what did the groundlings do during the play
Groundling A groundling was a person who visited the Globe Theatre in the early 17th century. They were too poor to pay to be able to sit on one of the three levels of the theatre. If they paid one penny, they could stand in "the pit", also called "the yard", just below the stage, to watch the play. Standing in the pit was uncomfortable, and people were usually packed in tightly. The groundlings were commoners who were also referred to as stinkards or penny-stinkers. The name 'groundlings' came about after Hamlet referenced them as such when the play was first performed around 1600. At the time, the word had entered the English language to mean a small type of fish with a gaping mouth - from the vantage point of the actor playing Hamlet, set on a stage raised around 5 feet from the ground, the sea of upturned faces may have looked like wide-mouthed fish.[1] They were known to misbehave and are commonly believed to have thrown food such as fruit and nuts at characters they did not like, although there is no evidence of this.[citation needed] They would watch the plays from the cramped pits with sometimes over 500 people standing there.
Playing card Playing cards may have been invented during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD as a result of the usage of woodblock printing technology and there were 30 cards in a deck.[2][3][4][5][6] The first possible reference to card games comes from a 9th-century text known as the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written by Tang dynasty writer Su E. It describes Princess Tongchang, daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang, playing the "leaf game" in 868 with members of the clan of Wei Baoheng, the family of the princess' husband.[4][7][8]:131 The first known book on the "leaf" game was called the Yezi Gexi and allegedly written by a Tang woman. It received commentary by writers of subsequent dynasties.[9] The Song dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserts that the "leaf" game existed at least since the mid-Tang dynasty and associated its invention with the development of printed sheets as a writing medium.[9][4] However, Ouyang also claims that the "leaves" were pages of a book used in a board game played with dice, and that the rules of the game were lost by 1067.[10]