ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

1. ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

2. 400 years ago, Queen Elizabeth I was on the English throne; she reigned for a long period from 1558 to 1603 - 45 years in all; • Shakespeare was born in 1564 and he died in 1616, so he was essentially an Elizabethan, though he survived the Queen by 13 years. • He grew up in the little country town of Stratford-on-Avon where he went to the local Grammar School and learned the 'small Latin and less Greek' which Ben Jonson attributed to him. Round about 1585/6 he went to London and his first play (the first part of Henry VI) was produced about 1590.

3. The first theatres for Elizabethan drama were of two kinds and both were make-shift: Inn-yards and Great Halls. As far as we can see, despite the example of ancient Greece and Rome, there were no specially-designed buildings for presenting plays until the last quarter of the century.

4. 1. INN-YARDS • In mediaeval times plays were performed on carts that the players pushed around from village to village; the actors were known as 'Strolling Players' because they walked or 'strolled' round from place to place, setting up their cart as a stage in the market place or the village square. • They were actors, tumblers, jugglers, all rolled into one: they performed plays, they walked on stilts, they juggled, they created slapstick scenes - anything to please, to entertain and, of course, to earn themselves not only applause hut money to live on.

5. Gradually, the innkeepers learned that when the Players came to town business was brisk; entertainment in those days was not easily come by and the arrival of the Players brought everyone out on holiday. • Thus, the innkeepers began to offer the shelter of their inn-yards for the performances and the Players would stand their carts at one end of the inn-yard whilst the local audience stood around to watch, buying their ale and mead and treating it as a festive occasion.

6. It was from this that the more involved role of the inns developed: a temporary stage would be erected at the end of the yard and the audience would gather, not only in the yard itself, but would be able to pay for a view, perhaps even a seat inside the inn by a window overlooking the yard.

7. Many of these inns had tiers of galleries all round the yard and some of them became for a while almost permanent theatres. • It was the inn-yards that later dictated the shape and form of the custom made open-air theatres built in the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

8. 2. GREAT HALLS • More refined performances took place in the great halls of noblemen's houses, of the Inns of Court, or of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. In 1603, during the Great Plague, the King and his Court left London to stay at Hampton Court Palace and there Shakespeare's company performed their plays to entertain them. • The Great Halls were, again, make-shift theatres and the Players would act in such places by invitation. A screen would be erected at one end of the hall and behind it there would be room for the actors to dress, to move around and so on; in front, they would perform their play.

9. Shakespeare himself presents several 'plays-within-plays': for instance, in The Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream and, most notably, Hamlet. These are all performed in noble houses as were a number of his own plays, particularly the later comedies. Just as the Inn-Yards dictated the shape of the later open-air theatres, the Great Halls influenced that of the indoor theatres.

10. There were some obvious advantages of both such theatres; first of all, the Players were in no way responsible for their upkeep; secondly, in both the Inn-Yards and the Great Halls there would be ready-made audiences. • On the other hand, there were very obvious disadvantages: the Players always had to rely on the hospitality of inn-keepers or of the noblemen and others who owned the Great Houses; then, they had no storage space, so they had to carry all their properties and costumes with them.

11. However, the biggest disadvantage of all was that the City of London authorities were hostile to them. • Then as now, London was like a magnet and the Players, particularly, were drawn to it, since the population was such that they could perform the same play a number of times and still get an audience; furthermore, there was some prestige in playing in London; everybody who was anybody went to London to make his name . • Thus, hostility from the City authorities made life very difficult. Nevertheless, it was this hostility that brought about the great advances in the theatre which took place in the sixteenth century.

12. 3. OUTDOOR THEATRES • In 1575, when Shakespeare was only eleven, the City authorities imposed a Code of Practice upon the Players which so displeased them that they decided to withdraw outside the City boundaries. • Thus it was that in the following year, 1576, the first custom-made London theatre, appropriately called 'The Theatre' was built in Finsbury Fields and the next year, 1577, The Curtain was built in the same area.

13. Finsbury, now a bustling part of London, was then almost a country area but within easy reach of the City. These two theatres were so successful that ten years later another spate of building began, but this time across the river on Bankside, which gradually became a theatre centre. • In 1587 The Rose was built, in 1595 The Swan, in 1599 The Globe and in 1600 The Fortune, all in the same vicinity.

14. The Globe was built by the Burbage Brothers, Richard and Cuthbert, whose father, James, had built The Theatre back in 1576. • The Globe was, in fact, a sort of reconstruction of The Theatre, for in 1597/8, when the lease ran out, The Theatre was demolished and its fabric taken to Bankside and used in the building of The Globe. • It was The Globe where, after 1599, Shakespeare's company, at that time called the Chamberlain's Men, performed his plays.

15. What then do we know about Elizabethan theatres? Well, first, they were, in general, round, square, octagonal, or something of the sort. This is supported both by the specifications for the Fortune Theatre and also by Shakespeare's words in the Prologue to Henry V • pardon, gentles all,The flat unraised spirits that hath daredOn this unworthy scaffold to bring forthSo great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cramWithin this wooden O the very casquesThat did affright the air at Agincourt?

16. Notice here "this cockpit" and "this wooden O", both of which indicate Shakespeare's awareness of the shape of his theatre; also, "this unworthy scaffold" reminiscent of the makeshift stage of earlier times. • What seems to be certain is that the buildings were not longer in one dimension than another; it is now, in fact, believed that the Globe was a 24-sided polygon and we know that the Fortune was square.

17. The theatres were, in effect, open-air theatres - the building, surrounded an open yard (like the Inn-Yards) with the stage at one end, jutting out into the audience to about half the depth of the theatre; the width was considerably more. • Round three sides of the yard were three tiers of galleries where the wealthier or superior members of the audience sat; the rest of the audience stood in the open yard around the stage and (for obvious reasons) they were known as 'the Groundlings'.

18. It was the Groundlings whose presence most impinged upon the Players for they were close to the stage. Shakespeare, however, never insulted his audience for he knew they were the lifeblood of the theatre.

19. Some of his contemporaries were less kindly ; Ben Jonson, for instance, castigated the Groundlings in one of his plays, despising the • popular applauseOr foamy praise that drops from common jaws, • and John Marston objected to coming too close to the common audience where he maintained he would be, • "choked/With the stench of garlic ... pasted to the balmy jacket of a beer- brewer".

20. But this common audience paid dearly for their entertainment. • It cost a penny to get into the theatre and prices were accumulative, so that for a further penny you could sit in the "twopenny gallery" on the top tier and for further pennies still you could go into one of the lower galleries. • The Groundling paying his penny would be spending the better part of a day's wages to go into the theatre.

21. Despite the smallness of the theatre (80 x 80 feet), it has been estimated that 2500 people could be accommodated inside. • The Elizabethans were, in fact, smaller than we are today and had shorter legs which enabled them to fit into more cramped conditions.

22. 4. PERFORMANCES • The uses of this multiple stage are, in many ways, obvious. • The main action took place on the main stage and, because it was surrounded on three sides by the audience, the apron stage made for an intimacy we do not get today on the conventional stage with a proscenium arch; soliloquies could appear to be spoken confidentially to the audience and on the large stage 'asides ' were less artificial than they often are today. • The curtained recess at the back would be used, for instance, for the Capulets' tomb in Romeo and Juliet or for Desdemona's bedroom; the balcony, for Juliet's bedroom; and a trapdoor to the space below the stage would be Ophelia's grave.

23. There was no scenery or scene painting as such, but plenty of stage properties, some simple, some considerably more elaborate. There were realistic noises off, sometimes from the 'heavens' - for example, in the storm in King Lear. • Lear's words: "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!" would be accompanied by appropriate noises of thunder from above; in other plays, the sounds of battle would be heard from behind the stage and from under the stage would come such sounds as the music 'Under the earth' in Antony and Cleopatra or the Ghost in Hamlet saying "Swear!"

24. Costumes were elaborate and lavish but there was little attempt to present historical accuracy. • The whole canon of Shakespeare's plays in his own day, whatever the geographical setting and whatever the chronological period, would present Elizabethan England.

25. 5. INDOOR THEATRES • Simultaneously with the growth of the outdoor theatres, a number of indoor ones were built for the companies of Boy Actors. • They were smaller than the outdoor theatres, rectangular, roofed and lighted by candles. • They were attended by a somewhat different class of audience; admission was more expensive and they housed something like 700 spectators.

26. 6. THEATRE AND DRAMA • There is little doubt that the theatre of the time influenced contemporary drama in many ways. • Where today elaborate scenery provides the settings, Shakespeare had to do it by the words in his play; if the setting is important, the audience learns about it through the characters' speeches: • Why should I war without the walls of TroyThat find such cruel battle here within? asks Troilus at the beginning of Troilus and Cressida, simultaneously telling us where the play is taking place and describing to us Troilus's mental state.

27. Again, the outdoor theatre performances always took place in the light, so Shakespeare had to establish different times of day and night by the words of the play. For example • "The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve" (A Midsummer Night 's Dream) • "The moon shines bright" (A Merchant of Venice), • “Look Hector, how the Sun begins to set;How ugly night comes breathing at his heels,Even with the vail and darking of the Sun,To close the day up, Hector's life is done.” (Troilus and Cressida)

28. Duration of Time is also effectively conveyed through the words of the play. Take for instance, the murder of Duncan in Macbeth Act II, scene i; it begins with a discussion between Banquo and Fleance: • B. How goes the night, boy? F. The moon is down; I have not heard the clock. B. And she goes down at Twelve. F. I take't 'tis later, sir. The scene then progresses through, "the king's a-bed" . . . "Good repose", to the knocking on the door and Macduff and Lennox greeting Macbeth with "Good-morrow, noble sir!"

29. I suppose the best example of this way of dealing with time is to be found in Marlowe's Dr Faustus where, in the last scene over a period of some ten minutes, the audience is taken through the last agonising hour of Faustus's life from the moment he exclaims, • Ah, Faustus! Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned eternally,to the closing moments of his life when he is dragged away by devils.

30. Everything had to be conveyed to the audience through the words and there is little doubt that the audience had better memories and probably higher powers of attention than we do today, so that they took in and retained the information given to them.

31. Most people could not read so they had to rely on word of mouth and on memory; this is apparent in Romeo and Juliet when the Servant is sent to bid the Capulet's guests to dinner. He can't read the list he has been given and he asks Romeo to read it through to him; he hears it read once and then goes off to find the guests; yet, there are thirteen people on the list to say nothing of sisters, wives, daughters, nieces and so on.

32. There were no programmes so plays were often preceded by a 'Dumb Show' which was in effect a sort of synopsis of the action. Though there is no evidence that Shakespeare's own plays had such a preliminary, we see him making use of this convention in " The Mousetrap" in Hamlet.

33. Entrances and Exits • Perhaps the most significant influence upon the plays was the nature of the Elizabethan stage. Being an apron stage it was not possible to draw curtains across it and, since it was essentially an open air stage it was never possible to hide it in darkness. As a result, Shakespeare could not open or close plays - or even scenes - with a set scene or a great dramatic gesture.

34. Remember - it took half an hour to get the audience in or out and they could all the time see anything that was going on on the stage. Thus, Shakespeare would start his plays perhaps with a procession or with two characters walking on, talking to each other; later scenes often start with such words as, "Look where he comes" or some such introductory words.

35. More of a problem was getting the dead off the stage at the end of a tragedy. A modern playwright would be able to swallow up the end of Hamlet in darkness or draw curtains across the front of the stage. But the Elizabethan audience could see the stage as they slowly made their way out of the theatre. How the illusion would be spoilt, the spell broken, if the mutilated bodies should rise and walk off the stage!

36. So Shakespeare had to find methods to remove the dead: Let four captains Bear Hamlet like a Soldier to the stagecries Fortinbras, or Octavius Caesar says of Cleopatra, Take up her bed And bear her women from the monument.

37. It was the exigencies of his theatre that forced Shakespeare to end his tragedies with the tension lowered, the forces of evil losing hold and normality gaining control, He is often praised for his psychological understanding of his audience - not allowing them to rush out into the streets when emotion was at its height, but calming them down, sending them out quietly.

38. He certainly understood the power at his command, for he shows in Julius Caesar how Antony rouses the crowd and what the results of sending an audience away in a highly tense and emotional state can be.