and, in 1609, when Decker published his Gull's Horn-book, the hour was thrown back to three, nor did it become later until towards the close of the seventeenth century. The time visually consumed in the exhibition appears, from the prologue to Henry the Eighth, to have been only two hours:—

——————————— "Those that come—

I'll undertake, may see away their shilling

Richly in two short hours."[216:A]

The mention of payment in this passage, leads to the consideration of the Prices of Admission, and the sum here specified, contemporary authority informs us, was demanded for entrance into the best rooms or boxes.[216:B] Sixpence also, and sometimes a shilling, was paid for seats or stools on the stage. Sixpence was likewise the price of admission to the pit and galleries of the Globe and Blackfriars; but at inferior houses, a penny, or at most two-pence, gave access to the "groundling," or the "gallery-commoner." Dramatic poets, as in the present day, were admitted gratis. We may also add, that, from some verses addressed to the memory of Ben Jonson, by Jasper

Mayne, and alluding to his Volpone or the Fox, acted in 1605, it is allowable to infer, that the prices of admission were, on the first representation of a new play, doubled, and even sometimes trebled.[217:A]

There is every reason to suppose, that while Shakspeare wrote for the stage, the Number of Plays performed in One Day, seldom, if ever, exceeded one tragedy, comedy, or history, and that the entertainment was varied and protracted, either by the extempore humour and tricks of the Clown after the play was over, or by singing, dancing, or ludicrous recitation, between the acts.

The house appears to have been pretty well supplied with Lights; the stage being illuminated by two large branches; the body of the house by cresset lights, formed of ropes wreathed and pitched, and placed in open iron lanterns, and these were occasionally assisted by the interspersion of wax tapers among the boxes.

The Amusements of the Audience before the Play commenced seem to have been amply supplied by themselves, the only recreation provided by the theatre, during this tedious interval, being the music of the band, which struck up thrice, playing three flourishes, or, as they were then called, three soundings, before the performance began; but these were of course short, being principally intended as announcements, similar to those which we now receive from the prompter's bell. To kill time, therefore, reading and playing cards were the resources of the genteeler part of the audience: "Before the play begins," says Decker to his gallant, "fall to cards; you may win or lose, as fencers do in a prize, and beat one another by confederacy, yet share the money when you meet at supper: notwithstanding, to gull the ragamuffins that stand aloof gaping at you, throw the cards, having first torn four or five of them, round about the stage, just upon the third sound, as though you had lost."[217:B]

Of the less refined amusements of these gaping ragamuffins, "the youths that thunder at a play-house, and fight for bitter apples[218:A]," we find numerous traces in Decker, Jonson, and their contemporaries, which enable us to assert, that they chiefly consisted in smoking tobacco, drinking ale, cracking nuts, and eating fruit, which were regularly supplied by men attending in the theatre, and whose vociferation and clamour, or, as a writer of that time expresses it, "to be made adder-deaf with pippin-cry[218:B]," were justly considered as grievous nuisances; more especially the use of tobacco, which must have been intolerable to those unaccustomed to its odour, and, indeed, occasionally drew forth the execration of individuals: thus in a work entitled, "Dyets Dry Dinner," we find the author commencing an epigram on the wanton and excessive use of tobacco, in the following terms:—