ELIZABETHAN THEATRES page 98-99/36-37-38

INTRODUCTION:

• Medieval Drama had religious origins and covered a didactic function. It consisted of Morality and Mystery Plays: they were performed inside the church and later brought outside. Mystery Plays were about stories taken from the Bible, while Morality ones were allegorical representation of virtues and vices.

• Drama of the English Renaissance spread during about a century, from when Elizabeth I became queen (1558) to 1642, when the Puritans had the theatres closed. --> The Puritans considered plays immoral: they blamed theatrical performances. They obliged the players to build theatrical locations outside their jurisdiction: therefore, all theatres were built on the south bank of the Thames.

THE ELIZABETHAN PLAYHOUSE:

• In 1576 the first Elizabethan playhouse, The Theatre, was built by James Burbage. In 1597 the company “The Lord Chamberlain’s Men” demolished the building and rebuilt it on the other bank. It was named The Globe; in 1613 a fire destroyed it, but it was quickly reconstructed.

• STRUCTURE: Theatres had a circular or polygonal shape: inside, the stage, a rectangular platform, was very high. In front of the stage there was the pit, place without roof where spectators had to stand on the ground. That is the reason why they were called “groundlings”: here there were members of the audiences who paid one penny, because they belonged to the lower social class. Differently, the rich had better and more expensive seats, around the walls. There was no scenery and no curtain, the spectators had to imagine the scene. A flag was put on the top of the playhouse when a play was in progress.

• Elizabethan theatres were noisy places: people ate, drank, spoke aloud and smoked. They didn’t use to keep quiet during a show, somebody did not arrive on time or remain until the end of the play. However, Londoners were glad to go to the theatre and considered it an exciting experience.

•PLAYS AND ACTORS: Only male actors could play: there were no women in companies, men plays also women’s roles in the performances. Shakespeare often exploited these theatrical rules to create confusion and ambiguity. The actors had to have particular skills: they could dance, juggle, fence. They often encouraged the audiences closer to the stage, the groundlings, to take part in shows.

• Elizabethan playwrights aimed at providing entertainment and earning money. After writing, plays were sold to a company to be performed. The group of playwrights who founded the English drama of the Renaissance were called the ‘University Wits’, because they had attended the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Shakespeare was the most important and successful playwright of the Renaissance. He was a member of The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and maybe he was first of all an actor. He wrote 37 plays, that can be classified in histories, comedies and tragedies.