IV.  The Elizabethans loved good poetry for its imaginative appeal.  Shakespeare was a poet before he was a dramatist.  Beautiful poetry presenting high ideals must have met with vigorous appreciation, or Shakespeare could not have continued to produce such great work.

V. The Elizabethans also demanded story and incident.  Modern critics have often noticed that the characterization in Shakespeare’s fourth acts, e.g., in Macbeth, does not equal that in the preceding part of the play; but the fourth act of Macbeth interested the Elizabethans because there was progress in the complicated story.  To modern theatergoers this fourth act seems to drag because they have acquired through novel reading a liking for analysis and dissection.

Shakespeare succeeded in interesting the Elizabethans by embodying in story and incident his portrayal of character.  Because of admiration for the revelation of character in his greatest plays, modern readers forget their moving incidents,—­for instance, the almost blood-curdling appearances of a ghost, the actions of a crazed woman, the killing of an eavesdropper on the stage, two men fighting at an open grave, the skull and bones of a human being dug from a grave in full view of the audience, the fighting to the death on the stage, which is ghastly with corpses at the close.  When we add to this the roar of cannon whenever the king drinks, as well as when there is some more noteworthy action, and remember that the very last words of Hamlet are:  “Go, bid the soldiers shoot,” we shall realize that there was not much danger of going to sleep even during a performance of Hamlet.

Scenery.—­The conditions under which early Elizabethan plays were sometimes produced are thus described by Sir Philip Sidney:—­

“You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player when he comes in, must ever begin with telling you where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived.  Now shall you have three ladies walk to gather flowers, and then we must believe the stage to be a garden.  By and by we hear news of a shipwreck in the same place, then we are to blame if we accept it not for a rock.”

[Illustration:  CONTEMPORARY DRAWING OF INTERIOR OF AN ELIZABETHAN THEATER[15].]

Those who remember this well-known quotation too often forget that Sidney wrote before Shakespeare’s plays were produced.  We do not know whether Sidney was describing a private or a public stage, but the private theaters had the greater amount of scenery.

Modern research has shown that the manner of presenting plays did not remain stationary while the drama was rapidly evolving.  Before Shakespeare died, there were such stage properties as beds, tables, chairs, dishes, fetters, shop wares, and perhaps also some artificial trees, mossy banks, and rocks.  A theatrical manager in an inventory of stage properties (1598) mentions “the sittie of Rome,” which was perhaps a cloth so painted as to present a perspective of the city.  He also speaks of a “cloth of the Sone and Mone.”  The use of such painted cloths was an important step toward modern scenery.  We may, however, conclude that the scenery of any Elizabethan theater would have seemed scant to one accustomed to the detailed setting of the modern stage.