ELIZABETHAN & JACOBEAN

THEATRE

Influences on the Development of the Elizabethan Theatre

Medieval Stagecraft Protestant Reformation

Tudor Pageantry Renaissance Learning and Ideas

Influence of Medieval Theatre Eager audience Established tradition of theatre and actors MYSTERY AND MORALITY PLAYS:

Mixing of high seriousness and low comedy

FOLK PLAYS: Pagan remnants: fairies and sprites Feast of Fools

INTERLUDES: Humanistic debates

Medieval Concepts of Tragedy De casibus: tragedies of fortune

Tragedy is less the result of individual action than a reflection of the inevitable turning of Fortune's wheel.

Fortune, traditionally female because of the association of women with the moon and changeability, has two faces, one benign, one severe.

Feast of Fools

Held between Christmas and Epiphany, particularly on New Year's Day

The ruling idea of the feast was the reversal of status.

The celebrations were relics of the ancient ceremonies of birth and renewal which took place at New Year and involved a temporary overturning of all values.

Feast of FoolsThe Ass, a widespread feature of the festival, was a mixture of Celtic, Roman and Christian traditions, for the Ass is at once a

relic of ancient magical cults, a fertility symbol, a symbol of strength and the epitome of stupidity.

The Protestant Reformation

Elizabeth (ruled 1558-1603) worked out a compromise church that retained as much as possible from the Catholic church while putting into place most of the foundational ideas of Protestantism.

Mystery and Morality plays were outlawed as they taught Roman Catholic doctrine   

1588: Defeat of the Spanish Armada The disgrace to

Spain damaged its prestige

England's star was on the rise.

Elizabeth took the defeat of the Armada as a sign of divine blessing

English patriotism and devotion to the Queen soared : history plays

The Battle of Gravelines: at which the English Fleet dispersed the Spanish Armada

Tudor Pageantry A hybrid dramatic form of literature,

ritual, and politics, Royal entries and aristocratic

entertainments -- fashionable literary forms were turned to the service of national propaganda Pageants Parades Masques

Composed by the bright young men who haunted the court in hopes of securing political office.

Full of spectacle: music, dance, elaboratestaging, fireworks

Renaissance Rebirth of Classical knowledge and ideals Roman theatre as model Humanistic Ideas Universities

Oxford Cambridge Inns of Court

Influence of Roman Theatre

5 act structure Comedy: Plautus and

Terence Plots Stock characters

Tragedy: Seneca Revenge motif Irony Use of ghosts Violent spectacle

Elizabethan Stock Characters Senex: old man in authority Miles gloriosus: braggart soldier Shrew: sharp-tongued woman Clever servant Machiavel: political schemer “Calumniator believed” : a liar who is believed Idiotes: a malcontent Parasite: a “moocher” Pedant: in love with the sound of his

own didactic voice Young Lovers Fools and clowns

Early Senecan Tragedies Gorbuduc by Thomas Sackville and

Thomas Norton The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd

Play within a play fromThe Spanish Tragedy

Humanism:from Morality to Chronicle

It was the aim of the humanists to educate those who ruled in wise and virtuous government.

How do you teach a king? Very tactfully . . . The effectiveness of the morality play was attractive to

humanists, who changed the nature of the moral from religion to political virtue without changing the techniques of the drama.

Theatre was a natural medium for the humanists to use in educating the king, for plays were frequently performed at Court.

Chronicle or History Plays

Explore the workings and legitimacy of kingship What is a good King? Historical exemplars (Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar) Often turn into tragedies

Types of Plays Chronicle or History

Plays Comedies

Romantic Pastoral Feast of Fools Social Humors

Tragedies Senecan Revenge De casibus -- turn of

Fortune Fatal flaw

Romances far-away adventures

Any combination of the above

“The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral,pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical historical,

scene individable or poem unlimited.” -- Hamlet

University Wits

University-educated playwrights, noted for their learning and clever language

George Peele (1556-96) Thomas Lodge (1558-1625) Thomas Nashe ( 1567-1601) Robert Greene (1560-92): best known

as first Shakespearian critic John Lyly (1554-1606)

Christopher Marlowe1564-93

MA from Cambridge Established blank verse as

dramatic medium: “Marlowe’s mighty line”

Overreacher Tragedies:

Tamburlaine Dido Queen of Carthage Dr. Faustus Edward II Massacre at Paris Jew of Malta

“Quod me nutrit me destruit” That which nourishes me, destroys me

Killed in a brawl

Ben Jonson1572-1637

Educated at Westminster School -- no university but the most learned of playwrights

Important comedies of humor include: Every Man in His Humor, Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair

Wrote and staged court masques with Inigo Jones

Celebrated poet and conversationalist: “Sons of Ben”

After Abraham van Blyenberch, 1618.©National Portrait Gallery, London.

COMEDY OF HUMORS The comedy of humours presents characters with a single attribute so exaggerated

that they become caricatures. Derives from the Latin humor, meaning "liquid." Renaissance theory held that the

human body contained a balance of four humours. When properly balanced, these humours were thought to give the individual a healthy mind and a healthy body

Humors: Choleric: yellow bile --

argumentative, angry Sanguine: blood --

cheerful, active Phlegmatic: phlegm --

thoughtful, passive Melancholy: black bile -- melancholic

Volpone at Carter Barron Theatre

Jacobean Tragedy

A sense of defeat A mood of spiritual despair The theme of insanity, of man pressed

beyond the limit of endurance Moral confusion ("fair is foul and foul is fair") that

threatens to unbalance even the staunchest of heroes. This sinister tendency came to a climax about 1605 and was in

part a consequence of the anxiety surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth I and the accession of James I.

While the Elizabethans affirned life, the Jacobeans were possessed by death.

James I

Jacobean Dramatists John Webster (c.1580-c.1632) Thomas Middleton (1580-1627) Francis Beaumont (c. 1585-16) John Fletcher (1579-1625) Cyril Tourneur (c.1575-1626) John Ford (1586-c.1639) Elizabeth Cary (c. 1585-1639)

John Websterc. 1580-c.1625

Son of a London tailor, member of Merchant Taylors’ Company

Collaborated on several plays with Thomas Dekker and John Marston

Fame rests on two tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi

Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren inThe Duchess of Malfi

Acting Companies 1590 -- 1642: approximately 20 companies of actors in

London (although only 4 or 5 played in town at one time) More than a hundred provincial troupes. Companies usually played in London in the winter and

spring and to travel in the summer when plague ravaged the city

Members: Shareholders Apprentices Hired men

Boy Actors No women on the English stage in Shakespeare's day.

The parts of women were acted by child actors--boys whose voices had not yet changed.

Whole acting companies were created with child performers: the Children of the Chapel Royal, and the St. Paul's Boys. The children's companies played regularly at Court.

The Puritans, who disapproved of the theatre in general, were particularly scandalized by boys cross-dressing as women.

Censorship Largely Puritan leaders

of the City of London disapproved of the theatres.

The Privy Council was wary of the political comment often present in topical plays.

Censorship under the direction of the Master of Revels was strict.

In 1596 the City Corporation ordered the expulsion of players from London and the closing of the inn-theatres.

Theatres moved across the River

William ShakespeareApril 23, 1564-April 23, 1616

Born in Stratford-upon-Avon Married Anne Hathaway in 1582

at age of 18 3 children: Susanna (1583) and

Hamnet and Judith (1585) 1585-92: “the lost years” 1595 record of membership in

Lord Chamberlain’s Men

Early Works: prior to 1594 History Plays:

Henry VI: 1,2,and 3 Richard III

Poetry: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, sonnets Plautine Comedy:

A Comedy of Errors Courtly Comedy:

Two Gentlemen of Verona Farcical/problem Comedy:

The Taming of the Shrew Senecan Revenge Tragedy:

Titus Andronicus Romantic Tragedy:

Romeo and Juliet

Lord Chamberlain’s

Men Originally formed under the patronage of Lord Strange, but

when he died in 1594, the players found a patron in Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain.

Performed at the Theatre and the Curtain 1599 moved to the newly built Globe. By 1600 they had

emerged as the leading theatrical company in London 1603 became the King's Men under a royal patent from

James I. The company continued successfully until the Puritans closed the theatres in 1642.

The Globe Built by the Burbages in 1598

for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men

Burned down in 1613 during production of Henry VIII

Rebuilt 1614

The New Globe: opened 1997

Blackfriars Theatre

Theatre Interiors

Sketch of the Swan Theatre

Popular Success: 1595-1600 Comedies:

Love’s Labour’s Lost A Midsummer’s

Night’s Dream Much Ado About

Nothing As You Like It Twelfth Night The Merchant of Venice Merry Wives of Windsor

Histories: King John Richard II Henry IV:

1,2 Henry V

Tragedies: Julius

Caesar Hamlet

New Place, Stratford, from a print of 1880,

purchased by Shakespeare in 1597

Anne Hathaway’s Cottage Stratford

17th-century LONDON

from a view by Claes Jansz Visscher

A Darker Vision: 1601-1607

Problem Plays: All’s Well That Ends Well Measure for Measure Troilus and Cressida

Tragedies: Othello King Lear Macbeth Antony and Cleopatra Coriolanus

Final Works: 1608-1612

Tragedy: Timon of Athens Romances:

Cymbeline Pericles The Winter’s Tale The Tempest

Collaborations with John Fletcher: Henry VIII Two Noble Kinsmen

Shakespeare was buried on April 25, 1616 in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, where he had been baptised just over 52 years earlier

Good friend for Jesus sake forbearTo dig the dust enclosed here!

Blest be the man that spares these stones,And curst be he that moves my bones

First Folio: 1623

The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays.

Included thirty-six plays, eighteen of which had never been published before

The editors of the volume, Shakespeare's fellow actors John Heminge and Henry Condell, arranged the plays in three genres: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.