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RENAISSANCE DRAMA
English Renaissance drama grew out of the established Medieval tradition of the mystery and morality plays (see Medieval English Drama). These public spectacles focused on religious subjects and were generally enacted by either choristers and monks, or a town's tradesmen (as later seen lovingly memorialized by Shakespeare's 'mechanicals' in A Midsummer Night's Dream ). At the end of the fifteenth century, a new type of play appeared. These short plays and revels were performed at noble households and at court, especially at holiday times. These short entertainments, called "Interludes", started the move away from the didactic nature of the earlier plays toward purely secular plays, and often added more comedy than was present in the medieval predecessors. Since most of these holiday revels were not documented and play texts have disappeared and been destroyed, the actual dating of the transition is difficult. The first extant purely secular play, Henry Medwall's Fulgens and Lucres , was performed at the household of Cardinal Morton, where the young Thomas More was serving as a page. Early Tudor interludes soon grew more elaborate, incorporating music and dance, and some, especially those by John Heywood, were heavily influenced by French farce.
Not only were plays shifting emphasis from teaching to entertaining, they were also slowly changing focus from the religious towards the political. John Skelton's Magnyfycence (1515), for example, while on the face of it resembling the medieval allegory plays with its characters of Virtues and Vices, was a political satire against Cardinal Wolsey. Magnyfycence was so incendiary that Skelton had to move into the sanctuary of Westminster to escape the wrath of Wolsey. The first history plays were written in the 1530's, the most notable of which was John Bale's King Johan. While it considered matters of morality and religion, these were handled in the light of the Reformation. These plays set the precedent of presenting history in the dramatic medium and laid the foundation for what would later be elevated by Marlowe and Shakespeare into the English History Play, or Chronicle Play, in the latter part of the century.
Not only was the Reformation taking hold in England, but the winds of Classical Humanism were sweeping in from the Continent. Interest grew in the classics and the
"Englysshed" and latin poetry and plays began to be adapted into English plays. In 1553, a schoolmaster named Nicholas Udall wrote an English comedy titled "Ralph Roister Doister" based on the traditional Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence. The play was the first to introduce the Latin character type miles gloriosus ("braggart soldier") into English plays, honed to perfection later by Shakespeare in the character of Falstaff. Around the same time at Cambridge, the comedy "Gammer Gurton's Needle", possibly by William Stevens of Christ's College, was amusing the students. It paid closer attention to the structure of the Latin plays and was the first to adopt the five-act division. Writers were also developing English tragedies for the first time, influenced by Greek and Latin writers. Among the first forays into English tragedy were Richard Edwards' Damon and Pythias (1564) and John Pickering's New Interlude of Vice Containing the History of Horestes (1567). The most influential writer of classical tragedies, however, was the Roman playwright Seneca, whose works were translated into English by Jasper Heywood, son of playwright John Heywood, in 1589. Seneca's plays incorporated rhetorical speeches, blood and violence, and often ghosts; components which were to figure prominently in both Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
The first prominent English tragedy in the Senecan mould was Gorboduc (1561), written by two lawyers, Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, at the Inns of Court (schools of law). The play is also important as the first English play in blank verse. Blank verse, non-rhyming lines in iambic pentameter, was introduced into English literature by sonneteers Wyatt and Surrey in the 1530's. Its use in a work of dramatic literature paved the way for "Marlowe's mighty line" and the exquisite poetry of Shakespeare's dramatic verse. With a new ruler on the throne, Queen Elizabeth I, who enjoyed and encouraged the theatrical arts, the stage was set for the body of dramatic literature we today call Elizabethan Drama.
Main characteristics of Elizabethan theatre - the influence of the theatre
on the texts
The reign of Elizabeth I (1558-1603) brought prosperity to England, it was an age of expansion and new discoveries, and the theatre as a form of entertainment enjoyed an unprecedented popularity. (It seems that the drama becomes the dominant popular genre when a society feels secure in its position in the world, as it happened in the heyday of
Athenian democracy in the 5 th^ century BC.) At the beginning of the Renaissance, many medieval characteristics of the theatre remained; first of all, actors were travelling around the country in companies, under the
patronage of a wealthy aristocrat, in whose house they could survive the winter months, when no open-air performances were possible. The most famous companies of the age were the Lord Admiral’s Men, with Christopher Marlowe as the leading dramatist, and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, with William Shakespeare. As travelling companies gave performances wherever they found a proper place and the prospect of a good audience, they usually performed in the courtyards of public houses and inns, making good use of the entrances behind them, and also the windows on the first floor that overlooked the scene. This type of theatrical space was used even later when the first purpose-built theatres were constructed. The space above the stage represented heaven, or was used when a balcony scene was required, as in Romeo and Juliet ; the stage represented earth and was used for the majority of the action, with a little space opening from it, serving the purposes of an inner room; and if the representation of hell was necessary, the empty space below the stage was used, as in Hamlet , where the Ghost’s voice could come from under the boards. As the authorities did not like the idea of large crowds gathering together, most public theatres were built outside the city walls of London, on Bankside. These theatres were constructed in a circular shape (“this wooden O”, as it is referred to in Shakespeare’s Henry V , Prologue 13); they were still partly open-air spaces, although there was a roof above the stage, and people sitting in the galleries were also sheltered from the extremities of the weather, but the groundlings, who were standing around the stage, were practically unprotected from rain or sunshine. The most famous London theatres were the Rose, the Theatre, and Shakespeare’s Globe. The most important feature of Elizabethan theatre was the appearance of new stage forms, with the result of an acting style completely different from anything before or after it. The so- called apron stage , surrounded by the audience on three sides, could not make use of the scenery of medieval pageants, but neither did it need and desire the spectacle of later Jacobean masques, not to mention Victorian theatre and its claim for ‘reality’. Therefore, the Elizabethan bare stage forced the playwright to provide everything verbally – the text of every play contains all sorts of information that modern authors would include in their stage directions only. (Cf. references telling us about the location: Rosalind: “Well, this is the Forest of Arden” As You Like It , 2.4.12; about the time: King Richard: “What is’t o’clock? Catesby: It’s supper time, my lord: it’s nine o’clock” Richard
III , 5.3.48-49; about the weather: Hamlet: “The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold” Hamlet , 1.4.1; about the view: Duncan: “This castle hath a pleasant seat” Macbeth , 1.6.1 etc.) As there were no curtains either, entrances were also marked by words: (Horatio: “But soft, behold. Lo, where it comes again”, Hamlet , 1.1.129; “Here Clarence comes”, Richard III ,
Their favourite genre was tragedy of the most violent kind, provoking horror with blood and thunder (not content with the Aristotelian emotions of pity and fear). However, the increasingly Puritan middle classes, who had been waging a war against theatre since the opening of the first public playhouse in 1576, were more and more opposed to this kind of entertainment, and soon after the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 Parliament banned all plays, recommending instead “the profitable and seasonable considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation and peace with God” (Ronald Harwood, All the World’s a Stage , Methuen, London, 1984, p. 150.). They distrusted anything that was pleasant, as leisure and entertainment were opposed to the Puritan ethics. Many other features of Renaissance theatre were also clearly against God and godliness; it is enough to think of the fact that men dressed up as women on stage, which is referred to as an abominable sin in the Bible (Deuteronomy 22:5). Besides, theatres were also considered dangerous for political reasons, just like all places where large crowds could gather uncontrolled. It is enough to add to the above the bawdy jokes and illicit behaviour typical of these places, it is not surprising that Puritans could not allow anything of this sort. Although plays were still put on in secret, both in private homes and public houses, it was not until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660 that English theatre entered its second great age.
Information taken from: https://btk.ppke.hu/uploads/articles/135505/file/introduction/drama/ elizabethan_drama_characters.html http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/dramamedren.htm
