The usual name for a theatre was the playhouse, a house intended for all
kinds of games and sport, such as fencing, bear-fights, bull-fights,
jigs, morris-dances, and pantomimes, as well as for dramatic
performances.
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that the theatrical entertainments
of those times were something more or less literary; anyhow, something
quite apart from the dramatic performances of the present day. They were
meant to satisfy mixed desires in the nation; but, besides satisfying
its craving for beautiful, picturesque language, fine spectacles, and
merry jests, they also gratified its desire for the display of physical
strength, for shallow rhyming tricks and competitions, graceful
exercises of the body, indeed for all that might be included under the
notion of sport and give opportunity for betting.
Therefore, the plays, properly so called, alternated with fights between
animals, in which bears and bulls were baited by great blood-thirsty
bulldogs, or with fencing-matches fought by celebrated English and
foreign fencing-masters, with rope-dancing, acrobatic tricks, and
boxing. Even the serious performances ended with a more or less absurd
jig, in which the clown sang endless songs about the events of the day,
and danced interminable morris-dances.
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, whose works are now reckoned among
the first literature--so much so that they are scarcely read any
longer--at the time of which we are speaking were nothing but practical
playwrights, and Shakespeare was so far from dreaming that the time
would come when his plays would be counted among the most precious
treasures of posterity that, as we know, he did not even take the
trouble to have a printed edition of his works published.
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