The Early Modern - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

The Early Modern

Theater

Cultural Context

Tudor Period: (1485-1603) 1517: Reformation begins/Luther

Henry VII to Elizabeth 1588: Spanish Armada

Elizabethan (1558-1603)

1605

: Gunpowder Plot

Stuart Period: 1620: Pilgrims land in Plymouth

Jacobean (1603-1625)

1649

: Charles I beheaded

Carolinean

(1625-1649)

1662

: Act of Uniformity; 1673: Test Act; Commonwealth (1649-1660) 1686: Tolerance

Restoration (1660-1685) 1665, 1666: Fire, Plague

Charles II (1660-1685) 1681: Exclusion Crisis

James II (1685-1688) 1689: Bill of Rights

Reformation

Feudal to capitalistic society

Unrest and conflict: negotiation btw “divine right of kings and liberty of people” (Thomson 192)

Birth of a truly professional

theater

; also meant decline of truly popular/populist

theater

; increasingly becomes a high cultural activity Slide2

Major developments in Renaissance Theater History: Court Pageantry, Progresses, and Household Players

Developed in part from Medieval processionals, adapted for the civic demands of an early modern state

Machiavelli: A prince “at convenient seasons of the year, ought to keep the people occupied with festivals and shows.” To calm the masses? To reaffirm power?

The “progress”--a monarch's parade or procession through his or her dominions, displaying self, wealth, power to public (Thomson 175, 190)

Court pageantry marks a delight in representation, but also expensive “self-advertisement” and tactics for enacting the “claim[s] to political power” (Berthold 368)‏

Household players: liveried precursors to professional actors in England; provided powerful families entertainment, also went on tour, representing powerful families (opportunities for spying!) Warwick's Men, Leicester's Men, etc. to King's and Duke's Men, professional troupes given patents after Restoration

Tudor legislation moved increasingly to limit unlicensed or strolling players, in part to control the “masterless men” (Thomson 179).Slide3

Acting and the Law

Under Elizabeth I, acting becomes a lawful and legal profession (1572); yet, highly regulated (Master of Revels, 1574 act) and subject to suspicion--actors were alternately classified as vagrants or “vagabonds and sturdy beggars,” and as servants of noblemen.

The 1572 Poor Law classed actors in the same section as vagabonds, rogues and wandering beggars and therefore required them to be attached to a household theatre company and have the patronage of a nobleman.

As “servants,” actors could avoid some legal prohibitions, like sumptuary laws; yet, another 1572 act forbade “the unlawful retaining of multitudes of unordinary servants by liveries, badges, and other signs and tokens (contrary to the good and ancient statutes and laws of this realm),” which meant that some actors were turned away.

Professional actor had a “secure,” if somewhat transgressive and threatening, “position in the structure of society” (Berthold 394)‏Slide4
Slide5

In 1572, in fact, players were defined as vagabonds—criminals subject to arrest, whipping, and branding unless they were “liveried” servants of an aristocratic household. Burbage's company and others used this loophole in the law to their advantage by persuading various lords to lend their names (and often little more) to the companies, which thus became the Lord Chamberlain's or the Lord Strange's Men. Furthermore, “popular” drama, performed by professional acting companies for anyone who could afford the price of admission, was perceived as too vulgar in its appeal to be considered a form of art.

—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”Slide6

Major developments in Renaissance Theater History: Professional Theater

First professional, secular drama developed in the Renaissance; by late 16

th

century, theater “had become an established part of city life” (Berthold 391); popular entertainment that embraced a variety of ranks and classes. Cost for admittance to an open air playhouse: 1 penny

Actors and managers could become wealthy; early modern “star system” developed, which would continue well into the modern period

Companies were organized like guilds and businesses; all takings went into a common pool, from which shareholders who put up money for performances recouped expenses; extra went to actors

Some actors were also shareholders

Playwrights didn't own their plays; sold copyright to a principal who then made money from performances. Actually received very little money, unless a member of the company or a shareholder.

Plays were commodities, and actors, entrepreneurs (Thomson 181)Slide7

Elizabethan Theater: Censure of the Stage

Stephen Gosson,

Playes Confuted in Five Actions

(1582)‏

Thomas White (1577): theater a sink of iniquity that “set a-gog: theft and whoredom; pride and prodigality; villainy and blasphemy”

Master Rainoldes,

Th'overthrow of stage-playes

(1599), a diatribe specifically against crossdressing in the theater

Some censure legitimate: opportunities for lawlessness and violence, congestion of traffic, encouragement of disreputable taverns, and danger of the spread of the plague. Theaters were often closed throughout the period, often in times of political turmoil or when contagions were feared.

Some less so: blasphemy of cross-dressing; 1580, an earthquake, and 1581, resurgence of the plague: signs from god (one churchman wrote that the theater

caused

these disturbances); chastised as “popish” (especially when discovered that the Church had used theater to teach scriptural history in Medieval period)‏

Increasing suspicion of acting as deliberate deception; “sensitivity about the very idea of impersonation” (Thomson 187)--CHIEFLY B/C OF THREATS TO AUTHORITY. CAN AN ACTOR PLAY A KING?Slide8
Slide9
Slide10
Slide11

The Elizabethan Theater

Two forms: private and public, as usual! (Private: some court functions, plays performed for/by private families, or in schools)

Public theaters: octagonal ring-like structures; roofs weren't added until Jacobean period (Thomson 192)

BUT, enclosed—this lead to more accuracy in moneytaking; the first box office (Thomson 178)

First permanent building designed purposely for theater: 1567, The Red Lion (Stepney)‏; 1576, James Burbage built The Theatre (Shoreditch); 1577, The Curtain [all these men were

entrepreneurs, marketeers interested in profit

]

On the right bank of the Thames (Southwark): The Rose (1587), the Swan (c. 1595), and the Globe (1599), built from timbers of the original Theatre

Located in “the liberties” of London, its outskirts—areas free from certain authorities (Steven Mullaney)‏

When performances were to occur, playhouses would fly flags: white for comedies, black for tragediesSlide12

"Hope Theatre: London theatres c. 1600." Online Map/Still. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Feb. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-2974>.Slide13

The “liberties or suburbs” of early modern London bear little resemblance to modern suburbs in either a legal or a cultural sense. They were a part of the city, extending up to 3 miles (5 km) from its ancient Roman wall, yet in crucial aspects were set apart from it; they were also an integral part of a complex civic structure common to the walled medieval and Renaissance metropolis, a marginal geopolitical domain that was nonetheless central to the symbolic and material economy of the city. Free, or “at liberty,” from manorial rule or obligations to the crown, the liberties “belonged” to the city yet fell outside the jurisdiction of the lord mayor, the sheriffs of London, and the Common Council, and they constituted an ambiguous geopolitical domain over which the city had authority but, paradoxically, almost no control.

—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”Slide14

Viewed from a religious perspective, the liberties were marked as places of the sacred, or of sacred pollution in the case of the city's lepers, made at once holy and hopelessly contaminated by their affliction. From a political perspective, the liberties were the places where criminals were conveyed for public executions, well-attended and sometimes festive rituals that served to mark the boundary between this life and the next in a more secular fashion. From a general point of view, the margins of the city were places where forms of moral excess such as prostitution were granted license to exist beyond the bounds of a community that they had, by their incontinence, already exceeded.

—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”Slide15

"Southwark: view of London from Southwark." Online Photograph.

Encyclopædia Britannica Online

. 25 Feb. 2008 <http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-11110>.

‘Long View' of London from Southwark, Wenceslaus Hollar, 1647.

Note the clearly visible—and labeled—Globe, as well as the nearby Bear Garden.Slide16

The Material Stage

Round/octagonal structure with three tiers of spectator galleries and the pit; small, people were crowded together; but, rowdy and loud.

Social background and ability to pay dictated where members of the public sat or stood in a theatre.

- Groundlings/Pit: 1 penny admission

- Covered bench seats in upper galleries: 2 pennies

- “Lords' rooms” next to the balcony, overhanging the stage: 6 pennies, a day's wages for a highly skilled worker

Proscenium stage (thrust stage—as opposed to simple platform, more playing space than on Continental stages; less “raking,” no perspective scenery [203])‏

Gallery above stage supported by pillars (for musicians, noble patrons, upper stage for acting)‏

Above gallery, windowed loft (trumpeters, etc)‏

Behind stage, dressing rooms accessible by doors; also where actors entered/exited

Very few props, very little if any scenery; essentially a bare stage

Played in contemporary dress; rich patrons could afford rich clothes for actors; sumptuary law exemptions (Thomson 170)

No women on stage, though women did attend performances regularlySlide17

Jan de Witt, Dutch visitor to England in 1596, describes the Rose and the Swan as the finest of the four London playhouses.

This is a Renaissance drawing of the Swan made for him from his notes—the only extant visual contemporary record of an Elizabethan theater (outside of maps, which frequently shows their locations).

Note the trumpeter in the loft, the flag announcing a performance, the Lords' seats, the three tiers of bench seating, the pit, and the proscenium stage. Slide18

The Material Stage

Bare stage, few props, daytime performances (3:00-6:00pm)‏

Mood had to be created by actor himself and the words he speaks

Called “spoken decor”--a “crucial stylistic feature of the Elizabethan stage” (Berthold 403)

Playwrights used it for both aesthetic and practical purposes, and actors used it to capture the audience

The crowd “was silent only if the actors silenced it” (Thomson 181)

Midsummer Night's Dream

: the Rude Mechanicals' inept, overdrawn attempts to paint a night scene and describe an actor as a wall:

Pyramus

O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!

O night, which ever art when day is not!

O night, O night! alack, alack, alack,

I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot!

And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,

That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!

Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,

Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!Slide19

Other Considerations:

Because outdoor (noise from city, Thames) and populated by unruly crowds (rotten fruit thrown at bad actors), acting likely dependent on a clear, “penetrating voice and widely visible gestures” (Berthold 401)‏

Some evidence that bombast and ranting becoming less acceptable, but definitely not absent—especially in tragedies

In comedies, low humor was enjoyed by all classes; NOT SIMPLE “COMIC RELIEF”!!! (Thomson 189, 190-191), though theater moving in direction of “high culture” by way of professionalization/gentrification

Significant gestures still very choreographed and meaningful, a practice that continues into the Restoration period—not “realistic” acting by our standards

No stage lighting

Relatively less stage machinery—trap doors were used, and some cranes, but in general relatively unspectacular (unlike Continental Renaissance and Medieval performance)‏

By this time, England had become a Protestant nation Slide20
Slide21

Some things have double the ill, both naturally in spreading the infection [of the plague], and otherwise in drawing God's wrath and plague upon us, as the erecting and frequenting of houses very famous for

incontinent

rule [italics added] out of our liberties and jurisdiction.

—Nicholas Woodrofe, lord mayor of London in 1580

Playhouses were regarded not merely as a breeding ground for the plague but as the thing itself, an infection “pestering the City” and contaminating the morals of London's apprentices. Theatres were viewed as houses of Proteus, and, in the metamorphic fears of the city, it was not only the players who shifted shapes, confounded categories, and counterfeited roles. Drama offered a form of “recreation” that drew out socially unsettling reverberations of the term, since playhouses offered a place “for all masterless men and vagabond persons that haunt the highways, to meet together and to

recreate themselves

[italics added].” The fear was not that the spectators might be entertained but that they might incorporate theatrical means of impersonation and representation in their own lives—for example, by dressing beyond their station and thus confounding a social order reliant on sumptuary codes to distinguish one social rank from another.

—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”Slide22

Jacobean and Stuart Court Theater

Under James II and Charles I, strict regulation of political topics in drama (Thomson 195)

Elaborate masques “celebrat[ed] the serene authority of a King” (Thomson 196) were the most “significant early Stuart contributions to the development of English theatre” (196), not because of the drama, but because of the “theatrical conduct” of the event itself.

Members of the court—women included—performed roles in an elaborate “courtly ritual” (196); example of Charles I becoming part of

Salmacida spolia

(201)

Gave an “illusion of security” belied by the rebelliousness and popular appeal of the public theaters, and of the very real political tensions of the period. Masque/antimasque—order/disorder harmonized and neutralized (200)

Very expensive, elaborate, stylized (198)--Inigo Jones

“the acme of theatrical elitism” (199); Hierarchy, perspective...

Antitheatricalism continued to grow

William Prynne (201-2); Court theater “reeked of Catholic ritual”; “corrputing guile of women” (201)

Harshly punished by Charles I [Gunpowder plot, Catholic intolerance; Charles I tyranny—execution, itself a theatrical event (203)

Interregnum

Some theater, but not much; public theaters closed

1655, Lord Mayor's pageant reestablished, Davenant lured back to stage an opera (204)Slide23

Major developments in Early Renaissance

Theater

History

Perspective Scenery

Flowering of arts and sciences in

Reniassance

led to refinements in stage décor and construction

Beginning in Italian renaissance, stages “raked” to accommodate a vanishing point well beyond the back of the

theater

.

Offered a perfect illusion—to the person seated in the right place. Court and “humanist”

theater

, not really “popular” or “public”

Italian architect

Sebastiano

Serlio

codified the scenery for comedies, tragedies, and pastoral plays (1545,

Architettura

)‏

In England,

Inigo

Jones brought Italianate perspective scenery to the stage—but this was only in the beginning of the 17

th

century, and it primarily impacted court

theater

.

Jones and Jonson: the Stuart court masque—perspective scenery part of elaborate court

theater

, but not likely popular/public (Thomson 203) Slide24
Slide25

Teatro Olimpico, the first permanent indoor theatre, designed by Andrea Palladio and completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, 1585, Vicenza, Italy.Slide26

Fixed scenery in the Teatro Olimpico, built by Andrea Palladio. Opened in 1584.Slide27

Serlio's plans for (left to right) tragic, pastoral, and comic plays. Note the use of perspective and the shortened acting space, marked out in squares.Slide28
Slide29
Slide30
Slide31
Slide32

Jacobean Public Theater

Period known for its “revenge tragedies,” like Ford's

'Tis Pity—

which also has a masque in it! But there, the illusion of security is not maintained; the masque becomes a mockery of the idea itself, because Hippolyta tries to kill Soranzo there

Indoor theaters

Innovated largely by consideration of the weather

Drew fashionable audiences, trend that would continue during the Restoration

Indoor theaters very small (St. Paul's playhouse—less than 200)

Some on-stage seating, making the spectator an actor (Thomson 192)

“liveliness of discourse between actor and audience” (192)

More decline in truly popluar theater, toward “gentrified” activity—though no less rowdy in the Restoration!!

All later development was indoorsSlide33

Restoration Theater

Two monopolies granted by Charles II to Duke's and King's Men; others could be prosecuted for playing without patents or licenses (two companies merged in 1682)

Governed by symmetry—important in plays (like

The Rover),

as in theaters themselves; sense of order, control

The Material Stage

Two rooms, separated by archway and drop-curtain; musicians' balcony above (212)

Scenic stage (court masque innovations/perspective scenery/machinery)

proscenium/forestage (site of action) and auditorium

Lit by candles—length of burning indicates play intervals (206)

Audience and actors in close proximity, though this would wane by century's end

Forestage acting gives actors a lot more freedom and power, contact with audience

Three, sometimes four distinct seating areas

Increasingly, the theater became a place to “see and be seen.”

Some members of the audience—wealthier, privileged—could sit

on

the stage, making them part of the drama.

Pit, boxes, galleries (upper/lower)Slide34

Gentrifying the Popular Playhouse

Truly popular playhouses and opportunities for dramatic expression (like those in the Medieval period) going the way of the dodo under demands of professionalization

Minority clientele; higher admission costs (fewer could attend)

Pit: half crown admission (2s 6p); Benches appeared after 1660

Galleries: 18 pence (middle/lower); 1 shilling (upper—rear of playhouse)

Boxes: 4 shillings (

multitiered

boxes rising above pit on all 3 sides)

Seating for 600-800 (remember Greek theaters???)

3:00 starting time (meant workers couldn't attend); but, as century progressed, time pushed back, to generate more audiences

After early play, more partying for the wealthier classes—for the aristocratic

theater-

goer

, the day didn’t start until the theater beganSlide35

Sexual and Social Spectacle

Each seating area occupied a distinct price point, and therefore distinct classes of people occupied each.

Box seating was the most expensive area of the auditorium, a box costing 4 shillings (20p).

Boxes were used by people of high class and mostly by ladies and their protective husbands, though women often went to the playhouses unattended.

A gallant might approach the boxes in an attempt to charm the lady of his choice, but it was certainly no place for him to spend the entire performance. In some theatres approach to the boxes was in fact quite easy as the height of the pit brought the boxes and pit almost level.

Wits sat in the pit:

Sparkish

in

The Country Wife

will not sit in the boxes as he wants to be thought of as a theatre critic not just an admirer of fashion: 'SPARK. Pshaw! I'll leave Harcourt with you in the box to entertain you, and that's as good; / if I sat in the box, I should be thought no judge but of trimmings' (here 'trimmings' means fashions. Act ii, Scene

i

.)."  Slide36

Restoration Mores

“Reassessment of sexual values” (207); more permissive theater-going society under Charles II (wealthier clientele)

“Charles II, a gentleman and a libertine, set the style of the public theatres” (207)

Actresses

Actresses introduced onto the public stage with the two patents

Charles II lived on Continent during interregnum, familiar with female actresses

Made to seem “social reform”, but not really—women on stage became “sex objects rather than symbols of sexual equality” (208)

Frequent rape scenes—sexualizes the assault; Breeches parts—designed to show off women's legs

Women sold more tickets (like physical comedy did in Elizabethan times)

Restoration Comedy

Charles II: the “merry monarch”; comedy favored

Most set in town, or at least speaking to town concerns [history thus far almost demands it—professional, urban, commercial center]

Rambling: wandering the town in search of sex or material pleasures (213)**, is a frequent source of plot

Typically conclude in marraige, but more as a

convention

than a moral imperative; a “necessary rite of passage”

Worldly-wise, often cynical, very frank about sexual exchange and commerceSlide37

Moral Opposition Grows

By the end of the 17

th

century, “moral opposition to the theatre was growing” (218)

1692: Society for the Reformation of Manners

Jeremy Collier: 1693,

A Short View on the Immorality of the Stage

“Powerful propaganda signalled the end of an age”, but didn't

cause

it (218)--London theatres were being hit where it hurt the most: the pocket

Prosecutions, managerial in-fighting and power plays, lack of competition (after United Company)

Many famous and respected actors made a point to return to provincial tours and fairground performances, so “refus[ing] to be tied down by any one”

Moves to “disempower actors had begun” (219); it would become a manager's theater, rather than an actor's theater.

Before long, the forestage interaction between actor and audience, essential to Restoration theater, would be curtailed and the audience would be separate from the drama on stage—our legacy, today.