British Theatre

1. British Theatre Performance space and theatrical conventions

2. Classical Antiquity • Britain is one province in the Roman Empire • Outdoor performance spaces – audience seated on hillside/slope above performers • Surviving theatres in St. Albans and Chester • http://www.stalbansmuseums.org.uk/Sites/Roman-Town/Roman-Theatre • www.chesterwalls.info/amphitheatre.html • These traditions lost with fall of Rome.

3. audience performancespace backstage audience St. Albans

4. Fall of Roman Empire ~450AD • Theatre disappears from Britain as Latin speakers lost • Britain fragmented into • Celtic language speakers in Wales, Cornwall, Scotland • Germanic language speakers in South and East • Poetic rather than dramatic literary conventions in both the Celtic and Germanic traditions

5. Drama re-emerges after ~1200 • not from a revival of classical Roman traditions, • but from the Christian rituals of the Mass. • The ritual re-enactment of the Last Supper (the celebration of the Eucharist) • Benedictine abbeys re-enact the Resurrection at their Easter matins service • These re-enactments connect the audience to Christian truths. So drama does not begin as literature but as “theology”

6. Medieval Drama • Place of medieval drama in history of European drama • no connection to classical drama • not entertainment • not money-making • begins as liturgy or ritual • dramatizing liturgical moments, i.e.. elevation of the host • supports religious values and practices • earliest dramatized liturgy reenacts the Passion and the Resurrection

7. By late Middle Ages ~14th C • Religious Dramas for largely illiterate audience – free to everyone; performed in public spaces • Saints’ lives • Allegories in which a character standing for Everyone is first tempted by VICE and then redeemed by VIRTUE. • Mankinde and Everyman • Bible stories (Corpus Christi plays) • Always end comically (well)

8. Plays performed in inner courtyards of medieval inns.

9. Corpus Christi cycle plays • Performed at Corpus Christi feast (early summer) outdoors in public spaces • Cycle of plays beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelations • Re-enacts Biblical stories that foreshadow events in life of Christ • Tries to capture all of human history (Creation to end of world) in one day

10. York Cycle (1 of 4 extant cycles) • Begins sometime after ~1325; closed down by Reformation censors in Elizabeth’s reign (~1580); this is Shakespeare’s boyhood. • Associated with towns – not villages or hamlets – showed wealth, power, pride, civic organization and institutions, literacy, and religious belief. • Literate townsmen put on plays for less literate farmers • http://jerz.setonhill.edu/resources/PSim/applet/index.html

11. Cycle plays performed on wagons in streets of York over 1-3 days in late June. Audience stayed in place, and wagons moved to ~12 viewing stations.Played to crowds on 3 sides. Same script every year. Compare to tail- gate party.

12. Comic Cycle plays suppressed by Protestant Reformation Catholic • plays reinforced possibility of “real presence” of Christ • emphasis on human sin overcome by divine forgiveness • sin as precursor to salvation • every play is a comedy Protestant • No belief in “real presence” • emphasis on limits to divine forgiveness in doctrine of “elect” • sin as precursor to damnation • develop tragic drama

13. Tudor Drama (1485-1603) • Before Elizabeth – • Some revivals of Latin/Roman dramatic forms, especially tragedy • Elizabethan dramatists: first modern English playwrights – theatres and admission costs • Theatre as business proposition • Money in acting, writing, but esp. producing • How to earn a living as a writer without a wealthy patron

14. London ~ 1590 Today’s West End Theatres National Theatre London Eye Many theatres south of the river in “Southwark” because outside of control of London’s conservative aldermen.

16. Early Modern Public Theatre • Large, outdoor but partially roofed, daylight only illumination • Variety of standing/sitting price options • In the 3/4ths (audience on three sides of a thrust stage • Three levels of play space (below stage trapdoor; stage; balcony) • Two back entrances

17. 1599 Thus daily at two in the afternoon, London has two, sometimes three plays running in different places, competing with each other, and those which play best obtain most spectators. The playhouses are so constructed that they play on a raised platform, so that everyone has a good view. There are different galleries and places, however, where the seating is better and more comfortable and therefore more expensive. For whoever cares to stand below only pays one English penny, but if he wishes to sit he enters by another door, and pays another penny, while if he desires to sit in the most comfortable seats which are cushioned, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen, then he pays yet another English penny at another door. And during the performance food and drink are carried around the audience, so that what one cares to pay one may also have refreshment. Note thrust stage – audience on 3+ sides

18. 1647 woodcut

19. Note the thrust stage, the three levels on which the audience may sit, and the floor space for the “groundlings” to stand. ~1550-1642

20. A modern production in the reconstructed Globe Theatre.

21. Middle Temple in Inns of Court – banquet hall and first performance space for Twelfth Night

22. Puritan Commonwealth ~1642-1660 • Charles I executed 1649 • Theatres closed 1642, but re-opened on Restoration of the Monarchy after death of Oliver Cromwell in 1660. • Charles II returned from exile in France and brought “French fashions” into British theatre • women performers • proscenium stage rather than thrust stage

23. Mid 17th C French theatre with stage behind curtain

24. Proscenium Stage • Dominates British theatre from Restoration (1660) to modernism (early 20th C) • You have likely seen this theatre in your HS auditorium. • Actors on stage behind curtain • Scene changes indicated by curtain • Audience sits in dark • Actors pretend audience not present

25. Some 20th& 21st C innovations • Often returns to earlier forms • Theatre in the round • Direct interactions audience/actors • Chorus or narrator • Musical Theatre • American origins, • but hugely popular in the UK

26. Stratford-Upon-Avon is home to three stages on which Early Modern (and other) plays are performed. This is the stage at the National Theatre on the South Bank near the London Eye and Houses of Parliament.

27. Stage on which we’ll see Merry Wives of Windsor.

28. Matilda