MB UNIUD

Shakespeare

• - great skill (use of rhyme, blank verse, and poetic imagery)
• - comedy and tragedy, history and farce
• - greatness
• - considered the most creative Elizabethan writer.

Influence of the Classics on Drama

By the Greek and Latin writers:

• - Plutarch
• - Seneca

Jacobean Drama

• - Its name derived from King James I
• - Ben Jonson (The Fox, Epicene, The Silent Woman, The Alchemist)
• - Satirical comedies
• - Tragedies (full of shocking details, images of blood, torture and violent deaths)
• - Influenced by Macchiavelli (The Prince)

Playhouse

• - Under Stuart kings
• - Public and Private
• - At first for common people
• - Later for the aristocracy
• - Civil War
• - Playhouses were closed down
• - Performances were forbidden

Theatre

• - Opened again in 1660
• - Theatre Royal
• - For the upper classes
• - Entertainment

Restoration Playhouse

• - Indoor theatre
• - Lit with candles
• - Painted scenery
• - Servants sat in the upper gallery
• - The middle class sat in the middle galleries
• - Aristocrats sat in the boxes

Restoration Tragedy

• - Heroic tragedies
• - Rhyming couplet
• - Characters didn't belong to the British tradition

The Comedy Of Manners

• - New genre
• - Based on satirical observation of the social behaviour (of the upper classes)
• - Conflicts of men and woman
• - Written in prose
• - George Etherege (The Man of Mode)
• - William Wycherley (The Country Wife, The Plain Dealer, The Way Of The World)

Women and the Theatre

• - Introduction of actresses
• - Inspired new plays
• - Women equal to men
• - Success of this innovation
• - Aphra Behn