text: Aside from the many societal restraints on the stage, there were also the practical ones which greatly affected how Shakespeare wrote his plays.\n1.  Women were not allowed to appear on-stage, therefore young boys would play the female roles. Many of his plays have few female characters, and those that there are often diguise themselves as men.\n2.  With no electricity, staging was fairly basic.  Characters usually state the location and the time of day so the audience would know what was going on.  An entrance from below the stage through the trap door would symbolize one from hell, and from the rafter above would be from heaven.\n3. Each play was performed by just a few actors in the troupe, so each one played many roles.\nand 4.  The stage itself was outdoors, with the groundlings standing on the floor right in front of the stage.  The upper classes would have seats in the sections above, and the very upper class could pay to sit right on stage.  Also, the atmosphere was nothing like the quiet, polite audiences of today.  A Shakespeare play has been described as being the Renaissance equivilent of cross between and NBA finals game and a Madonna concert.