Merchant of Venice. - Repositories

xviii
INTROD UCTION
Thomas Lucy for stealing deer from that gentleman's
park, certain it is that the young man left his family
in Stratford about the year 1585, and departed to try
his fortune in London.
London and London Theatres. — We have already
taken a glance at London in the Elizabethan age; it
is not difficult to appreciate what a school its very
streets must have been to one whose wits were sharp
and whose nature was social. No college training,
no study of any kind could have been so powerful in
the development of the poet, as was intercourse with
the men with whom he was to become acquainted in
London. When he entered the city, however, Shakespeare
had no prestige, probably no friends, and worse
than all no money to speak of. There is an ill-founded
tradition that he secured employment at first in caring
for the horses on which the gallants of the city
rode from their homes to the theatres. Another
tradition says that he was a prompter's assistant on
the stage. However this may have been, it is apparent
that soon after his arrival in London Shakespeare
became associated with some of the theatres. The
only play-houses then belonging to London were two
small unroofed wooden structures in the fields outside
the city gates. The plays were acted by daylight on
stages devoid of scenery, where little but a placard
aunounced the change of place from act to act. On the