Prologue to King Lear - Shakespeare's RiddleOnly a small percentage of plays (around eighteenth century) written during the golden age of Elizabethan drama (1590-1610 ) survives into print (Nolan 30). Popular drama in the 1580s existed as nothing more than the street professions of clowns and jugglers who performed occasional dramatic interludes (Nolan 35). As with the "bohemian" and "hippie" youth movements in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other American cities during the 1960s, gangs of reckless young men with working-class and university educations invaded London's urban underworld and street culture in the second half of the 16th century, living mainly on their own ingenuity and talent. Early in their career, they wrote for local buskers, just as the early Beatles, Roy Orbison, Willie Nelson and Buddy Holly wrote material for other, more famous artists in Liverpool and Nashville before receiving their big break in the world of business (Rinehart ). Employing vagabond actors and artists who lived on London's poorer back streets, they birthed an era of dramatic art that flared for a single twenty-year episode, leaving only a few names like Shakespeare etched in the minds of London's middle-class merchants and tradesmen . consumers of that era ("Elizabethan London"). Because Elizabethan drama flared up only briefly, few intellectuals paid specific attention to the plays during the years of their performance (Folgeroy); critics of the time derided them (Hall 2: 126). Future theater scholars appreciated the Elizabethan era only as they raked out the ashes of a vanished art form (Ardath, "Searching"). Even Shakespeare had no sincere biographer to tell the important... medium of paper......81.Mute Cybelines: Shakespeare's Women. Narr. Diana Rigg. Dir. Anthony Hale.2 episodes. PBS. WEBA, Boston. October 26-27, 1985. Nolan, Paul. "The Nature of Elizabethan Drama". Shakespeare Quarterly 14.3-4 (1986): 29-45.Riggs, Diana, narr. Silent Cybelines: Shakespeare's women. Dir. Antonio Hale. 2 episodes. PBS. WEBA, Boston. October 26-27, 1985. Rinehart, Thomas. Personal interview. February 27, 1990 Return, Robert. “Re: Biography: Shakespeare.” Online publication. July 6, 1999. shak-L. Shaksper: the global electronic conference. June 27, 1999. http://www.arts.ubc.ca/english/iemls/shak/shak-L.htmlSmith, Logan Pearsall. "On reading Shakespeare." New York Times February 20, 1989, National. ed.: C23.Who was Shakespeare? New York: Folger Library, [1974].