bear torn to pieces by ferocious bulldogs. Then they would go to a play,
and throw stones or dead cats at the actors if their tastes were not
gratified.

To please such crowds no stage action could possibly be too rough; hence
the riotousness of the early theaters, which for safety were placed outside
the city limits; hence also the blood and thunder of Shakespeare's
_Adronicus_ and the atrocities represented in the plays of Kyd and
Marlowe.

[Sidenote: THE TWO SCHOOLS]

Following such different ideals, two schools of playwrights appeared in
England. One school, the University Wits, to whom we owe our first real
tragedy, _Gorboduc_, [Footnote: This play, called also _Ferrex and
Porrex_, was written by Sackville and Norton, and played in 1562, only
two years before Shakespeare's birth. It related how Gorboduc divided his
British kingdom between his two sons, who quarreled and threw the whole
country into rebellion--a story much like that used by Shakespeare in
_King Lear_. The violent parts of this first tragedy were not
represented on the stage but were announced by a messenger. At the end of
each act a "chorus" summed up the situation, as in classic tragedy.
_Gorboduc_ differed from all earlier plays in that it was divided into
acts and scenes, and was written in blank verse. It is generally regarded
as the first in time of the Elizabethan dramas. A few comedies divided into
acts and scenes were written before _Gorboduc_, but not in the blank
verse with which we associate an Elizabethan play.] aimed to make the
English drama like that of Greece and Rome. The other, or native, school
aimed at a play which should represent life, or please the crowd, without
regard to any rules ancient or modern. The best Elizabethan drama was a