WS ABC the Elizabethan Theatre (Part 1)

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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