Approaches to Shakespeare

CHAPTER 1
 
WHEN WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE was about four years old he had a chance to see his first play.
 
There had once been a yearly pageant in Stratford on St. George’s Day, with a dragon that snorted fire made of real gunpower. But the dragon had been put away six years before Shakespeare was born, and there had been very little make believe in Stratford until the day the actors arrived.
 
The acting company came on horseback, bringing a wagon for their costumes and their swords, their feathers and their drums. They went first to the mayor, to ask his permission to put on plays in Stratford, and the mayor for that year happened to be Mr. John Shakespeare, William’s father. The mayor not only gave his permission but also arranged for a payment of nine shillings out of the town funds so that the first show could be seen by everyone without charge.
 
The actors put on their first show in the town hall, which was easy to change into a theater. The main room was long and narrow, and scaffold could set up at one end of it with rows of benches below. At right angles to it was a smaller room, which the actors could use for changing their costumes. They had a great many costumes, because there were usually only six men in a company and the plays called for as many as twenty characters. An actor could change himself from a tinker to a Roman senator in as much time as it took him to slip out of a leather jerkin and into a colored robe, and he had a whole collection of beards to help hos disguises. The beard was tied on with strings hidden under his ha like those Chinese opera actors do, and if the actor was appearing in a bedroom scene and had no excuse for wearing a hat, the strings of his beard could be hidden under his night-cap.