Elizabethan theatre was published by Dr. Gaedertz in 1888 in his book on the Old English Stage. The building within was open to the sky, except that the small look-out room at the top was roofed, and the back part of the stage containing the raised gallery; the roof here rested on a pillar at each side, and under the gallery were two doors from the "mimorum ædes" for the entrances and exits of the actors. From that covered part of the stage a large raised platform spread into the open, to give as much space as possible to the actors of the play; around and before this was the standing-room that answered to the modern pit. There were built round the walls a lower and an upper gallery, in which seats were provided. A third gallery, highest of all, was under shelter of a slight projection of roof from the top of the walls, which answered for that uppermost circle to the shelter given to each of the galleries below by the floor of the circle above it. Thus, the spectators on the ground below stood, and were open to weather; the spectators in the galleries sat, and had shelter overhead. The actors had overhead shelter at the back of their stage, but none at the proscenium.

It was in the year 1600 that Henslowe and Alleyn built the Fortune Theatre, in or near Golden Lane, St. Giles'swithout-Cripplegate. In June, 1600, the Privy Council ordered that there should be only two theatres in and about the City of London. As the Globe replaced the old house called the Theatre, the Fortune was to be in place of its old companion house, the Curtain; and the Curtain, like the Theatre, should be pulled down. Still there was acting in the On the thirty-first of December, 1600, the Privy Council complained that more theatres had been allowed than but two houses, one in Middlesex called the Fortune (opened in November, 1600), and one in Surrey called the Globe.

In 1601, on the eighth of September, John Shakespeare was buried at Stratford.

In May, 1602, there is more evidence of Shakespeare's prosperity, in purchase from the Combes of a hundred and seven acres of land near the town, for £320. He was then busy elsewhere, and the conveyance was delivered to him through his brother Gilbert. In the following October came the payment of a second sixty pounds for New Place, not in fulfilment of the original agreement, but as fine for correction of a flaw in the lease.

In lives enwoven lies the life of Home:

The daily fellowship of kindred thought,

Where to one battle young and old are brought
And all are working for the days to come.
In lives enwoven lies a Nation's life:

Only from day to day upgrows her power,
Day to day utters speech, and hour by hour
We see the body of the Nation grow.
Age halting, and youth hurrying, to the strife,
With lives enwoven, step by step we go:
Bear with me, while I seek to read life so.