The price of general admission to the Globe and Blackfriars was sixpence, at the Fashion Theatre twopence, and at some of the inferior theatres one penny.  The boxes at the Globe were a shilling, at the Blackfriars one-and-six.  The usual net receipts of a performance were from nine to ten pounds, and this was about the sum that Elizabeth paid to companies for a performance at Whitehall, which was always in the evening and did not interfere with regular hours.  The theatres opened as early as one o’clock and not later than three in the afternoon.  The crowds that filled the pit and galleries early, to secure places, amused themselves variously before the performance began:  they drank ale, smoked, fought for apples, cracked nuts, chaffed the boxes, and a few read the cheap publications of the day that were hawked in the theatre.  It was a rough and unsavory audience in pit and gallery, but it was a responsive one, and it enjoyed the acting with little help to illusion in the way of scenery.  In fact, scenery did not exist, as we understand it.  A board inscribed with the name of the country or city indicated the scene of action.  Occasionally movable painted scenes were introduced.  The interior roof of the stage was painted sky-blue, or hung with drapery of that tint, to represent the heavens.  But when the idea of a dark, starless night was to be imposed, or tragedy was to be acted, these heavens were hung with black stuffs, a custom illustrated in many allusions in Shakespeare, like that in the line,

   “Hung be the heavens in black, yield day to night”

To hang the stage with black was to prepare it for tragedy.  The costumes of the players were sometimes less niggardly than the furnishing of the stage, for it was an age of rich and picturesque apparel, and it was not difficult to procure the cast-off clothes of fine gentlemen for stage use.  But there was no lavishing of expense.  I am recalling these details to show that the amusement was popular and cheap.  The ordinary actors, including the boys and men who took women’s parts (for women did not appear on the stage till after the Restoration) received only about five or six shillings a week (for Sundays and all), and the first-class actor, who had a share in the net receipts, would not make more than ninety pounds a year.  The ordinary price paid for a new play was less than seven pounds; Oldys, on what authority is not known, says that Shakespeare received only five pounds for “Hamlet.”

The influence of the theatre upon politics, contemporary questions that interested the public, and morals, was early recognized in the restraints put upon representations by the censorship, and in the floods of attacks upon its licentious and demoralizing character.  The plays of Shakespeare did not escape the most bitter animadversions of the moral reformers.  We have seen how Shakespeare mirrored his age, but we have less means of ascertaining what effect he produced