Transcript Elizabethan Theatre History Elizabethan theatre history is

Shakespeare Quotes
William Shakespeare quotes such as "To be, or not to be" and "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?" form some of literature's
most celebrated lines. Other famous Shakespeare quotes such as "I 'll not budge an inch", "We have seen better days" ,"A dish fit for the
gods" and the expression it's "Greek to me" have all become catch phrases in modern day speech. Furthermore, other William
Shakespeare quotes such as "to thine own self be true" have become widely spoken pearls of wisdom.
Sonnet 18
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date".
Hamlet
To be, or not to be: that is the question". - (Act III, Scene I).
"Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry". - (Act I, Scene
III).
"This above all: to thine own self be true". - (Act I, Scene III).
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.". - (Act II, Scene II).
"That it should come to this!". - (Act I, Scene II).
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so". - (Act II, Scene II).
"What a piece of work is man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action
how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! ". - (Act II, Scene II).
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks". - (Act III, Scene II).
"In my mind's eye". - (Act I, Scene II).
"A little more than kin, and less than kind". - (Act I, Scene II).
"Brevity is the soul of wit". - (Act II, Scene II).
""When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions". - (Act IV, Scene V).
As You Like It
"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" - (Act II, Scene VII).
"Can one desire too much of a good thing?". - (Act IV, Scene I).
"I like this place and willingly could waste my time in it" - (Act II, Scene IV).
"How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!" - (Act V, Scene II).
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind! Thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude".(Act II, Scene VII).
"True is it that we have seen better days". - (Act II, Scene VII).
"For ever and a day". - (Act IV, Scene I).
"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool". - (Act V, Scene I).
King Richard III
"Now is the winter of our discontent". - (Act I, Scene I).
"A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!". - (Act V, Scene IV).
"Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe". - (Act V, Scene III).
"So wise so young, they say, do never live long". - (Act III, Scene I).
"Off with his head!" - (Act III, Scene IV).
"The king's name is a tower of strength". - (Act V, Scene III).
Romeo and Juliet
"O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?". - (Act II, Scene II).
"It is the east, and Juliet is the sun" . - (Act II, Scene II).
"Good Night, Good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow." - (Act II, Scene II).
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". - (Act II, Scene II).
"Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast". - (Act II, Scene III).
"Tempt not a desperate man". - (Act V, Scene III).
"For you and I are past our dancing days" . - (Act I, Scene V).
"O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright". - (Act I, Scene V).
"It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear" . - (Act I, Scene V).
"See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand! O that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!". - (Act II, Scene II).
"Not stepping o'er the bounds of modesty". - (Act IV, Scene II).
The Merchant of Venice
"But love is blind, and lovers cannot see".
The Merry Wives of Windsor
"Why, then the world 's mine oyster" - (Act II, Scene II).
"This is the short and the long of it". - (Act II, Scene II).
"I cannot tell what the dickens his name is". - (Act III, Scene II).
"As good luck would have it". - (Act III, Scene V).
Measure for Measure
"We have heard the chimes at midnight". - (Act III, Scene II)
King Henry IV, Part III
"The smallest worm will turn, being trodden on". - (Act II, Scene II).
"Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer". - (Act V, Scene VI).
King Henry the Sixth, Part I
"He will give the devil his due". - (Act I, Scene II).
"The better part of valour is discretion". - (Act V, Scene IV).
King Henry IV, Part II
"He hath eaten me out of house and home". - (Act II, Scene I).
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown". - (Act III, Scene I).
"A man can die but once". - (Act III, Scene II).
"I do now remember the poor creature, small beer". - (Act II, Scene II).
King Henry the Sixth, Part II
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". - (Act IV, Scene
II).
"I 'll not budge an inch". - (Induction, Scene I).
Timon of Athens
"We have seen better days". - (Act IV, Scene II).
Julius Caesar
"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him". - (Act III, Scene II).
"But, for my own part, it was Greek to me". - (Act I, Scene II).
"A dish fit for the gods". - (Act II, Scene I).
"Cry "Havoc," and let slip the dogs of war". - (Act III, Scene I).
"Et tu, Brute!" - (Act III, Scene I).
"Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings". - (Act I,
Scene II).
"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
Macbeth
"what 's done is done".- (Act III, Scene II).
"I bear a charmed life". - (Act V, Scene VIII).
"Yet do I fear thy nature; It is too full o' the milk of human kindness." - (Act I, Scene V).
"
"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it; he died as one that had been studied in his death to throw away the dearest thing he
owed, as 't were a careless trifle". - (Act I, Scene IV).
Twelfth Night
"Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them". - (Act II, Scene V)
"Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better" . - (Act III, Scene I).
The Tempest
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, rounded with a little sleep".
King Henry the Fifth
"Men of few words are the best men" . - (Act III, Scene II).
A Midsummer Night's Dream
"The course of true love never did run smooth". - (Act I, Scene I).
"Out of the jaws of death". - (Act III, Scene IV).
"Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and
then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." - (Act V, Scene V).
King Lear
"I am a man more sinned against than sinning". - (Act III, Scene II).
"Nothing will come of nothing." - (Act I, Scene I).
Othello
"‘T’is neither here nor there." - (Act IV, Scene III).
"I will wear my heart upon my sleeve for daws to peck at". - (Act I, Scene I).
Antony and Cleopatra
"My salad days, when I was green in judgment." - (Act I, Scene V).
Cymbeline
"The game is up." - (Act III, Scene III).
"I have not slept one wink.". - (Act III, Scene III).
The Commoners, the Groundlings or Stinkards
Elizabethan Theatre History
Elizabethan theatre history is fascinating. Plays were first produced in the yards of
inns - the Inn-yards. The plays, the playwrights, the politics and the propaganda all
play an important part in Elizabethan theatre history.
The history of the Elizabethan Theatre is a short and turbulent one. The success and
popularity shown by Elizabethan theatre history during the life of William
Shakespeare is an outstanding success story for the theatrical entrepreneurs of the era.
The Elizabethan period saw the rise in the popularity of theatres and during this time
the staging of plays moved from renovated inn-yards to the building of huge out door
amphitheatres, such as the Globe, which were used for the summer seasons and the
building or renovation of indoor theatres, used in the Winter seasons and by royalty,
called Playhouses. The Elizabethan Theatre history started in 1576 and continued in
England until the Protestants came to power. By 1648 Elizabethan theatres and
playhouses were ordered to be pulled down, all actors to be seized and whipped, and
anyone caught attending a play to be fined five shillings - but this was not the end of the
Elizabethan theatre history!
The Elizabethan stage.
During the early part of the 16th century, there were two distinct types of theatre in England. One was represented by small groups of
professional actors who performed in halls, inns, or marketplaces. The location of a play was established by the words and gestures of the
actors. As in the commedia dell'arte, these localities had little significance. The second type of theatre, found in the London area, was
made up of amateurs, usually university students, performing for the royal court and assorted gentry. The audience and the actors were
educated, acquainted with the classics, and knowledgeable about theatre in other countries, particularly France. The stage was probably
set with buildings made of laths, covered with painted canvas, with cloud borders masking the upper part of the acting area.
The significant achievement of the Elizabethan stage was connected with the theatres of professional acting groups, not the court theatre.
During the second half of the 16th century, as they became successful, the troupes no longer needed to remain itinerant. In 1576 the actor
James Burbage erected the first permanent public theatre, called simply the Theatre. The building boom continued until the end of the
century; the Globe, where Shakespeare's plays were first performed, was built in 1599 with lumber from the demolished Theatre.
The typical Elizabethan stage was a platform, as large as 40 feet square (more than 12 metres on each side), sticking out into the middle of
the yard so that the spectators nearly surrounded it. It was raised four to six feet and was sheltered by a roof, called "the shadow" or "the
heavens." In most theatres the stage roof, supported by two pillars set midway at the sides of the stage, concealed an upper area from
which objects could be raised or lowered. At the rear of the stage was a multileveled facade with two large doors at stage level. There was
also a space for "discoveries" of hidden characters, in order to advance the plot; this was probably located between the doors. Some
scenes took place in a playing area on the second level of the facade, but, again, historians disagree as to which scenes they were.
Properties were occasionally carried onto the platform stage, but from extant lists it is obvious that they were few in number. Some
properties were so cumbersome that they remained onstage throughout a performance. Smaller properties were probably revealed in the
discovery space, and servants carried some properties on and off. It appears that the audience was not concerned by the scenic
inconsistencies.
All of the theatre buildings were round, square, or octagonal, with thatched roofs covering the structure surrounding an open courtyard.
Spectators, depending on how much money they had, could either stand in the yard, which may have sloped toward the stage, sit on
benches in the galleries that went around the greater part of the walls, sit in one of the private boxes, or sit on a stool on the stage proper.
The importance of this type of theatre was its flexibility. In some ways it was similar to earlier attempts to reconstruct the scaenae frons of
the Romans; it had the facade and the entrance doors. The Elizabethan theatre differed in that it had a main platform, an inner stage, and
an upper stage level that made movement possible in all directions instead of simply along the length of a narrow stage.
Special effects were also a spectacular addition at the
Elizabethan theatres thrilling the audiences with
smoke effects, the firing of a real canon, fireworks
(for dramatic battle scenes) and spectacular 'flying'
entrances from the rigging in the 'heavens'.
The Commoners called the
Groundlings or Stinkards would
have stood in the theatre pit and
paid 1d entrance fee. They put 1
penny in a box at the theatre
entrance - hence the term 'Box
Office'
. Theatre in Elizabethan England was mainly divided into venues where the plays were performed; open air amphitheatre, inn-yards and
playhouses.
Inn-Yard Theatres
This was how the Elizabethan theatre in England emerged. A possible root of the inn-yard theatre were the so-called "strolling players" whose
performing company moved from one village square or market place to another. Inn-keepers noticed that whenever these moving players were
there, there were a lot of people availing their services so they thought of offering accommodations to these "strolling players" while the provided
entertainment to the audience.
Audience that ended up buying mead or ale from the inn. A fee was also charged to those who want to enter the inn and many of the laborers and
farmers came with their families to watch these performances and they treated such events as thought it was a festival.
Open Air Amphitheatre
This started with James Burbage in 1576 when he made the move to cast in iron the legitimacy of theatre, its structure was patterned from Roman
and Greek amphitheatres. Initially, what was staged in areas similar to this, like the town square, was the very popular form of entertainment
called bull or bear baiting. The stage mutated itself eventually to accommodate human theatricals but the construction of the very first
amphitheatres and bull arenas were very similar. Basically, what James Burbage was to increase profits with this type of venue. Inn-yards can
house 300 people while amphitheatres housed 3000.
Playhouses
It did not take long before indoor plays were produced. Their advent made it easier for the actors to cater to the nobility-- as the indoor setting
provided comfort and luxury that this particular audience held highly. The pay off of this luxury was that the price of the entrance fee was so
steep; the common folk rarely had enough money to avail of this luxury theatre.
Playhouses also allowed for the Elizabethan theatre in England to continue during the winter months and in the evenings, using candlelight for
lighting. As the stage was far intimate than the open stage, this allowed for more emphasis in the words of the play rather than big, attentiongrabbing effects.
Amphitheatres
The Theatre, Finsbury Fields, Shoreditch, London Amphitheatre
Newington Butts, Southwark, Surrey Amphitheatre
The Curtain, Finsbury Fields, Shoreditch, London Amphitheatre
The Rose, Bankside, Surrey Amphitheatre
The Swan, Paris Garden, Surrey Amphitheatre
The Globe, Bankside, Surrey Amphitheatre
The Fortune, Golding Lane, Clerkenwell Amphitheatre
The Boar's Head, Whitechapel, London Amphitheatre
The Red Bull, Clerkenwell Amphitheatre
The Bear Garden Bankside, Surrey Amphitheatre
The Bull Ring Bankside, Surrey Amphitheatre
The Hope Bankside, Surrey Amphitheatre
Playhouses
Paul's, St. Paul's Cathedral precinct,
The Blackfriars,
The Cockpit, Drury Lane, Westminster,
Salisbury Court,
Gray's Inn Theatre,
Middle Temple Inn Theatre,
Whitehall Theatre,
Whitefriars
Coming from the diatribe Histriomastix by William Prynne, he told of an urban myth which occurred in an inn-yard theatre, about the
Devil himself manifesting in the middle of the play Doctor Faustus. It claimed to have made some audience members lose their sanity.
Inn-yards
The Bull Inn,
The Bell Savage,
The Cross Keys,
The Bell,
The White Hart,
The George Inn
When you consider how the Elizabethans spoke to one another, you can really see their uniqueness in their literature. For example, you
can really feel the emotion and feelings about how they loved how their English sounded. Even the early plays were packed with rhythms
and alliterations. As well, you can see that Shakespeare himself during the Elizabethan time adopted several unusual words.
Unlike today where sentences have to be well structured from a grammar perspective, this was not the case during Elizabethan times. It
was much more important to have a nice sounding sentence. Therefore, you will see many sentences with repeated words to give
emphasis.
Another problem that you may have if you were to read writings from the Elizabethan period is that there are often less transitional
words or grammatical signals. So often times it can be difficult to hear or read and find the subject of a sentence.
Elizabethan Language and Elizabethan words
Shakespeare is a classic example of how the English language has changed since the Elizabethan times. Throughout most of the literature
he produced, you will find that he used the word "most" instead of the word "very". So for example, if I were to say, "He is very high."
Shakespeare would have wrote, "He is most high". This is confusing but just a slight change in the way the words were used.
As mentioned above, you would also find several repeated words to give emphasis. Such as in Hamlet you will see sayings such as,
"Excellent, Excellent well". While this is confusing, this is also how they would speak to one another. It has a very distinguished sound to
it that even those who speak English may find difficult to understand by today's standards.
A classic example of how the Elizabethans likely talked can be seen in the King James Version of the Holy Bible. Several translations have
been made since then simply based on the fact that many people find it difficult to read. Also, several words have different meanings than
they used to so the right context of the writing in the King James Version must be evaluated while reading it.
Metaphor
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
2 .2
What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun
2 .2
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
1. 4
Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night.
Romeo and Juliet, 3. 2
Come, civil night,
Thou sober-suited matron, all in black.
3. 2
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Romeo and Juliet, 3. 2
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain-tops.
Romeo and Juliet, 3. 5
Beauty's ensign yet
Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks,
And death's pale flag is not advanced there.
Romeo and Juliet, 5. 3
Come, gentle night, come, loving, black-brow'd night.
Romeo and Juliet, 3. 2
Simile
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
1.5
As is the bud bit with an envious worm,
Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air,
Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
Could we but learn from whence his sorrows grow.
We would as willingly give cure as know.
1.1
How silver-sweet sound lovers' tongues by night,
Like softest music to attending ears!
Romeo and Juliet, 2. 2
My man's as true as steel.
Romeo and Juliet, 2. 4
Death lies on her like an untimely frost
Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.
Romeo and Juliet, 4. 5
Oxymoron/ Antithesis
Romeo’s confusion
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire,
sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?
Act 1
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Romeo and Juliet, 1. 5
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
Romeo and Juliet, 2. 2
Pun
Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground
1.1
M Dreamers often lie (meaning tell lies)
R In bed asleep while they do dream things true (meaning lying down)
1.4
"THIS populace that watched with joy the cruel torment of a bear or
the execution of a Catholic, also delighted in the romantic comedies of
Shakespeare. This people, so appallingly credulous and ignorant, so
brutal, childish, so mercurial compared with Englishmen of today, yet
set the standard of national greatness. This absurdly decorated gallant
could stab a rival in the back, or write a penitential lyric. Each man
presented strange, almost inexplicable, contrasts in character, as Bacon
or Raleigh, or Elizabeth herself. The drama mingles its sentiment and
fancy with horrors and bloodshed; and no wonder, for poetry was no
occupation of the cloister. Read the lives of the poets--Surrey, Wyatt,
Sidney, Spenser, Raleigh, Marlowe, Jonson--and of these, only Spenser
and Jonson died in their beds, and Ben had killed his man in a duel. . . .
Crime, meanness, and sexual depravity often appear in the closest
juxtaposition with imaginative idealism, intellectual freedom, and moral
grandeur. . . ."
-- NEILSON and THORNDIKE, Facts About Shakespeare
Boy actors: Some of the differences between then and now
In Shakespeare's time, girls and women were not allowed to act on stage. All the female parts therefore had to be
played by boys. Indeed, in Elizabethan and Jacobean times there were troupes of boy actors who played every part
in a dramatic performance.
The boy trainees would, of course, eventually be able to play men's parts but during their apprenticeship, while
they were young and when their voices hadn't broken, they played female parts. They often entered the profession
between the ages of ten and thirteen, some of them continuing to play women's parts until they were in their late
teens or early twenties.
There may be some questions you would like to ask about these boy actors. You may have asked some of the
following questions:
1) How would young teenage actors be able to play parts of mature women like Cleopatra? : Nobody really knows
the answer to this question, because there is very little written evidence about which boy actors played which parts.
Cleopatra, with her 'infinite variety', would have been an incredibly difficult part to play and it seems likely that the
play was not very successful when it was first written. We don't know the details, but it is at least possible that the
play was not very successful because there wasn't a boy who could play the role effectively. It's also possible,
however, that the more mature female parts were played by either older boys or less masculine-looking men.
2) How effective would they be? Would the audience be convinced? : They must have been generally effective
because most of the plays were successful and Elizabethan audiences were much less polite and accommodating than
our own, so they would soon have made their displeasure felt.
What sort of physical contact would there be between the boy playing a woman and the man with
whom she was engaged in a love scene?: There would only be formal physical contact between
actors such as Romeo and Juliet. Remember that in the most famous love scene in Shakespeare,
Romeo and Juliet are separated by one of them being on the balcony while the other is on the
ground! In many cases the contact would be no more than the touching or kissing of a hand.
Did the lack of realism of having a boy play a female part matter?: Not really, because the
Elizabethan stage was unrealistic anyway. They didn't have scenery or complex sound effects to
suggest realistically what they were describing. They didn't separate themselves from the audience
by curtains. Since their audiences didn't expect realism in these ways, they could cope well with
unrealistic boy actors. The power of Shakespeare was in the words.
However, all this doesn't mean that the boy actors didn't need considerable powers in order to
play their parts successfully. They would need:
An excellent memory.
An ability to act with wit and energy, especially in the parts where girls dress up as boys, such as
Viola in Twelfth Night and Rosalind in As You Like It.
A good singing voice for some of the parts, such as Ophelia in Hamlet and Desdemona in Othello.
A particular physique for particular parts. Shakespeare often wrote parts with particular actors in
mind and this was presumably true of the boys' parts too, since mention is made in the texts of
their height, for instance Rosalind is tall, while Maria in Twelfth Night is short.
Far from the image the Puritans give, boy actors were well looked after by the companies they
worked for. They lodged with the families of senior actors, where they were fed and clothed, as well
as being trained in their art.