed parts, which extended around the pit and back of the stage and which contained the galleries and the boxes, were all exposed to the open air on the inner side.  The pit, which was immediately in front of the stage, had the sky for a roof and the ground for a floor.  The frequenters of the pit, who often jostled each other for standing room, were sometimes called the “groundlings.”  Occasionally a severe rain would drive them out of the theater to seek shelter.  Those who attended the Elizabethan public theater were in no danger of being made drowsy or sick by its bad air.

[Illustration:  THE BANKSIDE AND ITS THEATERS

1.  The Swan Theater.     3.  The Hope Theater.     5.  Old St. Paul’s.
2.  The Bear Gardens.     4.  The Globe Theater.    6.  The Temple.]

III.  The audiences did not attend merely for relaxation or amusement.  They often came for information and education, and they were probably glad to learn about alchemy from one of Ben Jonson’s plays.  The audience doubtless welcomed long monologues if they were well delivered and presented ideas of worth.  The theater took the place of lectures, newspapers, magazines, and, to a certain extent, of books.  We know that in 1608 the Blackfriars Theater acted the part of a newspaper in presenting a scandal about the French king and that at another time it gave some humorous information concerning the English monarch’s newly discovered silver mine in Scotland.