The usual net receipts of a performance were from nine to
ten pounds, and this was about the sum that Elizabeth paid to companies
for a performance at Whitehall, which was always in the evening and did
not interfere with regular hours. The theatres opened as early as one
o'clock and not later than three in the afternoon. The crowds that filled
the pit and galleries early, to secure places, amused themselves
variously before the performance began: they drank ale, smoked, fought
for apples, cracked nuts, chaffed the boxes, and a few read the cheap
publications of the day that were hawked in the theatre. It was a rough
and unsavory audience in pit and gallery, but it was a responsive one,
and it enjoyed the acting with little help to illusion in the way of
scenery. In fact, scenery did not exist, as we understand it. A board
inscribed with the name of the country or city indicated the scene of
action. Occasionally movable painted scenes were introduced. The interior
roof of the stage was painted sky-blue, or hung with drapery of that
tint, to represent the heavens. But when the idea of a dark, starless
night was to be imposed, or tragedy was to be acted, these heavens were
hung with black stuffs, a custom illustrated in many allusions in
Shakespeare, like that in the line,
"Hung be the heavens in black, yield day to night"
To hang the stage with black was to prepare it for tragedy. The costumes
of the players were sometimes less niggardly than the furnishing of the
stage, for it was an age of rich and picturesque apparel, and it was not
difficult to procure the cast-off clothes of fine gentlemen for stage
use.
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