All the Worlds a Stage:

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• All the Worlds a Stage
• Early Modern English Theater

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The Stage

• All the world's a stage,
• And all the men and women merely players
• They have their exits and their entrances
• And one man in his time plays many parts,

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Medieval Entertainment

• Morris dances
• Mummings, disguisings, and pageants

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Mystery Plays

• Began as (an addition to) Church services
• Understand religion through spectacle
• Early dramatizations the Resurrection, Angels
  and Mary, the Nativity scene
• Expansion leads to a move out of the Church
  semi-secularization language changes from Latin
  to English
• Guilds in charge of specific Bible stories

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List of Plays

• The Fall of Lucifer
• The Creation of the World and the Fall of Adam
• Noah and the Flood
• Abraham and Isaac
• The longest known cycle the York Cycle contained
  50 plays

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Morality Play

• Begin to replace Mystery plays by the end of the
  fifteenth century
• The plays teach the principles of Christian
  living in a more direct fashion.
• It dramatized moral allegory, so contained
  abstract allegorical figures like the Seven
  Deadly Sins, Contemplation, Perseverance, and
  Slander.
• The hero stands for all mankind

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Structure of Morality Play

• Two opposing groups Virtues and Vices fight for
  control of hero
• Present a glimpse into the entirety of everymans
  life
• Illustrates how he yields to temptation but is
  saved
• Power from the poignancy and terror of death

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Interludes

• A staged dialogue
• Literally means a play between
• Reflected education style, rhetoric and
  argumentation
• Move away from didacticism toward secularism

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The Renaissance comes to England

• English drama influenced by Roman dramatists
• Comedy from Terence and Plautus
• Tragedy from Seneca
• From classical models English drama receives
  structure (acts and scenes) content (intrigue
  based plots, type or stock characters)
• Senecas influence speeches with elevated
  rhetoric, violent plots, ghosts thirsting for
  blood

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Shakespeares Theaters
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Players

• Specialized acting each company had a great
  clown/fool and tragedian
• Cross-dressing boys played the parts of women
• Anti-theater preachers claimed this led to
  unnatural lust.
• Women appear on-stage after the Restoration.

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London Theaters
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Map of the theaters
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Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)

• Appeared on dramatic scene in 1590
• Transformed English drama with Marlowes Mighty
  Line showed how blank verse could be powerful
• Plays The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine 1 2,
  Edward II, Dido, Queen of Carthage, and Doctor
  Faustus

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Power of Marlowes Language

• Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,
• And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
• Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
• Her lips suck forth my soul see where it flies.
• Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
• Here will I dwell for heaven is in those lips,
• And all is dross that is not Helena.

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William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

• He was not of an age, but for all time!
• First plays performed in London in early 1590s
• Part of the Lord Chamberlains Men
• Actor, playwright, and sharer in the company when
  it moved to the Globe
• Retired in 1613

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Ben Jonson (1572-1637)

• Most classical writer
• Dramatizes the city preferred genre is the city
  comedy
• Plays Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair
• Oversaw the publication of his plays
• First Poet Laureate of England