IB English A

DJ-06/01/09

Notes on Drama in the Renaissance

At the close of the Middle Ages, some of the morality plays and miracles had
been extended into interludes, performed at courtly banquets by household servants
and strolling players. Some of these were expanded into real comic plays, as early as
1560. Comedy thus preceded tragedy: it appealed to a wider audience and could be
more easily acted (though perfection of comic timing is perhaps the most difficult
aspect of acting).
Tragedy began in the Renaissance only with the revival of classical learning, in a
conscious attempt to recreate classical dramatic forms. Students at the universities,
studying Greek and Latin classics, were presenting productions of the classical
tragedies in their original languages, for audiences of other scholars. By about 1560
they were beginning to translate the classical originals into English -- Seneca's Latin
version of "Oedipus" was thus turned into an English version.
Then people bean to treat local stories in the Senecan manner, creating bloody
tragedies full of high-flown oratory. The earliest of these local stories was "Gorboduc"
which was produced in 1561, the first play using the blank verse which became
standard form for Renaissance drama. (Classical drama had used other metrical forms;
those writing in English had the idea that blank verse was the best possible verse
approximation to actual English speech rhythms, and this is why they adopted it in
their plays.)
Many features which had been common in classical drama were adopted in
English tragedy too:
--Chorus to conclude each act with comments on content
--Dumb Show to mime chief actions of the scene about to be presented
--the Ghost as a catalyst to action.
In addition, the classical tradition contributed weighty ideas and careful expression.
The local drama was the source of emotion and dramatic action. The two strains came
together only in the 1580's, when some university-trained dramatists (e.g., Christopher
Marlowe)--known as the university wits--came to London and mixed with the
professional playwrights from the popular tradition.
Meanwhile, this popular tradition had developed into a truly professional theatre.
During the early Elizabethan era, the house-hold servants of various courtiers had
become strolling players, performing in innyards and at various homes, under the
company name of "Lord ____'s Men" or "Lord ____'s Servants." Queen Elizabeth and
her friend Lord Leicester were particularly fond of drama, encouraged performances at
court and gave a Royal Patent in 1574 to one such group, Lord Leicester's Servants.
This patent gave the acting company royal protection and helped to keep them from
suffering repression by those who objected to plays and actors on principle. In
particular the church and the middle-class Puritan officials of the City of London
resisted the growth of public performances. They said that audiences were unruly and
vulgar, that performances attracted prostitutes and pickpockets.
When drama became increasingly popular, Richard Burbage of the Lord
Chamberlain's Men had the idea of building a structure especially for dramatic

performances. He built it on leased land in Shoreditch, outside the city walls of

London, since the authorities would not authorize it within the city.
It was called The Theatre, built in 1576, and it was the first of a number of very
popular theatres built in London in the same era. Later Burbage tore down this first
Theatre and moved the lumber to the south bank of the Thames (near where the
National Theatre stands today) where he re-erected the building as The Globe, which
was the theatre for which Shakespeare worked.
The theatres were immensely popular: by 1600 there were five of them, each
seating about 2,000 people and putting on a performance almost every day. Thus there
was a daily capacity of 10,000 when London had a population of only 100,000! And
audiences wanted new entertainment: each theatre produced a series of plays in
rotation (the repertoire system), performing a play perhaps ten times during its "run,"
and adding a new play every two weeks or so.
In addition to performing in such public theatres, the acting companies performed
in several other kinds of settings. Sometimes the acting companies were asked to
perform at Court for the Queen and later for King James. They might also perform at
the homes of other noblemen. They were also asked on some occasions to perform for
the law students at the Inns of Court, the "law schools" of London. In times of plague,
when the public theatres were closed by the city authorities, the companies might
wander through the provinces (it is probable that it was on such a tour that
Shakespeare first saw professional actors, when they visited Stratford and per formed
in the Guildhall during his childhood.)
The acting companies were shareholding groups, though only Shakespeare's
Globe Theatre was actually owned by the acting company itself. The actors
commissioned plays from dramatists, and some playwrights worked exclusively for
certain companies. Thus, Shakespeare and Ben Jonson wrote for rival companies in
rival the atres. There would be a core of about 6-10 actors in a company, all men, who
shared the proceeds and hired 4-6 others as weekly, wage-earning extras, along with
boy apprentices (who played women's roles and took small extra parts). There was
much doubling of parts, since a company would have only about 16 actors in all.
Actors would be give scripts only for their own parts, together with cues. The
complete text was written down in only one copy, held by a "book-holder" or
prompter. This was in order to avoid pi rating of texts by other companies, but it
caused difficulties for actors: the demand for new plays meant that the rehearsal
period was very brief and rushed, and thus actors might not know what the WHOLE
play was like until a day or two before their first performance, having learned their
own roles individually. Writers also had to write under great pressure of time.
Even with all the efforts to protect them from theft, many texts were pirated
anyway, resulting in "Bad Quartos," full of errors, published without permission of the
authors and based on partial scripts and faulty memories of individual actors.
Sometimes an Authorized Quarto would be published AFTER a play was no longer
being produced.

Not until 1623 were all of Shakespeare's plays published in an authorized version,
the First Folio put together in his honor by friends and former colleagues, after his
death. This was an unusual honor, indicating his very special position as the most
respected dramatist of his time.
Around 1600, a new fad developed for child actors: for many years there had been
troupes of child actors at the public schools like Eton, but they now tended to become
truly professional groups and rivaled the adult companies (see references to this in
"Ham let").
Some of the varieties of drama which were popular in the Renaissance need to be
mentioned because they had an influence on Shakespeare's work.
Masques were spectacular performances produced at court and in wealthy homes,
combining dance, music and lyric poetry. They usu ally treated mythological subjects
and pastoral stories--featuring philosophical shepherds and lovelorn shepherdesses,
speaking poetry and singing to the accompaniment of lutes in idyllic pastoral set tings.
The courtiers themselves would often take roles in the performances. Masques had
their beginning as early as 1512 in England. They were often written and designed by
professionals: Ben Jonson, who later wrote for the public theatre, began as a writer of
courtly masques; Inigo Jones, who became famous as an architect and designer, also
created the designs for court masques. (Shakespeare uses elements of the masque in
several of his plays, including "As You Like It.")
Antimasques were comic parodies of masques (analogous to the sa tyr play in
relation to Greek tragedy), treating mythical subjects in absurd fashion. (Shakespeare
used the antimasque in "Midsummer Night's Dream in the "mechanicals' play".)
The public often came crowding into court to see these spec tacles, and it is no
wonder that playwrights began to incorporate them into dramas presented in the public
theatres.
The chronicle play was an English invention, using history but bending it to
artistic shape. They were stories of King Arthur, of later kings and other English
characters, such as "Arden of Faversham," an actual murderer. The play "Edward II,"
by Christopher Marlowe, around 1590, transformed this genre by raising it to the
status of real art.
The tragedy of blood was a sub-type based on classical models. Thomas Kyd's
"The Spanish Tragedy," written before 1588, was the best known of these, and many
of its elements also appear in some of Shakespeare's plays: for example, there was a
ghost, demanding revenge a maddened gentleman who sought revenge, a villain using
cunning schemes, a beautiful and injured lady, a play within a play, and a bloody
climax. Christopher Marlowe also used some of these conventions.
Marlowe was the best known of the dramatists other than Shakespeare. He was
born in the same year, 1564, but he had a very different upbringing, receiving a
classical education at Cambridge (he was intended to go into the clergy). He has been
called "the father of English dramatic poetry," since it was he more than any one else

who wove together the scholarly traditions of the university wits and the energy and
action of the popular public theatre.
When Marlowe arrived in London, there were already rough comedies, tragedies
and chronicles, but the scholars scorned what the ordinary public loved, and vice
versa. Marlowe adopted the energy and spectacle of the public theatre--but added a
beauty of language and a sophistication of characterization and theme.
He is best known for what he did to the very rough blank verse of drama as he
found it: playwrights before him had used isolated 10-syllable iambic lines. He
developed flowing, varied blank verse, using pauses and changes of accent and
making lines flow together in longer speech patterns. "Marlowe's might line" has been
praised ever since he produced it.

THE THEATRES
The purpose-built theatres of the Elizabethan period, such as the Globe, were
modeled on the earlier sites of performances by touring companies in country
innyards. The buildings would be circular or polygonal, up to three storeys high, open
to the sky to provide light. The raised stage projected from one side of the circle into
the central open area. The stage was at first a structure of boards on sawhorse but it
later became permanent, and there was then a roof over the outside ring where the
seats were located and over the stage itself, though the surrounding yard, where the
poorer spectators stood, was still open to the sky. The area under the stage could not
be seen by the audience because it was curtained off. It was called "hell" and used for
various purposes, with trapdoors permitting access to the stage itself. The underside of
the roof over the stage would be painted blue, with golden stars and a sun, and was
called "the heavens." Above the stage roof was a small "hut," and a trapdoor in the
floor of the hut permitted stagehands to use machinery to lower gods in "chariots"
(deus in machina) onto the stage, as if they had come from "heaven." (Shakespeare
does this in one of his romantic plays "Cymbelline.") Above the hut was a flagpole,
and a flag was flown from it on a day when a performance was scheduled.
The stage projected halfway into the open central area. Its roof was two storeys above
the stage floor, and at the back of the stage there were two doors which gave access to
a backstage area, part of the outer ring of the building, called the "tiring house."
Between these two doors there was probably a recessed and curtained "inner stage" or
"study"--it seems that such an area was needed for certain scenes, such as the death
scene of Desdemona in "Othello."
There was no way of curtaining the whole stage and no way of "blacking it out,"
so the action in a play was continuous: there were no separate acts or intermissions,
and the "scenes" ended when the actors left the stage and they, or others, reentered.
(The five-act structure seen in modern editions of Shakespeare's plays did not exist in
his time: they were added by editors influenced by classical dramatic theory.)
Between scenes an actor could leave the stage by either of the two doors,
"retiring" into the backstage area before reappearing in a later scene. Above the tiring

room was an "upper stage," where musicians would sometimes be situated, but where
some scenes would also be played (e.g., the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet.")
There were few props and no sets in the Elizabethan theatre. Costumes, however,
were often rich and elaborate. There was no artificial lighting, but torches or lanterns
might be used to indicate that a scene was to be imagined as taking place at night. A
great deal was expected of the spectator's imagination: a single wooden tree might
suggest a forest, a throne represent a king's palace.
The audience paid a penny to gain access to standing room in the yard. Those
who stood there were called "groundlings," and they were the poorer people. Those
who could afford more paid an extra sum to go up the stairs to the seating areas
surrounding the yard. The most favored seats were those nearest the stage, and in
some cases spectators were allowed to sit ON the stage itself, or in the upper stage
area. The like these seats because it permitted them to be seen--a little like a first-night
crowd at the opera nowadays.
The stage projected into the groundlings' are and this put the actors very close to
some of the spectators. This probably helped to encourage the typical use of soliloquy
(solo speeches in which an actor is apparently "thinking aloud") and aside (speeches in
which the actor's words are supposedly heard by the audience but not by some or all of
the others on stage). They were very helpful devices, which allowed the dramatist to
let the listeners know what was going on inside the heads of the characters.
The private theatres, owned by noblemen and wealthy individuals, later became
very successful and catered to a more sophisticated audience. They were enclosed
buildings, lit by candlelight, lavishly decorated and resembling the medieval
banqueting halls where amateur performances had been offered since the middle ages.
Shakespeare's company performed in such a theatre, the Blackfriar's, and Shakespeare
wrote some of his later plays for its audiences.