What theatre was organized by w shakespeare

Elizabethan Theatre

Definition

Elizabethan theatre, sometimes called English Renaissance theatre, refers to that style of performance plays which blossomed during the reign of Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558-1603 CE) and which continued under her Stuart successors. Elizabethan theatre witnessed the first professional actors who belonged to touring troupes and who performed plays of blank verse with entertaining non-religious themes.

The first purpose-built permanent theatre was established in London in 1576 CE and others quickly followed so that drama simply to entertain became a booming industry. Theatres showing plays daily led to permanent acting companies which did not have to tour and so could invest more time and money into wowing their audience of both sexes and all social classes. The most celebrated playwright of the period was William Shakespeare (1564-1616 CE) whose works were performed at the famous Globe Theatre in London and covered such diverse themes as history, romance, revenge, murder, comedy and tragedy.

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Elizabeth I & the Arts

The Elizabethan age saw a boom in the arts in general but it was the performance arts that perhaps made the most lasting contribution to English and even world culture. The queen was herself an admirer of plays, performances, and spectacles which were frequently held at her royal residences. Elizabeth carefully managed her image as the Virgin Queen who had sacrificed her personal life to better concentrate on the good of her people. Theatre was, therefore, just one of the media she used to project her own glory and that of her family, the Tudors. The queen actively sponsored artists and playwrights.

Naturally, the Elizabethans did not invent theatre as plays have been performed ever since their invention by the ancient Greeks of the 6th century BCE. Medieval England had witnessed the performance of morality plays and mystery plays, there were even dramas performed by actors during religious ceremonies and holidays. There were also Masques, a type of mime where masked performers sang, danced, and recited poetry, wearing extravagant costumes, and stood before painted scenery. Finally, towns across England had long funded public shows, which involved musicians, acrobats, and jesters, and these continued even as theatre became popular.

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The Elizabethan period saw these public performers become a professional body of entertainers. The first professional troupes of actors were sponsored by the queen, nobles, and anyone else who had the money for such entertainments. Plays were performed which, perhaps thanks to the English Reformation, were now entirely free from religious themes and not connected to public holidays or religious festivals. Secular plays presented a new challenge, though, and the influence of popular art on politics and public minds was recognised by Elizabeth, who banned performances of unlicensed plays in 1559 CE. In the 1570s CE, religious play cycles were also banned. The royal control of theatre continued in 1572 CE when only nobles were permitted to sponsor professional acting troupes. From 1574 CE all troupes had to be licensed, too.

The move away from divisive religious topics had led writers to explore other themes, and their imaginations knew no bounds. Historical topics were especially popular with the new playwrights in a period when a sense of English nationalism was developing as never before. This combined with a Humanist interest in Greek and Roman antiquity. Royal patronage of theatre would continue during the reign of Elizabeth’s successor, James I of England (r. 1603-1625 CE) who funded three professional actor companies (aka playing companies).

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Professional Actors & Theatres

The first professionally licensed troupe of actors belonged to Elizabeth’s court favourite Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester (l. c. 1532-1588 CE). Called ‘Leicester’s Men’ they gained their license in 1574 CE and toured the country’s stately homes giving performances. Naturally, actors needed a suitable stage on which to impress and so the first purpose-built theatres soon arrived. In 1576 CE London received its very first purpose-built and permanent playhouse, founded by James Burbage (c. 1530-1597 CE), himself an actor, and simply known as the Theatre (although there were earlier adapted buildings with temporary scaffolding such as the 1567 CE Red Lion). Located on Holywell Street in Shoreditch, the Theatre was a wooden enclosed building with no roof in the centre, and it welcomed audiences of both courtiers and commoners. The Theatre was such a success that other theatres were built, starting with the Curtain. Burbage opened a second theatre in London, Blackfriars Theatre, by converting a disused Dominican monastery. There was also the Rose (1587 CE) and the Swan (1595 CE) as the theatre business positively boomed and Elizabeth’s encouragement of her nobles to stay at court and have residences at the capital guaranteed a ready audience. Other towns soon followed the fashion and acquired theatres, too; early adopters being Bath, Bristol, Norwich, and York. By the time of the Stuart kings, many theatres were offering a performance of a different play every day, typically in the afternoons, to a knowledgeable audience of men and women expecting to see novel entertainment. Even the most popular plays were only performed a handful of times each year as theatres strived to entertain regular theatre-goers.

Further, as theatres developed so actors and playwrights were freed from the obligations and restrictions that sponsorship by nobles brought. It was the Theatre, though, which was to become world-famous, especially after 1599 CE when it was relocated to the south bank of the River Thames and given a new name: the Globe Theatre.

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The Globe Theatre opened for business in 1599 CE and was owned by Burbage’s sons and some members of the professional acting company known as Chamberlains’ Men. One of these investors was William Shakespeare, and he and other actors and playwrights shared half of the profits from the theatre while the other half went to pay secondary actors, musicians, costumes, and maintenance costs. Crucially, then, the establishment of theatres meant that previously travelling actors could now form a more solid financial base which allowed them to produce more plays and give them a much higher production value. Theatre companies could boast twelve or more permanent main actors and a number of bit-part players, boys and apprentices. Also on the staff were musicians, writers, artists, and copyists.

The Globe Theatre was made of wood, more or less circular in form, and open to the skies in the centre. Rising to a height of 12 metres (40 ft.) and measuring 24 metres (80 ft.) across, inside were three tiers of seating providing a capacity of around 2,000. The theatre got its name from the globe on its roof, which carried the legend in Latin of Shakespeare’s famous line ‘All the world’s a stage.’ The Globe’s own stage was rectangular, measured some 12 metres in length and was protected by a thatch roof. Around 12 actors could perform on the stage at any one time. Behind the stage was a gallery which could seat more viewers or be used as an important part of the play (e.g. Juliet’s balcony in Romeo and Juliet). The audience could be surprised by such technical tricks as lowering actors on wires or having them appear or disappear through a trapdoor in the stage floor.

In the second half of the 17th century CE, some important developments arrived. Women played women parts (previously boys had done this) and large flat painted scenes, often with perspective incorporated into them, were moved on sliding rails on and off stage. Another change was that now plays had extended runs with the same performance being repeated each day, a development that actors with short memories must have greatly welcomed. The pattern of performance plays was set and would remain in place right up to the present day.

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William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare has become one of the most celebrated authors in any language. Born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564 CE, it was not until 1592 CE that William became known in theatre circles. Two years later he joined Chamberlain’s Men and then, as mentioned above, became an important member of the Globe Theatre’s permanent staff, a position he held throughout his writing career. William produced on average two plays every year, writing 37 in all. The dating of Shakespeare’s works is problematic as none have surviving original manuscripts and so historians have looked to their content and other documentary evidence. The plays are usually divided into four groups and illustrate the broad scope of Elizabethan theatre in general. These categories are: comedies, romances, histories, and tragedies. The works, like many plays of the period, combine wordplay and in-joke references to contemporary politics with tales of love, dark deeds of revenge and murder, historical events, historical fiction, and a big dollop of jingoism.

Shakespeare’s first play is usually cited as Henry VI Part I, written around 1589 CE. His most popular plays include A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c. 1596 CE) which revolves around the wedding of the Greek hero Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyte, Henry V (1599 CE) which includes a fictionalised version of that king’s rousing speech at the Battle of Agincourt of 1415 CE, Hamlet (c. 1601 CE) which tells the revenge of the Danish prince of that name against his evil uncle, and Macbeth (1606 CE), titled after the Scottish king who descends into madness after embarking on a rampage of murder.

Other Playwrights & Actors

Under the Stuart kings, it became fashionable and profitable to print the scripts of plays, even if they were always originally written with performance in mind. Some 800 play scripts survive from the 16th and 17th century CE, although this is only a small proportion of those produced at the time. After Shakespeare, the next most celebrated Elizabethan playwright is Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593 CE). In 1587 CE his first play was performed, Tamburlaine the Great. The play was a smash hit and told the epic tale of Timur, the founder of the Timurid Empire in central Asia (1370-1507 CE). Other successes followed such as The Tragedy of Dido, Queen of Carthage but, like many playwrights and poets of the period, Marlowe was prone to drinking bouts, and it was a brawl in a tavern that ended in his death. As Marlowe also worked as a spy for the government, some have speculated that his death was actually an assassination.

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The third great playwright of the period was Ben Jonson (1572-1637 CE). Escaping an early career path as an apprentice bricklayer, Jonson’s first play, Isle of Dogs (1597 CE), was successful but got him into trouble with the authorities who regarded it as inciting rebellion. After a short term in prison, Jonson soon found himself back in confinement after he killed an actor in an argument. Out for a second time, Jonson concentrated on what he was good at and wrote a string of hit plays, many of which were performed at the Globe Theatre. Jonson’s other works included poetry, masques, and a huge body of literary criticism.

Accomplished actors, of course, made a name for themselves in the new genre. One famous figure was the comic actor Richard Tarlton (d. 1588 CE) who was also a court jester who made Elizabeth I titter until his jokes went too far and ridiculed some of her noble favourites. Multi-talented, Tarlton co-founded the Queen’s Men company and wrote many successful plays, his most popular being Seven Deadly Sins (1585 CE). Tarlton’s most famous character was a little Chaplinesque: a small man with baggy trousers and carrying a large stick.

Challenges & Legacy

Another challenge was public health. When a new wave of the Black Death plague hit London in 1592 CE, all theatres were closed for a year. Many mayors sought to avoid public gatherings and even paid acting companies not to perform if a new outbreak of plague was present. Theatres, being wooden structures, were also susceptible to devastating fires. The Globe Theatre, for example, had to be rebuilt in 1614 CE when a cannon shot fired during a performance for dramatic effect set fire to the thatch roof.

Despite the threats, Elizabethan theatre seems to have quickly established itself as an important and lasting part of England’s popular and literary culture. As early as 1623 CE, for example, 36 of William Shakespeare’s plays were collected together in print in the First Folio. More editions would be printed throughout the 17th century CE and a first properly edited collection was published in 1709 CE. Shakespeare continues to be read across the world, of course, and his works continue to interest modern filmmakers. As fellow author Ben Johnson noted in his preface to First Folio, the star of Elizabethan theatre was «not of an age, but for all time» (Wagner, 275).

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Theatre in the Age of Shakespeare

The theatre in Shakespeare’s time was much different than it is today. Authors wrote plays for the masses, especially those who couldn’t read or write.

The theatre changed a lot during Shakespeare’s lifetime. The authorities didn’t like it and didn’t allow acting in the city itself. They thought it had a bad influence on people and kept them from going to church. Queen Elizabeth, on the other hand, loved acting and helped the theatre become popular.

As time went on more and more popular theatres emerged outside city walls. This was considered an unsafe area with crime and prostitution.

Shakespeare’s theatre was full of life. People did not sit all the time and it was not quiet during the performance. The audience could walk around, eat and drink during the play. They cheered, booed and sometimes even threw objects at the actors.

Theatres were open arenas or playhouses that had room for up to three thousand people. They were structures made mainly of wood. There was no heating and actors got wet when it rained. The stage was higher and there was an open pit in front of it where most of the people could stand in. Richer people and noblemen sat in the gallery. There was almost no scenery because the dialogue was the most important part of the play. Colourful and well-designed costumes were very important and told the people about the status of a character. Women never performed in plays, so young boys played female characters. The performances took place in the afternoon because it was too dark at night.

Plays were organized by acting companies. They performed about 6 different plays each week because they needed money to survive. They had almost no time for rehearsals.

The companies in Shakespeare’s time had a hierarchical system.

Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the Admiral’s Men were the two most important companies in London at that time. Among the most famous theatres during were the Globe, the Swan and the Fortune.

Globe Theatre

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Globe Theatre, famous London theatre in which after 1599 the plays of William Shakespeare were performed.

Early in 1599 Shakespeare, who had been acting with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men since 1594, paid into the coffers of the company a sum of money amounting to 12.5 percent of the cost of building the Globe. He did so as a chief shareholder in the company, and by doing so he helped to establish a uniquely successful form of commercial operation for the actors of the time. This investment gave Shakespeare and the other leading actors both a share in the company’s profits and a share in their playhouse.

At this time, officially approved playhouses and officially approved acting companies had been in existence in London for only five years. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men was one of only two companies licensed to perform within the London city limits. (For more on this subject, see Sidebar: Shakespeare and the Liberties.) The other company used the Rose playhouse, owned by an impresario and his ex-actor son-in-law.

The second best playhouse

Shakespeare’s company built the Globe only because it could not use the special roofed facility, Blackfriars Theatre, that James Burbage (the father of their leading actor, Richard Burbage) had built in 1596 for it inside the city. The elder Burbage had a long history as a theatrical entrepreneur. In 1576 he had built the first successful amphitheatre, known as The Theatre, in a London suburb. Twenty years later, when the lease on The Theatre’s land was about to expire, he built the theatre in Blackfriars as its replacement. But the wealthy residents of Blackfriars persuaded the government to block its use for plays, so Burbage’s capital was locked up. He died early in 1597, his plans for the future of theatre in London frustrated.

Thus, the members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were forced to rent a playhouse. At the end of 1598, they decided to build one for themselves. Because the inheritance of Burbage’s sons, Cuthbert and Richard, was tied up in the Blackfriars, they formed a consortium with Shakespeare and four other actors, who became co-owners of the new Globe. The same shortage of cash made the consortium reluctant traditionalists; they gave up the idea of an indoor theatre in the city. The old playhouse was one of their few remaining resources, but they could not use it in situ because the lease had expired, so they dismantled it, took the timbers (illegally) to make the skeleton of their new amphitheatre, and kept the basic auditorium shape of The Theatre for the new building.

The success of the Globe

For all its hurried construction in 1599, the Globe proved a triumph. Its first decade of use made it a favourite not just with subsequent generations of theatregoers but with the company itself. In later years the troupe paid a lot to keep it going. At least two circumstances provide evidence for this statement. In 1608, when the company could finally fulfill James Burbage’s original plan for the Blackfriars, the members chose, extravagantly, to operate the two theatres together, using the open-air Globe in the summer and the roofed Blackfriars in the winter. Had they chosen to, they easily could have rented one of the buildings to another company, since there was a shortage of playhouses in London in this period. But they kept both for themselves. They were given a second chance to transfer full-time to the Blackfriars in 1613, when the Globe burned to the ground, its thatch accidentally set alight by a cannon during a performance of Henry VIII. By then the Blackfriars was already beginning to bring better profits than the Globe, since the smaller house size was more than compensated by its higher prices. Instead, bearing the cost out of sentiment and traditional loyalty, the company members dug deep into their own pockets and rebuilt the Globe more splendidly than before.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

Third time’s a charm: the when, how, and why behind Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

Building the First Globe Theatre

The story of the Globe Theatre starts with William Shakespeare’s acting company The Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Shakespeare was a part-owner, or sharer, in the company, as well as an actor and the resident playwright. From its inception in 1594, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed at The Theatre, a playhouse located in Shoreditch. However, by 1598 their patrons, including the Earl of Southampton, had fallen out of favour with the Queen. The Theatre’s landlord, Giles Alleyn, had intentions to cancel the company’s lease and tear the building down.

While Alleyn did own the land, he did not own the materials with which The Theatre had been built. So, on 28 December 1598, after leasing a new site in Southwark, Cuthbert and Richard Burbage led the rest of the company of actors, sharers, and volunteers in taking the building down timber by timber, loading it on to barges, and making their way across the Thames. Working together, the actors built the new theatre as quickly as they could.

The ground on the new site was marshy and prone to flooding, but foundations were built by digging trenches, filling them with limestone, constructing brick walls above the stone, and then raising wooden beams on top of that. A funnel caught the rainwater and drained it into the ditch surrounding the theatre and down into the Thames.

The theatre was 30 metres in diameter and had 20 sides, giving it its perceived circular shape. The structure was similar to that of their old theatre, as well as that of the neighbouring bear garden. The rectangular stage, at five feet high, projected halfway into the yard and the circular galleries. The pillars were painted to look like Italian marble, the sky painted midnight blue, and images of the gods overlooked the balcony. It could hold up to 3,000 people.

Shakespeare’s plays that were performed there early on included: Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra. Here the Lord Chamberlain’s Men enjoyed much success and gained the patronage of King James I in 1603, subsequently becoming The King’s Men.

Disaster at the Globe

During the fateful performance of Henry VIII on 29 June 1613, the cannon announcing the unexpected arrival of the king at the end of Act 1 set fire to the thatched roof, and within an hour the Globe burned to the ground. Everyone escaped safely, save for one man whose breeches reportedly caught fire. Two different songs had been written about it by the next day.

The Globe was rebuilt by February 1614; the company could then afford to decorate it much more extravagantly, and it had a tiled roof instead of thatched. However, by this point Shakespeare’s influence had lessened, and he was spending more and more time back in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Disaster struck again in the 1642 when parliament ordered the closure of London theatres. In 1644-5 the Globe was destroyed and the land sold for building.

Shakespeare’s Globe Today

In 1970, an American actor and director Samuel Wanamaker set up the Shakespeare’s Globe Trust to pursue his dream of reconstructing the original Globe Theatre. For what would be almost the next 30 years, he and his team worked and fought to obtain the permissions, funds, and research necessary for a project of this scope.

Historians, scholars, and architects all worked together in their efforts to build the Globe in the same way the Lord Chamberlain’s Men did, down to the green oak pillars and thatched roof. Their work and dreams were fulfilled when the new Globe Theatre opened in 1997, one street away from where the original stood. The Globe stands today as a living monument to Shakespeare, the greatest English playwright, home to productions of his plays and many other new ones every season.

Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre

This article gives an in-depth view of The Globe Theatre. If you’re after some quick, interesting facts on The Globe Theatre click here!

Drama at Shakespeare’s time – and at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre – was characterised by a tug of war between a disapproving puritanical attitude to theatre by the city councillors on the one hand, and royal approval on the other. The city fathers resented royal patronage and regarded it as interference in their affairs. This battle went on until finally, in 1642 and 1644, all the theatres were destroyed under order of Parliament.

We have therefore had great difficulty in gaining a good picture of what Elizabethan theatres were really like. We don’t even know exactly where the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre stood, although we can get quite close, and indeed, there is a splendid reconstruction of it, which is now one of London’s most popular theatres and biggest tourist attractions.

One of the most valuable sources of our knowledge about the actual architecture of the theatre is a drawing done by a Dutchman, Arend van Buchell, who did the drawing from a sketch made by his friend, Johannes de Witt, who attended a play at the Swan Theatre. Buchell said of it: ‘the largest and most remarkable of the theatres in London is the Swan, which is able to accommodate three thousand spectators.‘ This is his drawing:

Shakespeare’s Swan Theatre

After the old Globe Theatre was built in early 1599 the first production was As You Like It, followed by works by Shakespeare, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and others. In 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, a cannon went off to mark the entrance of the king, and a stray spark set the thatch roof aflame. In one hour, the theatre was destroyed.

Reconstruction of the Globe began immediately, and it was finished by June 1614. Performances continued until 1642, when the Puritans, who found theatre vulgar and intolerable, shut all theatres down. Two years later the Globe was levelled to make way for tenement dwellings.

Plays were big business for those who owned them: Shakespeare was only one man who became rich from his involvement as a shareholder in the most popular theatre. The plays produced by the Globe were very high in quality and the theatre was always full.

The competition among the theatres created a huge demand for new material and is the single most important factor in the flowering of drama that is now known as the ‘golden age’ of English drama. Apart from Shakespeare’s, scores of the plays of that period are regularly performed today. This great demand is reflected in Shakespeare’s vast output. If you look at a timeline of Shakespeare’s life you will see how fast he worked. He wrote up to four plays in some years and averaged 1.5 plays a year during his working life.

A day out at the Globe Theatre was a real treat. The grounds around the theatre would have been bustling, with plenty of entertainment. Even people not attending performances would flock to the Globe for the market stalls and the holiday-like atmosphere. There were many complaints about apprentices missing work to go to the theatre.

The groundlings paid a penny to stand in the pit of the Globe Theatre. The others sat in the galleries. The very grand could watch the play from a chair set on the side of the stage itself. Theatre performances were held in the afternoon because they needed the daylight. The turnover of plays was unimaginable to the modern mind. The theatres could often present eleven performances of ten different plays in two weeks. The actors generally got their lines only as the play was in progress – very different from the well-rehearsed performances that we expect these days. There would be someone backstage whispering the lines and the actors would then repeat them. Women were not allowed to appear on the stage so the female roles were played by men and boys.

Shakespeare was not only a shareholder in the Globe and a prominent writer; he also acted in some of the plays. We don’t know exactly how many roles he played himself, although we do have some documented information.

Shakespeare had begun his career on the stage by 1592. It is probable that he played the title role in Edward I by Edward Peele in 1593. Regarding the major roles in his own plays, he was probably directing because he gave way to the other actors and played small, peripheral parts, including Adam in As You Like It; Duncan in Macbeth; King Henry in Henry IV Part 1and Part 2; and the ghost in Hamlet. Shakespeare’s first biographer, Nicholas Rowe, refers to a role by Shakespeare as ‘the Ghost in his own Hamlet’ and says that he was at ‘the top of his performance’.