The Rise of England 195(Left) William Shakespeare (Right) The Globe Theater, London, 1616.
success, angering rivals. Shakespeare became part owner and actor in the
Lord Chamberlain’s Men, an acting company of the Globe theater, which
held an audience of 3,000 and hence was the largest of London’s six pri
vate theaters. Seats at such theaters cost at least six times more than the
cheapest tickets at the public theaters, which included places for the
“penny stinkards” who stood in the uncovered pit below the stage.
Audiences shouted for what they liked and hooted at what they did not.
Fights were not infrequent, both inside and outside of the theater. The play
wright Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) died in a brawl in an inn under
mysterious circumstances; the actor and playwright Ben Jonson killed
another actor in a duel. Because of their rowdy reputations, most London
theaters stood outside the city walls. London officials sometimes tried to
close down the public theaters because they thought that disease spread eas
ily among assembled crowds and because of complaints about profanity and
lewdness on stage.
An Emerging Empire of Trade
During the later years of Elizabeth’s reign, bitter battles for influence and
power within Elizabeth’s inner circle belied the appearance of relative har
mony. Elizabeth died in 1603, the forty-fifth year of her reign, leaving Eng
land a substantially more unified, effectively ruled, and powerful state that
had begun to look across the oceans in the interest of expanding trade.
Over the next few decades, England slowly began to develop a trading and
then settlement empire in North America—as did France—while gradually