But besides having no scenery, the people of England had at first no theaters.  Plays were acted in halls, in the dining-halls of the great or in the guild halls belonging to the various trades.  It was not until 1575 that the first theater was built in London.  This first theater was so successful that soon another was built and still another, until in or near London there were no fewer than twelve.  But these theaters were very unlike the theaters we know now.  They were really more like the places where people went to see cock-fights and bear-baiting.  They were round, and except over the stage there was no roof.  The rich onlookers who could afford to pay well sat in “boxes” on the stage itself, and the other onlookers sat or stood in the uncovered parts.  Part of a theater is still called the pit, which helps to remind us that the first theaters may have served as “cock-pits” or “bear-pits” too as well as theaters.  For a long time, too, the theater was a man’s amusement just as bear-baiting or cock-fighting had been.  There were no actresses, the women’s parts were taken by boys, and at first ladies when they came to look on wore masks so that they might not be known, as they were rather ashamed of being seen at a theater.

And now that the love of plays and shows had grown so great that it had been found worth while to build special places in which to act, you may be sure that there was no lack of play-writers.  There were indeed many of whom I should like to tell you, but in this book there is no room to tell of all.  To show you how many dramatists arose in this great acting age I will give you a list of the greatest, all of whom were born between 1552 and 1585.  After Nicholas Udall and Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, the writers of our first comedy and first tragedy, there came:—­

    George Peel.  Francis Beaumont. 
    John Lyly.  John Fletcher. 
    Thomas Kyd.  John Webster. 
    Robert Greene.  Philip Massinger. 
    Christopher Marlowe.  John Ford. 
    William Shakespeare.  Thomas Heywood. 
    Ben Jonson.

It would be impossible to tell you of all these, so I shall choose only two, and first I shall tell you of the greatest of them—­Shakespeare.  He shines out from among the others like a bright star in a clear sky.  He is, however, not a lonely star, for all around him cluster others.  They are bright, too, and if he were not there we might think some of them even very bright, yet he outshines them all.  He forces our eyes to turn to him, and not only our eyes but the eyes of the whole world.  For all over the world, wherever poetry is read and plays are played, the name of William Shakespeare is known and reverenced.

Chapter XLV SHAKESPEARE—­THE BOY