If the actors of the Elizabethan time had no scenery they made up
for the lack of it by splendid and gorgeous dressing. But it was
the dressing of the day. The play might be supposed to take
place in Greece or Rome or Ancient Britain, it mattered not. The
actors dressed after the fashion of their own day. And neither
actors nor audience saw anything funny in it. To them it was not
funny that an ancient British king should wear doublet and hose,
nor that his soldiers should discharge firearms in a scene
supposed to take place hundreds of years before gunpowder had
been invented. But we must remember that in those days dress
meant much more than it does now. Dress helped to tell the
story. Men then might not dress according to their likes and
dislikes, they were obliged to dress according to their rank.
Therefore it helped the Elizabethan onlooker to understand the
play when he saw a king, a courtier, or a butcher come on to the
stage dressed as he knew a king, a courtier, or a butcher
dressed. Had he seen a man of the sixth century dressed as a man
of the sixth century he would not have known to what class he
belonged and would not have understood the play nearly so well.

But besides having no scenery, the people of England had at first
no theaters. Plays were acted in halls, in the dining-halls of
the great or in the guild halls belonging to the various trades.
It was not until 1575 that the first theater was built in London.
This first theater was so successful that soon another was built
and still another, until in or near London there were no fewer
than twelve. But these theaters were very unlike the theaters we
know now. They were really more like the places where people
went to see cock-fights and bear-baiting. They were round, and