The comparatively little scenery in Elizabethan theaters imposed strenuous imaginative exercise on the spectators.  This effort was fortunate for all concerned—­for the dramatist and for the actor, but especially for the spectator, who became accustomed to give an imaginative interpretation and setting to a play that would mean little to a modern theatergoer.

Actors.—­Those who have seen some of the recent performances of plays under Elizabethan conditions, on a stage modeled after that of Shakespeare’s time have been surprised at the increase of the actors’ power.  The stage projects far enough into the pit to bring the actors close to the audience.  Their appeal thus becomes far more personal, direct, and forceful.  The spectator more easily identifies himself with them and almost feels as if he were a part of the play.  This has been the experience of those who have seen the old-time reproduction of plays as different as The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Much Ado About Nothing.  In the case of The Tempest, a very interesting act was presented when all the scenery consisted of a board on which was painted “Prospero Isle.”

In Shakespeare’s times, the plays were probably well acted.  While the fame of Elizabethan actors like Edward Alleyn and Richard Burbage has come down to modern times, the success of plays did not depend on single stars.  Shakespeare is said to have played in minor roles.  The audience discouraged bad acting.  The occupants of the pit would throw apples or worse missiles at an unsatisfactory player, and sometimes the disgusted spectators would suddenly leap on the stage and chase an incompetent actor off the boards.

Prior to the Restoration in 1660, the women’s parts were taken by boys.  While this must have hampered the presentation of characters like Lady Macbeth, it is now known to have been less of a handicap than was formerly thought.  The twentieth century has seen feminine parts so well played by carefully trained boys that the most astute women spectators never detected the deception.  Boys, especially those of the Chapel Royal, had for a long time acted masculine, as well as feminine, parts.  As late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, the choir boys were presenting some of the great Elizabethan plays in a private theater connected with St. Paul’s Cathedral.  Rosencrantz in the second act of Hamlet bears witness to the popularity of these boy actors, when he calls them “little eyases, that cry on the top of question and are most tyrannically clapped for it.”  Ben Jonson’s touching lyrical epitaph on a boy actor, Salathiel Pavy, who had for “three fill’d zodiacs” been “the stage’s jewel,” shows how highly the Elizabethans sometimes regarded boy actors.  The regular theaters found the companies of boys such strong rivals that, in 1609, Shakespeare and other theatrical managers used modern business methods to suppress competition and agreed to pay the master of the boys of St. Paul’s enough to cause him to withdraw them permanently from competing with the other theaters.