“Yes, and no doubt Shakespeare had that very inscription in mind when he wrote the line a few years ago—remember we are in Elizabeth’s reign!—in As you Like It.”
“Are they acting now? The play can’t have begun yet. There’s such a noise going on inside.”
Betty glanced about her at the crowd entering the theatre. Every now and then a boat rowed across from the opposite shore, would land a company of richly-dressed young men who, laughing and swaggering, pushed their way through the throng and went into the building.
“We’ll go too,” said Godmother.
In a moment Betty found herself in a round wooden place, part of which was open to the sky, though the stage facing her, was protected by an overhanging thatched roof. Three galleries, one above the other, ran round the theatre, and these were thronged with people. On the stage, which jutted out into the open-air part of the building, another smaller stage was set with a gallery above it, filled with musicians in funny tall hats trimmed with ribbons. Some young men were sitting actually on the stage itself, while the poorer people stood in the open space in front of it, with nothing but the sky above their heads. There was a perfect babel of noise, for hawkers were moving about calling nuts and ale and apples to sell, the young gallants on the stage were playing at dice and quarrelling, and the whole place seemed in confusion. Then there was a flourish of trumpets from the musicians’ gallery and suddenly everything was quiet.
“There have been two trumpet sounds before we came in,” Godmother explained. “This third one means that the play is going to begin.”
“I know what it is,” whispered Betty. “I saw some funny little play-bills on the door outside. It’s Richard the Second—and that’s all about the very reign we were in when we came to old London last time!”
Her eyes were now fixed on the stage, which was hung round with curtains, and strewn with green rushes. There was no scenery except one roughly-painted canvas stretched across the back of the smaller stage, above which, on a board, was written King Richard’s Palace.
“That was Westminster, wasn’t it?” whispered Betty, just as King Richard himself, John of Gaunt and a train of nobles walked on to the stage, and the King began his first speech.
“Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured, Lancaster——”