What influence Shakespeare had upon the culture and taste of his own time and upon his immediate audience would be a most interesting inquiry.  We know what his audiences were.  He wrote for the people, and the theatre in his day was a popular amusement for the multitude, probably more than it was a recreation for those who enjoyed the culture of letters.  A taste for letters was prevalent among the upper class, and indeed was fashionable among both ladies and gentlemen of rank.  In this the court of Elizabeth set the fashion.  The daughter of the duchess was taught not only to distill strong waters, but to construe Greek.  When the queen was translating Socrates or Seneca, the maids of honor found it convenient to affect at least a taste for the classics.  For the nobleman and the courtier an intimacy with Greek, Latin, and Italian was essential to “good form.”  But the taste for erudition was mainly confined to the metropolis or the families who frequented it, and to persons of rank, and did not pervade the country or the middle classes.  A few of the country gentry had some pretension to learning, but the majority cared little except for hawks and hounds, gaming and drinking; and if they read it was some old chronicle, or story of knightly adventure, “Amadis de Gaul,” or a stray playbook, or something like the “History of Long Meg of Westminster,” or perhaps a sheet of news.  To read and write were still rare accomplishments in the country, and Dogberry expressed a common notion when he said reading and writing come by nature.  Sheets of news had become common in the town in James’s time, the first newspaper being the English Mercury, which appeared in April, 1588, and furnished food for Jonson’s satire in his “Staple of News.”  His accusation has a familiar sound when he says that people had a “hunger and thirst after published pamphlets of news, set out every Saturday, but made all at home, and no syllable of truth in them.”

Though Elizabeth and James were warm patrons of the theatre, the court had no such influence over the plays and players as had the court in Paris at the same period.  The theatres were built for the people, and the audiences included all classes.  There was a distinction between what were called public and private theatres, but the public frequented both.  The Shakespeare theatres, at which his plays were exclusively performed, were the Globe, called public, on the Bankside, and the Blackfriars, called private, on the City side, the one for summer, the other for winter performances.  The Blackfriars was smaller than the Globe, was roofed over, and needed to be lighted with candles, and was frequented more by the better class than the more popular Globe.  There is no evidence that Elizabeth ever attended the public theatres, but the companies were often summoned to play before her in Whitehall, where the appointments and scenery were much better than in the popular houses.