There are no actual figures available, so what we know about Shakespeare's audiences comes from a combination of eyewitness reports, statistical surveys put together by modern academics and internal evidence from the plays themselves. We know that playgoing was a popular form of entertainment where the price of admittance for the groundlings that stood around the stage was a penny, and the price for seats could rise up to a shilling, or twelvepence. Eyewitnesses report that people of all classes, including respectable women attended. We know that some of Shakespeare's plays were performed before Queen Elizabeth I, but these performances took place at court. It is impossible to be precise about what proportion would have been ordinary working people as opposed to the middle/upper classes. However, we can be fairly sure that a wide spectrum of the population did attend. If we look at the plays themselves, they contain a mixture of poetry on subjects likely to interest both the educated classes and the ordinary spectator: kingship, ambition, and love combined with elements of farce, singing, dancing, fights and spectacle. Shakespeare occasionally refers to the groundlings, usually commenting on their interest in the visual parts of the play rather than the poetry.