Slide 1
SEMINER ONELIZABETHAN THATRESubmitted ByName: Tanusree Ghosh
(Dutta)Method: EnglishCollege Roll No. : 06
1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
It is quite impossible to complete any piece of study without
the help of others. I am beholden to many learned and knowledgeable
persons and well wishers for the completion of study through their
sincere cooperation. I deem it a great pleasure to acknowledge
them.First of all I want to convey my sense of gratitude from the
core of my heart to my guide, respected Dr. Jahidul Sarkar,
Principal of M.R. College of Education, B.Ed, and Dr. D.K.
Bhattacharjee, OSD, of M.R. College of Education, B.Ed for this
help in expanding my knowledge, their fruitful, sincere guidance as
well as their affectionate, valuable suggestions through out
session.I am extremely grateful and profoundly obliged to
acknowledge Moumita Roy, Lecturer, of M.R. College of Education,
B.Ed. for their endless encouragement, keen help, and ocean of
enthusiasm to select the topic and as well as concept planning from
time to time during this session.I am also grateful to all of my
friends who were always inspiration for me.
Tanusree Ghosh (Dutta)
INTRODUCTIONTheater had an unsavoury reputation. London
authorities refused to allow plays within the city, so theatres
opened across the Thames in Southwark, outside the authority of the
city administration.The first proper theatre as we know it was
built at Shoreditch in 1576. Before this time plays were performed
in the courtyard of inns, or sometimes in the houses of noblemen. A
noble had to be careful about which play he allowed to be performed
within his home, however. Anything that was controversial or
political was likely to get him into trouble.More theaters began
opening in the London area, including the Rose Theater in 1587, the
Hope Theater in 1613 and the most famous, the Globe Theater in
1599.
1
INTRODUCTIONAlthough Shakespeare's plays were performed at other
venues during his career, the Globe Theatre in the Southwark
district of London was the venue at which Shakespeare's best known
stage works (including his four great tragedies) were first
produced. The Globe was built by one of Shakespeare's associates,
Cuthbert Burbage, the brother of the most famous Shakespearean
actor of the Elizabethan Age, Richard Burbage.Five years prior to
the Globe's opening, Shakespeare became one of the share-owning
partners in a theater company organized under the sponsorship of
the Lord Chamberlain, the head of Queen Elizabeth I's royal
household.
THE TIME AND ERA
The Elizabethan era was from 1558 to 1603 and was a time where
the people were very violent and enjoyed blood and guts. one of the
most popular attractions in Shakespeare's London was animal
baiting. This was where people would watch animals fighting against
each other while the audience gambles on who would win.Theaters had
to fight hard for customers who were tempted by a whole range of
ways to spend their time. It was also difficult because the animal
baiting rings were right next to the Globe Theater. Shakespeare's
plays had to compete like these for an audience who loved blood and
violence, this very much influenced the plays that he wrote.
STAGE SPACE
The Globe Theater has a open arena design and structure. It has
a central yard, open to the sky, where people would have to stand
and watch, if it rained those members of the audience and the
actors would get wet. It had a raised stage at one end and was
surrounded by three tiers covered galleries which balconies
overlooking the back of the stage, where people could sit and not
be affected by the weather. The stage was projected halfway into
the yard.The theater is up to 100 feet in diameter and it took 6
months to build the structure of it. The Globe was made out of
timber, nail, stone, plaster and thatched roofs, which was later
changed to tiled roofs.There was a cannon above the stage that was
fired to signal that the play was about to begin.The Globe had a
bare stage that sloped down slightly towards the audience. Unlike
some modern theatres, the stage wasn't hidden behind a curtain.The
stage was big enough for several actors to be onstage at once and
it was very close to the audience. The groundings in the yard
surrounded the stage on three sides, and they could get close
enough to the stage to touch it, or even touch the actors.
Although it is difficult to know the exact way in which actors
performed on stage at the Globe. We do know that the acting style
change through time and in Shakespeare's day, actors seem to have
performed with many more over the top gestures then modern actors
use.We know about these extravagant gestures and the generally
exaggerated style of acting because lots of play writers make fun
of it.Like today, there were well-established conventions for what
certain gestures meant and we can also see this on portraits of the
period.One of the most famous criticisms of this style of acting
can be found in Hamlet. When Hamlet invites a group of travelling
players to perform a play in front of his mother and uncle, but
asks them no to follow the more exaggerated style.If the audience
was bored, did not like they story or a character, they would throw
food at the actors. The actors would have to stay focused and not
be distracted by the untamed crowd.All actors in Shakespeare's time
were men. Women were forbidden to act on the public stage and so
any female characters in Shakespeare's plays would have been
performed by boys whose voices hadn't broken.ACTING STYLE
In the Globe Theater, there was a 1500 plus audience capacity
and up to 3000 people would flock to the theater and its
grounds.The poorer members of the audience stood in the central
yard, which was open to the sky, so if it rained, they got rained
on. Because they were standing on the ground, they were known as
the 'Groundlings' or 'Stinkards', because they smelt so bad. The
groundings had a reputation for being rowdy. They would shout and
cheer throughout the play and often threw things at the actors.The
rich members of the audience sat in the covered galleries which
surrounded the yard. The rich would sit in comfort and were safe
from the weather.If the audience didn't like what they were seeing
on stage, they would shout insults or throw food and empty beer
bottles at the actors.In spite of this bad reputation, the theater
was a place where people from many different profession, social
classes and backgrounds mixed together.The groundlings were never
far away from the people in the galleries, and plays of the times
often mocked any snobbish citizens who believed that their seats in
the galleries made them better than the people down in the yard. At
the end of the play, many of the spectators coming down from the
expensive seats would mingle with the groundlingsThe grounds of the
Globe were bustling with people and potential audience. There were
stalls selling merchandise and refreshments, which attracted non
playgoers to the market.There were no toilets so people had to
relieve themselves outside or if they were standing in the yard,
right then and there.Plays began at 2pm and went on till about 4 or
5pm, which meant that in order to see plays people would have to
miss part of the working day.AUDIENCE
Plays also clashed with afternoon church services, which also
began at 2. So many people would go skip church to go to the
theater, and the shouts from the audience disturbed the service.
this was once of the reasons why Puritans and cit authorities saw
plays and theaters as immoral.People would go to the Globe with
clear expectations about what they were going to see. The plays
were advertised on sheets of paper called playbills which were put
up around the streets.Many plays followed very typical patterns,
and people who liked a particular kind of play would be able to
choose what they would enjoy seeing. Most of the popular plays
involved revenge and bloody murders because that was what people in
those days enjoyed watching. The plays would often have what they
were about in their title, so that the audience would know what
they would be seeing from just the name of the play.If the audience
didn't like the play that was being performed, they would shout and
stamp until the actors acted something else instead.AUDIENCE
ENTRANCES AND EXITSThere were two doors at the back of the stage
at the Globe, which the actors could use to come on and off
stage.Sometimes these doors might have been used to represent
different locations, wood signs would have been hung above the
doors saying what places they represented.There also seems to have
another space or door at the back of the stage, although nobody is
sure exactly what this would have looked like. It was used when a
character had to be suddenly revealed or exposed as it was known.
This place was called the discovery space.
10
PROPS, SET AND COSTUMEIn Shakespeare's time, people were very
conscious of the latest fashions, and also of the social
conventions behind clothes. So costumes were an important way for
the actors on Shakespeare's plays to convey information about the
characters that they were playing.Some actors would play two
different characters in the plays so they would use costumed to
distinguish between the different characters.There were also other
ways of using costumes to say things about characters. The colour
of their clothes was symbolically important. For example black
would be seen as a dark, evil or mourning character. White was
associated with purity and yellow was a colour associated with
lovers.Costumes were not used realistically in Shakespeare's
theatre. Actors playing lords or layers or soldiers or servants,
for example, would have worn costumes that would have made their
status instantly recognizable. Costumes would also be used to
portray the characters' nationality.
PROPS, SET AND COSTUMEShakespeare's plays were performed on a
bare stage, with no scenery. sometimes the scene would use sound
effects or the characters might wear costumes which revealed their
nationality.Sometimes the location might be signalled by the
actors' skills. Because in all of Shakespeare's plays, only men
acted, men had to dress up as woman for the woman roles. Like
costumes, props were important assets for the theater companies.
Most of the props that the companies possessed were small, portable
objects, that were easy to store and could be carried on stage by
the actors as the companies didn't want to hire stagehands.So a
company might have a lot of swords, shields, pieces or armor, and
so on which would be useful for a wide variety of plays. But the
company might also have a few larger props and that might be
specific to just one or two of the plays. But their selection of
props would have been fairly limited.
Lots of plays form Shakespeare's time call for 'noises off', or
form backstage there would be sounds of battle, shouts, gunshots,
horses, music and birds.There was a cannon above the stage that was
fired to signal that the play was about to begin.The cannon was
only one of the special effects that were used in the Elizabethan
theater. fireworks were used in a number of plays, but these
fireworks were notoriously foul-smelling and even in the Globe,
with its open roof, they would have been terribly noisy. Towards
the end of Shakespeare's career and later in the 17th century, more
and more plays were performed in indoor theaters, which would have
been more difficult to let of explosions, so they used quieter
sound effects.There was no artificial lighting in the Globe, all
the light came from sunlight. in order to make best use of the
available light, plays would have to begin in the early
afternoon.
LIGHTING AND STAGE EFFECTS
The history of the theater is fascinating. How plays were first
produced in the yards of inns - the Inn-yards. The very first
theater and the development of the amphitheatre! The Elizabethan
Entrepreneurs ( the men with the ideas and the money!). The
building, design and construction of a London Elizabethan Theatre,
the plays, the playwrights, the politics and the propaganda all
play an important part in the history of the Elizabethan
Theatre.
CONCLUSION
WEBLIOGRAPHYhttp://elizabethan-theater.wikispaces.com/Introductionhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Renaissance_theatrehttp://shakespearean.org.uk/elizthea1.htmhttp://www.britannica.com/shakespeare/browse?browseId=248012
THANK YOU !
