Transcript Elizabethan Theatre

By: Lydia, Jose, Alexis.
 The Renaissance in England
 The climax of Renaissance drama came during the Elizabethan Age in
England. This was a period in which drama was the expression of the soul
of a nation, and theater became a vital force in the lives of people.
Famous Elizabethan Plays
Author
Play
John Webster (c.1580-1634)
Thomas Heywood (c. 1570-1641)
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594)
Francis Beaumont (1584-1616)
Beaumont and John Fletcher (1579 –
1625)
The Dutchess of Malfi
A Woman Killed with Kindness
The Spanish Tragedy
The Knight of t he Burning Pestle
The Maid’s Tragedy
 Three Elizabethan Dramatists
 Towering above all the brilliant actor-playwrights
responsible for the glory of the Elizabethan period, three
produced plays that never lost their appeal.
 The plays of Marlowe, Johnson, and Shakespeare
continue to be produced today.
 Christopher Marlowe (1564-1693) introduced the first
important use of blank (unrhymed) verse, the “mighty
line” of English poetic drama. He wrote Tamburlaine
the Great, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II.
 Ben Jonson (1572-1637) was a master of English comedy.
He wrote Volpone, The Jew of Malta, and Edward II.
 The Humors
 To the Elizabethans, the word humor (or humour, as the
British spell it0 referred not to an attitude of
amusement, but to a personality trait. Scholars believed
that all matter was made of four elements- air, earth,
fire, and water- and that the human body was composed
of these four elements, each having its own effect on the
personality.
The Humors
Element Body Fluid
Personality
Air
Fire
Water
Earth
Sanguine- light-hearted, happy-go-lucky
Choleric- angry, hot-tempered
Phlegmatic-dull, listless
Melancholy
Blood
Yellow Bile
Phlegm
Black Bile
•The humor of most interest in Elizabethan plays is that of black bile, represented
by earth and the melancholy personality. The melancholy character fell into three
main types: the lover, the malcontent and the intellectual.
•Hamlet is an excellent example of the intellectual melancholy humor.
 William Shakespeare (1564-1616) is consider by many
people to be not only the greatest Elizabethan
dramatist but perhaps the greatest dramatist of all
time.
 Shakespeare’s character felt emotions-love, jealously,
ambition, joy, and grief- that are as universal today as
they were four hundred years ago.
 The Elizabethan Playhouse
 The design of Elizabethan theaters was inspired by inn
yards, where the audience stood around a platform stage
or watched the onstage action from rooms surrounding
a courtyard.
 Behind the stage was the tiring house, a room that
functioned as the actors’ dressing room.
 In the center rear was a curtained recess called the of the
stage study, or inner body.
 The Elizabethan Playhouse cont.
 In the center of the second-level acting area was a
shallow balcony, the tarras, behind which a curtain
called the arras was often hung to conceal another
recess called the chamber. This area might have been
used by musicians, or even members of the audience.
 The Heavens, a roof supported by two ornate columns,
was above the stage.
 Above the Heavens was what appeared to be a small
house, which was appropriately called the scenery hut.
 The Elizabethan Playhouse cont.
 The members of the audience who paid a penny to stand
in the pit were called groundlings. The groundlings were
typically apprentices, soldiers, sailors, country folk, and
“cut purses,” the Elizabethan equivalent of present-day
pickpockets.

 William Shakespeare
 William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-on-Avon,
England, in 1564.
 By 1594 Shakespeare was established in London, where
he become a shareholder in the acting company known
as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later the King’s Men.
 In 1599 his company built a new theatre called the
Globe. When the company purchased Blackfriars
Theatre in 1608, Shakespeare was also a shareholder. He
did do some acting-even appearing before Queen
Elizabeth I- but his major contribution was as
playwright. He is credited with 37 plays.
 The Theatre Space
 Shakespeare wrote most of his plays for his acting
company’s own theatre, the Globe. There was not one
Globe, but two; when the first burned down in 1613 a
new theatre was promptly erected in the same spot.
 The new Globe was torn down in 1644, after the Puritan
government closed all the theaters, and no
contemporary pictures of either theatre are known to
exist.
 Styles of Costumes
 In Shakespeare’s day both male and female roles were
played by men; most actors performed in contemporary
costumes, with little attempt at period authenticity. For
the wealthy, Elizabethan dress meant luxurious
materials in a wide range of colors and textures,
trimmed with jewels, embroidery, fur or lace.
 Male costumes featured doubles- short jackets that
ordinarily opened up the front, with a standing
neckband, and often a short shaped skirt.
 Styles of Costumes cont.
 The most notable element of female costumes was the
farthingale, a hoop that extended the hips greatlysometimes as much as three or four feet.