THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE which is often associated with our hero also includes the first decades of the following Jacobean period as well. This type of theatre was very different from the Church dominated Miracle Plays and theatre that preceded it and the later post-Restoration theatres, i.e. the ones that followed the Civil War and the Cromwellian period.(1642-1660).
A c.1596 sketch of the Swan theatre.
The Elizabethan theatre did not have a front curtain that separated the audience from the stage, there was no lighting (plays being performed in daylight hours only), and female actors were not allowed. All female roles were played by young male actors, who acted Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Beatrice, Desdemona et al before their voices had broken.
A modern drawing of how "A Midsummer Night's Dream' may have looked like 400 years ago.
Costumes were very important and were looked after very carefully. many of the richer ones were donated by aristocrats and merchants. Since it was the law in Elizabethan times that no-one was allowed to dress above their station in life, actors were given a special dispensation to do so. Otherwise they may have had to pay heavy fines or worse.
Since there was no on-stage lighting, the play had to make frequent references to the time of day. Hence the many famous WS lines that refer to the passing of time:
The bright day is done,
And we are for the dark.
(Antony and Cleopatra (V.2)
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.
(Romeo and Juliet III.5)
Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day.
(Macbeth III,2)
So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
(Macbeth I,3)
But soft! methinks I scent the morning air.
(Hamlet I.5)
The day begins to break, and night is fled...
(1 Henry VI, II,2)
The public theatres (as opposed to the private theatres in aristocrats' and merchants' houses) were open to the sky and built of wood. They were polygonal or rectangular and the stage stuck out into the auditorium. These theatres were modelled on the inn-yards where plays were performed before purpose-built theatres such as the 'Globe,' the 'Rose' and the 'Swan' were constructed along the south bank of the Thames.
London's theatres spread along the south bank of the Thames.
They were situated here so as to be beyond the possibility restrictive authority of the city fathers.
The audience would sit around the stage (with some rich members actually sit on it on stools). They would pay one penny which was dropped into a box (hence the term ,'Box Office') and these 'groundlings'** would stand and be exposed to the elements. For those who wanted to pay more in order to remain dry and sit out of the wind, they could sit on benches in covered galleries which ran around the inside walls of the theatre.
There was a curtained recess at the back which could
be used to show a separate room or scene. An upper story could be used as a balcony, as in the classic scene when Juliet first sees Romeo in her garden. Above this balcony, there was another room where musicians would play and above the stage would be a large canopy whose underside was painted with stars. Several trapdoors were built into the stage which led to an empty space - the cellarage - a place which the audience could not see.
The writer of this blog outside the 'Globe' theatre, London
The public were informed when a play was about to begin by the use of flags and cannon. Cannon were also used for sound effects and it was the sparks of a cannon that set the thatched straw roof of the 'Globe' theatre on fire. This lead to this theatre's destruction during a performance of Henry VIII on June 29 1613. (The new 'Globe' was rebuilt with a tiled roof and stood until 1642.)
** 'Groundling' was the name of a certain type of fish that lived on the sea-floor and looked up all the time.
More about the Elizabethan theatre next time.
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WILLIAM D'AVENANT (1606-68) {WS's son/godson? - more on this later} the son of an Oxford vintner was an English playwright, poet and theatre manager. He wrote many masques and plays and King Charles I appointed him to be the Poet Laureate in 1638. In the Civil war that broke out four years later, D'Avenant was a Royalist. He fought for the king and was knighted after the siege of Gloucester in 1643. Later he was captured and imprisoned (1650-52) and while he was a prisoner in the Tower of London he composed his epic Gondibert. He is said to have been released by Cromwell's secretary, John Milton. He repaid the writer of Paradise Lost by helping him out during the Restoration period.
William D'Avenant (before 1630)
After the Restoration in 1660, D'Avenant, together with Thomas Kiiligrew received official permission to form an acting company - the Duke's Men - and also to manage a theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Here, among other plays, they also staged several of Shakespeare's.
D'Avenant had quite an influence on how plays were acted then and his productions of Macbeth, The Tempest, Measure for Measure and Much Ado About Nothing were considered important steps in the development of the theatre. He also put on Two Noble Kinsmen (as The Rivals) a Shakespearean play that has since been lost. He also wrote The Siege of Rhodes in 1656, the first English opera which introduced actresses to the stage.
D'Avenant produced his own first tragedy, Albovine in 1629 and he followed this up with The Cruel Brother and The Just Italian. He also worked with Inigo Jones, an important and influential architect and stage-designer, to co-produce three masques.
The famous and gossipy writer, John Aubrey, (1626-97) recorded that D'Avenant was Shakespeare's natural (i.e. illegitimate) son although other theories state that he was the Bard's godson. Aubrey based this theory (c.1680) on that WS had to pass through Oxford on his journeys back and forth between Stratford-upon-Avon and London and it was in Oxford, D'Avenant was conceived. So far no-one has found any positive proof to back up this theory. Aubrey's theory first appeared in print in 1749.
John Aubrey
D'Avenant is also said to have preserved and transmitted a number of Shakespearean theatrical traditions, especially in connection with the stage direction of production of Hamlet.
On a less pleasant note, D'Avenant contracted syphilis in 1630, a disease which caused him to lose part of his nose. This accounts for the discreet way his nose appears in John Greenhill's best-known portrait of him.
D'Avenant as Poet Laureate (after 1638)
Next time: The Elizabethan theatre.
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DESDEMONA - "the sweetest innocent that e'er did lift up eye" starts off on the wrong foot. Without consulting her father, a Venetian senator, she runs off and marries Othello, a Moorish gentleman and soldier of fortune. She is brought to the council to explain her behaviour and her father reluctantly accepts it that she loves her husband.
She is then escorted to Cyprus by the evil and jealous Iago and learns that another officer, Cassio has been disgraced as a result of Iago's stratagem. Cassio asks Desdemona to intercede for him with Othello, and Iago, who is annoyed that he wasn't promoted, used this contact to suggest to Othello that Cassio and Desdemona are lovers. Iago then boosts Othello's jealousy and in the end Othello kills his wife by smothering her in her bed.
In many productions of the play, Desdemona is shown as a soft and passive beauty. This is not true. She has the strength of character to 'buck the system' and marry without her father's permission. But not only that, but she marries a Moor as well. She is also a sophisticated woman of the world who has a witty tongue, this being apparent when we hear her flippant banter with Iago and Cassio on the quayside in Act II. sc.i.
On the other hand, although she is an educated Venetian lady, she is slow to realise the depth of Othello's jealousy and tends to belittle Cassio's flirting. It is this innocence on her part that causes many directors to cast her as a simple, passive wife.
Iago's wife, Emilia, sums her up best, "O she was heavenly true!'
Desdemona was first played by an actress (not allowed in WS time) by Margaret Hughes in 1669, this performance being watched by Samuel Pepys. The 19th century actor, Charles Kean (1811-68), son of the famous actor, Edmund Kean collapsed while playing in Othello and died soon after. Memorable performances of Desdemona were given both by Sarah Siddons (1755-1831) and Dame Ellen Terry (1847-1928).
Maggie Smith as Desdemona
More recently in 1966, Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey, Marigold Hotel and Pride of Miss Jean Brodie) played Desdemona opposite Sir Laurence Olivier and the film received more Academy awards for a WS play than any other. An Indian Bollywood version was produced in 2006 and starred the ever-popular Kareena Kapoor as Desdemona.
It is generally agreed that WS based Othello on Giraldi Cinthio's novella, Hectommithi (1565), but the only direct link is Desdemona's name which is the only name that appears in both the original and the WS version. In the original, Desdemona dies when the bed falls on her while other versions have Othello smothering, stifling or strangling her to death. In the 1948 film, A Double Life, actor Ronald Coleman kisses his wife to death.
In another version, Orson Welles stretches a scarf across Desdemona's mouth before kissing her to death. Some other versions in keeping with the Elizabethan stage tradition had Desdemona killed off-stage. The murder was accompanied by lurid and fatal noises.
Next time: Sir William D'Avenant (Shakespeare's godson?)
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CORDELIA, "the unpriz'd precious maid" whose "voice was ever soft, gentle and low," was the third and youngest daughter of King Lear, the ruler of pre-Christian Britain. When asked to flatter her father and so receive her third of the kingdom on her father's abdication, all she can say is, "Nothing, my lord."
Lear is furious with his honest daughter and banishes her.
Later she returns with her husband at the head of a French army in order to avenge the wrongs that Lear's other daughters, Goneril and Regan, two "gilded serpents," "she-foxes" and "tigers, not daughters" have done to their ageing father. Cordelia's forces are defeated and she is reunited with her father. They are captured and imprisoned and Edmund, the bastard son of Lear's ally, the Earl of Gloucester, gives orders that Cordelia is to be hanged. At the last moment, in a moment of remorse, Edmund tries to countermand his previous order but it is too late. Cordelia has been hanged. The last we see of her in this powerful tragedy is King Lear holding her dead body as he cries out:
I might have saved her;now she's gone for ever!
Cordelia, Cordelia! stay a little.
Although Cordelia has a small part in the play, (117 lines), she plays a critical role. She represents true love, honesty and virtue in contrast to her evil sisters. (forerunner of Cinderella?) and acts out the role of the dutiful daughter, her love overcoming any materialistic demands.
The original WS tragic end of this play was found to be too much for many 17th century audiences. In 1681, Nahum Tate, an Irish poet and playwright, (1652-1715) changed its final scenes. Cordelia is not hanged. Instead she falls in love with Edgar (Gloucester's good son) and Lear retires peacefully. This version became the standard for 150 years until 1838 when W.C. Macready, an actor and the manager of Covent Garden and Drury Lane theatres, had the play returned to its original words.
Shakespeare probably based his play on an earlier happier play, The True Chronicle History of King Leir and his Three Daughters, c.1594. In other versions by Holinshed and Edmund Spenser, Cordelia stabs herself, but several years after Lear dies.
Next time: Yet another tragic lady: Desdemona.
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CRESSIDA, "there's language in her eye, her cheek, her lip, nay her foot..." is the beautiful daughter of Chalchas, who, during the siege of Troy, has defected to the Greek camp. Troilus, the son of the Trojan King Priam, falls in love with her. Her mischievous Uncle Pandarus decides he will be their go-between but in the meanwhile, Chalchas has persuaded the Greek general, Agamemnon to arrange a prison exchange.
As a result, when Troilus sees Cressida again, he finds her embracing Diomedes, another Greek general. Troilus is out for blood but when he fights Diomedes, the latter merely takes his horse away from him and sends it to Cressida. And Cressida, what does she have to say about all this? This passive creature, the victim of her emotions, doesn't say much. She merely justifies her flighty behaviour before fleeing off stage in Act V. sc ii:
Ah, poor our sex!this fault in us I find,
The error of our mind directs our mind:
What error leads must err; O, then conclude,
Minds sway'd by eyes are full of turpitude.
This play was probably written before 1603 and was first published in 1609. It was then described as a new work, 'never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar.' Its sources include Homer's Iliad together with Caxton's Recuyell of the Histories of Troy {the first book printed in English in 1475} and John Lydgate's Troybook. (c.1412-20). Shakespeare also possibly used Chaucer's poem Troilus and Cressida, itself a work based on Boccaccio's Filostrato.
Although this play is often categorised as a tragedy, it is really a 'problem play' in that it is a mixture of tragedy and comedy. Chivalric-heroism is mocked; Achilles is a stupid, boastful homosexual braggart; the great lover, Troilus, is debased and looks like a romantic fool while Cressida is shown to be 'a daughter of the game.' She is heartless and has no real depth of feeling. All she succeeds in doing is to wake an excessive passion for her in Troilus.
The Shakespeare expert, Prof. Stanley Wells, comments that Troilus and Cressida is perhaps, the Bard's most pessimistic play, 'a profound examination of human values, especially in relation to love and war, in the light of eternity. It does not seek popular appeal, but has found receptive audiences for the first time in the twentieth century.'
Personal post-script: My faithful 1997 Honda CR-V is also called Cressida. I hope she continues to be more loyal and faithful than the classic Cressida of ancient mythology and of the Swan of Avon.
Next time I will deal with Cordelia, another unfortunate Shakespearean heroine.
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A c.1596 sketch of the Swan theatre.
A modern drawing of how "A Midsummer Night's Dream' may have looked like 400 years ago.
London's theatres spread along the south bank of the Thames.
The writer of this blog outside the 'Globe' theatre, London
