Theater Experience of Elizabethan England

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Theater Experience of Elizabethan England

• The Elizabethan era is the period associated with
  the rule of Queen Elizabeth I (15581603)
• It was the height of the English Renaissance when
  poetry and literature flourished.
• Most prominent playwriter William Shakespeare

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Everyday Life

• Crimes of treason and Offenses against the state
  were treated with the same severity that murder
  and rape are today
• Leisure was an important part of the lives of the
  English people during the Elizabethan Age. Most
  of this leisure came either after church on
  Sundays or on the holidays
• Great cultural achievement, particularly in the
  area of music and drama. In that time, musical
  literacy was expected in the upper class of
  society
• Dancing was also a popular activity. The dances
  were mostly performed by couples
• Hunting was a favorite pastime for people,
  especially rich people. Queen Elizabeth herself
  loved to hunt.
• Plagues - Widespread diseases have been serious
  medical problems for a long time.

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Culture and Customs

• Hairstyle was an important issue for the men and
  women
• of the Elizabethan time. Both sexes took pride
  and joy in
• making their hair look as fabulous as the next
  person's.
• Fashion in the Elizabethan age was a way of
  expressing
• one's self the fashiotruly helped to reveal the
  general culture of the period.
• Any part of the costume was likely to be
  decorated with braid, embroidery, pinking
  (pricking in patterns) slashing, or puffing, or
  it might be encrusted with pearls, jewels, or
  spangles or trimmed with lace or artificial
  flowers. Men's clothing, like that of women, was
• gorgeous with color and ornamentation

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The creation and development of the Elizabethan
Theatre
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The Strolling Players

• Before the 1500's there were no such
• thing as a theatre in England
• Wandering minstrels who travelled from
• one town and castle to the next
• Some street players who entertained
• people at markets and fairs
• They were expected to memorize long
• poems and these recitals were included in their
  repertoire

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The licensed Acting Troupes

• Many of the wandering minstrels,
• or strolling players, were viewed as
• vagabonds and had the reputation
• as thieves
• Licenses were required to travel.
• This led to licenses for entertainers.
• Licenses were granted to the nobles
• of England for the maintenance of
• troupes of players.
• The Elizabethan Acting Troupes were formed and
  the development of the Elizabethan Theatre moved
  on.

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• During the 16th century, theater had a bad
  reputation London authorities refused to allow
  plays within the city, so theatres opened across
  the Thames in Southwark, outside the authority of
  the city administration.
• The first proper theatre as we know it was the
  Theatre, built at Shoreditch in 1576. Before this
  time plays were performed in the courtyard of
  inns, or sometimes, in the houses of noblemen.
• A noble had to be careful about which play he
  allowed to be performed within his home, however.
  Anything that was controversial or political was
  likely to get him in trouble with the crown!

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The Inn-yards

• The Audience capacity was up to
• 500 people
• There was gambling and there was
• even bear baiting in some of the
• Inn Yards
• The plays were performed in the
• cobblestone yards of inn yards
• Elizabethan Inn Yards were at their
• peak between 1576 - 1594
• Some Inn Yards were eventually
• converted to Playhouses, an indoor alternative to
  the massive open air theatres which were to
  follow

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The Inn-yards (The Rose)

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• After the Theatre, further open air playhouses
  opened in the London area, including the Rose
  (1587), and the Hope (1613). The most famous
  playhouse was the Globe (1599)
• The Globe was only in use until 1613, when a
  canon fired during a performance of Henry VIII
  caught the roof on fire and the building burned
  to the ground. The site of the theatre was
  rediscovered in the 20th century and a
  reconstruction built near the spot.
• These theatres could hold several thousand
  people, most standing in the open pit before the
  stage, though rich nobles could watch the play
  from a chair set on the side of the stage itself.

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Did You Know

• Elizabeth granted the first royal patent to the
  Servants of the Earl of Leicester in 1574. These
  "Servants" were James Burbage and four partners
  they were given the right to play "comedies,
  tragedies, interludes, stage-plays and other
  such-like" in London and in all other towns and
  boroughs in the realm of England
• Under Elizabeth political and religious subjects
  were forbidden on the stage.

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• Respectable people and officers of the Church
  frequently made complaint of the growing number
  of play-actors and shows.
• They said that the plays were often lewd and
  profane, that play-actors were mostly vagrant,
  irresponsible, and immoral people and that the
  theater itself was a public danger in the way of
  spreading disease. The streets were overcrowded
  after performances crimes occurred in the crowd.
  
• Despite the Churchs complaints, Elizabeth
  encouraged the development of theater.

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Playhouses

• Nine Public playhouses were built between 1576
  and 1642.The three most important were all
  outside the city limits of London
• The Globe (1599)
• The Fortune (1600)
• The Swan (?)
• Most famous of all were the Globe, built in 1598
  by Richard Burbage, and the Fortune, built in
  1599.

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General features of public playhouses

• Varied in size largest seated 2-3,000.
• Varying shapes round, rectagonal, octagonal
• The stage was raised, 4-6 feet, extending to the
  center of the yard.
• A "Tiring house" at the rear of the raised
  platform where the actors would wait and change.

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• The stage was roofed called "the
  heavens"supported by columns. Flying was common,
  with cranes and ropes.
• Traps in the floor, for fire, smoke, other
  effects.
• A hut above the Tiring House, for equipment and
  machinery.
• Flag on top of hut to signal performance day.
• Musicians gallery, below hut, third level.

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The Playhouses

• Elizabethan playhouses were suitable
• for winter and evening productions
• The plays produced at Elizabethan
• playhouses were selected to suit the indoor
• venues - the emphasis was on the words of
• the play rather than noisy special effects
• which were strong features of the open air
• theatres. The Playhouses were more comfortable
• and luxurious than other theatres
• Admittance to the Playhouses were more expensive
  than the other types of Elizabethan theatres.
  Attending a public theatre performance would cost
  between 1 to 3 pennies, but admission to a
  private, indoor, theatre cost between 2 to 26
  pennies
• The cost prohibited the attendance of most common
  folk at the Elizabethan Playhouses
• Everyone was given a seat in the Elizabethan
  playhouses- the higher the price of admission,
  the more comfortable the seat was

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Globe Theatre

• The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London
  associated with William Shakespeare.
• A hexagonal shaped with a roof extending over the
  stage only. The audience stood in the yard, or
  pit, or sat in the boxes built around the walls.
  Sometimes the young gallants sat on the stage.
• It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing
  company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was
  destroyed by fire on June 29, 1613.
• A second Globe Theatre was rebuilt on the same
  site by June 1614 and closed in 1642

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Indoor / Private Theatres

• Smaller, roofed.
• Troupes did shows in winter when it was too cold
  to be outside suggesting that the staging was
  probably similar.
• 1576 Blackfriars a former monastery was
  the first one closed by 1584.
• The New Blackfriars opened in 1596 by James
  Burbage. Their company, the Kings Men, used it
  after 1610 as their winter performance area.
• By the time of Shakespeare (1595?), actors had
  achieved a satisfactory level of financial and
  social stability.

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• By 1642, there were six private theatres in
  London.
• Private theatre rose in popularity from 1610 to
  1642. Public theatres were used only during the
  five warm months.
• Size about ¼ - ½ of the seating capacity of the
  public theatres.
• Spectators sat in the pit or in galleries or
  private boxes. The stages were probably similar.

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At the end of the reign of Elizabeth there were
eleven theaters in London, including public and
private houses. Various members of the royal
family were the ostenstible patrons of the new
companies
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Performances.

• Public performances generally took place in the
  afternoon, beginning about three o'clock and
  lasting perhaps two hours.
• Candles were used when daylight began to fade.
• The beginning of the play was announced by the
  hoisting of a flag and the blowing of a trumpet.
• at the close of the play the actors, on their
  knees, recited an address to the king or queen.
• The price of entrance varied with the theater,
  the play, and the actors but it was roughly a
  penny to sixpence for the pit, up to half a crown
  for a box.

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• Noble women were very careful of their
  reputations and wore masks not to be recognized.
• The audience was near and could view the stage
  from three sides
• People were allowed to throw things at the actors
  if they did not like the play
• At first there was little music, but soon players
  of instruments were added to the company.
• The stage was covered with straw or rushes. There
  may have been a painted wall with trees and
  hedges, or a castle interior with practicable
  furniture.
• A placard announced the scene. Stage machinery
  seems never to have been out of use, though in
  the early Elizabethan days it was primitive.

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Dialogue

• The playwright used poetic dialogue
• to
• - paint a picture of the scene
• - establish the time and the place of
• the action
• - familiarize the audience both with
• the characters identities and their
• physical appearances
• Soliloquies and asides were also
• used to compensate for the absence
• of an elaborate stage.

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Playwrights

• Although most of the plays written for the
• Elizabethan stage have been lost, over 600 remain
  
• extant.
• The men (no women were professional dramatists
• in this era) who wrote these plays were primarily
  
• self-made men from modest backgrounds. Some of
• them were educated at either Oxford or Cambridge,
  but many
• were not
• Most famous playwrights of the time were
  Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson
• First English tragedy was Gorboduc
• First English comedy was Ralph Roister Doister
  by Nicholas Udall

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William Shakespeare

• William Shakespeare (baptised April 26, 1564
  April 23, 1616) was an English poet and
  playwright. Shakespeare is considered by many to
  be the greatest writer in the English language,
  as well as one of the greatest in Western
  literature, and the world's preeminent dramatist.

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General characteristics of his plays

• Early point of attack
• Several lines of action (subplots), independent
  at first, then somehow merge together unity in
  apparent diversity (King Lear  is a perfect
  example).
• Large number and variety of incidents mixing of
  tears and laughter gentle and violent passions
• Time and space used freely a sense of ongoing
  life behind the scenes

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• Large range and number of characters 30 is
  common rich and poor, all individuals.
• Varied language elegant, ribald, witty, prosaic
  all to enhance character and action
• Subjects from many sources (mythology, history,
  legend, fiction, plays) but reworked to become
  his own.
• His four greatest tragedies are Hamlet, Lear,
  Macbeth, Othello

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Sources

• http//webpages.maine207.org/staff/RPERRONE/oldweb
  /ElizabethanTheatre.html
• http//www.springfield.k12.il.us/schools/springfie
  ld/eliz/elizabethanengland.html
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabethan_era
• http//www.globe-theatre.org.uk/elizabethan-theatr
  e.htm
• http//www.globe-theatre.org.uk/elizabethan-theatr
  es.htm