Transcript Theatre in context - School of English and American

Theatre in context
The Middle Ages
• origins of theatre: myths, rites
• the Middle Ages: everyday theatre: mimes and
minstrels
• liturgical drama
esp. at Easter (also other church festivals)
• mystery plays: religious theatre for the people
from sacred drama to profane
(pro fano = ‘before the temple’
from church to marketplace
Later medieval developments
• Miracle Plays: Medieval plays treating the lives
of saints, or Bible stories.
• Morality Plays: Allegorical medieval plays, like
Everyman, that depict the eternal
struggle between good and evil
that transpires in this world,
using characters like Vice,
Virtue, Wisdom, etc.
Commedia dell'arte
Italian popular comedy of the 15th to 17th cc.
Featured performances improvised from
scenarios by a set of stock characters, and
repeated from play to play and troupe to troupe.
Scenario: in general, the prose description of a
play's story. In the commedia dell'arte, the
written outlines of plot and characters from
which the actors improvised the particular
actions of a performance.
Masque
Spectacular theatrical form, especially of the
Renaissance and the Neoclassical periods,
usually associated with court theatres or
special events. Emphasis was put on costumes
and effects, with much music and dancing;
amateur actors frequently performed
The London scene
Bankside: medieval centre of dissipation
brothels and bear baiting within the estates of
the Bishops of Winchester
in 1546 Henry VIII had brothels closed
17th c.: reopened, together with theatres
London theatres
GLOBE (1598-99) now Park Street. Sign: Hercules +World
used only summer: no roof except for stage & galleries
winter: Blackfriars Theatre (1578) as private theatre
for choir boys to practice; Farrant on ground floor,
theatre upstairs
Shakespeare: shareholder and player
HOPE in Bear Gardens: former bear and bull baiting
arena (modelled on Swan + movable stage)
later: gardens, public houses, breweries, foundries,
dyers' and glassmakers' works
ROSE (1586-87, 1st Bankside playhouse) in Rose
Lane: octagonal building of wood and plaster,
partly thatched
built by Henslowe; played Marlowe's plays;
SWAN in Paris Gardens, (flint stones and
wooden coloumns)
sometimes used for fencing matches
17th century
1642: Puritans ban theatres - even demolish them for moral reasons
baroque: opera
Restoration: she-tragedies with a woman in the
leading role
even Dryden's All for Love's Anthony: heart torn
by feelings which he cannot control or
understand
male characters: unambiguous heroism: rather
unconvincing
Heroic drama
John Dryden (1631-1700) exponent of the golden
mean in art, politics and morality,
Poet Laureate from 1668
Heroic couplet (a closed and balanced pair of rhyming
iambic pentameters)
against blank verse in much English drama
works against dramatic illusion
Italian and French influence
audience face actors, rather than surround them:
criticism presented outside the space of audience
blank verse vs heroic couplet
blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant
Shakespeare "As You Like It" II.vll. 139-43
heroic couplet: 2 iambic pentameters
Blank verse vs heroic couplet
heroic couplet: 2 rhyming iambic pentameters
(vs blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter)
And since that plenteous autumn now is past,
Whose grapes and peaches have indulged your taste,
Take in good part, from our poor poet's board,
Such rivelled fruits as winter can afford.
Dryden, All for Love, “Prologue”
http://poemshape.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/what-isheroic-couplets/
Comedy of manners
the social habits (manners and mores) of a given
society, usually the dominant one at the time,
typically the upper classes
Often cold caricature, witness to lack of moral
standards in society at the time
Restoration comedy: 1660 to early 18th century
sexual and marital intrigue
(Comedy of manners: term not restricted to
drama)
Romanticism
(mainly in German theatre):
• need for historical consistency (no precision,
though) for imaginative & plausible
presentation (realism)
• mid-19th c. France: return to the tradition of
middle class dramas
• good acting: move with the natural elegance
of gentry
• touring companies disappear
New Historicism
Interrogate the relationship between history and
literature – especially concerning the
Renaissance and Romantic period