Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;
    Into a thousand parts divide one man,
    And make imaginary puissance: 
    Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
    Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth;
    For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
    Carry them here and there; jumping o’er times;
    Turning th’ accomplishment of many years
    Into an hour-glass.

These conditions, however, were accepted by the audiences of the time in the most liberal spirit.  Critics were prone to deride the popular liking for “cutler’s work” and “the horrid noise of target fight;” “the fools in the yard” were censured for their “gaping and gazing” at such exhibitions.  But the battles of the stage were still fought on; “alarums and excursions” continued to engage the scene.  Indeed, variety and stir have always been elements in the British drama as opposed to the uniformity and repose which were characteristics of the ancient classical theatre.

Yet our early audiences must have been extremely willing to help out the illusions of the performance, and abet the tax thus levied upon their credulity.  Shakespeare’s battles could hardly have been very forcibly presented.  In his time no “host of auxiliaries” assisted the company.  “Two armies flye in,” Sir Philip Sidney writes in his “Apologie for Poetrie,” 1595, “represented with four swords and bucklers, and what harde heart will not receive it for a pitched fielde?” So limited an array would not be deemed very impressive in these days; but it was held sufficient by the lieges of Elizabeth.  Just as the Irish peasant is even now content to describe a mere squad of soldiers as “the army,” so Shakespeare’s audiences were willing to regard a few “blue-coated stage-keepers” as a formidable body of troops.  And certainly the poet sometimes exercised to the utmost the imaginations of his patrons.  He required them to believe that his small stage was immeasurably spacious; that his handful of “supers” was in truth a vast multitude.  During one scene in “King John” he does not hesitate to bring together upon the boards the three distinct armies of Philip of France, the Archduke of Austria, and the King of England; while, in addition, the citizens of Angiers are supposed to appear upon the walls of their town and discuss the terms of its capitulation.  So in “King Richard III.,” Bosworth Field is represented, and the armies of Richard and Richmond are made to encamp within a few feet of each other.  The ghosts of Richard’s victims rise from the stage and address speeches alternately to him and to his opponent.  Playgoers who can look back a score of years may remember a textual revival of the tragedy, in which this scene was exhibited in exact accordance with the original stage directions.  Colley Cibber’s famous acting version was for once discarded, and Richard and Richmond on the eve of their great battle quietly retired to rest in the presence of each other, and