'Polite' Early Elizabethan Comedy (Lyly, Peele, Greene)
A more sophisticated kind of Elizabethan comedy, here
referred to as ‘polite’ was established at the Royal court
itself and in smaller, closed, private theaters such as
Blackfriars. These plays were performed in front of the
Queen, by children (boys only) from church quire
schools, such as the Children of St. Paul’s (Cathedral).
One of the first really ‘polite’ playwrights whose plays
were performed by these children was John Lyly. He is
perhaps best remembered today for his novel Euphues.
This novel was written in very flowery, alliterative style,
so that today, we term such writing Euphuistic and the
style Euphuism. His plays include Endymion
(mythological love affair between a mortal and the moon,
theme later picked up by Shelley) and Midas (again
mythological King who would turn anything he touched
into gold).
George Peele wrote The Old Wives’ Tale, a comedy
satirizing the chivalric stories of enchantment. The plot
revolves around Delia, enchanted by Sacrapant, her 1 Euphues, by John Lyly http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/lylyadd.ht
brothers, and her lover, who manages to save them from m, Public Domain,
Sacrapant with the help of the ghost of Jack (for whose https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?
funeral he previously gave his last money). Milton’s curid=7982507
Comus drew on this plot: in Comus, the Lady, enchanted and abducted by the wizard Comus is
saved by her two brothers with the help of the nymph Sabrina and the Angel. The play is
remembered for dances and songs (one more similarity with Milton’s Comus) as well as for odd
characters of the giant Huanebango and mad Venilia.
Robert Greene wrote Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Bacon alluded to in the title is of course
not Francis Bacon, but Roger Bacon the alchemist, doctor mirabilis, while the other character
alluded to in the title is Thomas Bungay. These two characters have magical powers and have
produced with them a kind of a TV, a brazen
head that speaks, etc. Burgess says the play
Bare bone summary
is fresh and charming and humorous, but
sometimes overly learned (see Burgess 86):
• At court, boys, church quires
characters speak stately and intricately, with
• Lyly – Euphuism, Endymion,
scholarly allusions that do not go well with
Midas
the social standing of characters making
• Peele, Old Wives’ Tale
them.
• Satire of chivalric, influence on
Milton
• Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar
Green and Peele, for the sake of convenience represented here as primarily comediographers, also
wrote tragedies, and are sometimes regarded as belonging to the group of authors identified as
‘University Wits’ (more on these in the next chapter).
Elizabethan theater
‘University Wits’ were, as the name suggests,
men educated at the university (Oxford or
Cambridge) who could no longer count on
finding employment in the monasteries. (The
monasteries having been dissolved by Henry
VIII). It had always been taken for granted
that the scholar will find a job at the
monastery, as much as it is or used to be taken
for granted that the philologist in Serbia will
take up a job at school. But, the monastery
being out of the question, what presented
itself as the most profitable course for such
scholars was writing plays for the popular
theater.
Inns of Court was not popular theater, and 2 Elizabethan Inn
neither was the royal court, or private
theaters, such as Blackfriars, where, originally, church quires staged the plays of John Lyly and
others. The public stage, stage for the people, begins with itinerant (travelling) groups of actors
performing their plays at inns (taverns). These inns, pictured above, would have a courtyard
surrounded by the inn building from three sides, with galleries leading to inn rooms. Actors would
set up stage at the bottom of the yard, and viewers would sit in the galleries (and pay more
expensive tickets or rent rooms), or, if they were common people, would stand in the inn yard
(these were called groundlings). The money collected from the groundlings (1 penny per person)
would go to the actors, while the rest was kept by the innkeeper. It was an interesting concept,
allowing the acting company to
stay in one place, but receive varied
audiences (as the guests of the inn
inevitably changed) – letting the
audience come to them, rather than
going after the audience.
3 Elizabethan Theater
The inn was the germ or model for
the first Elizabethan theaters: once
the Puritan London authorities
practically banned plays (1574) at
the inns (fearing illness and
rebellion resulting from large
gatherings, but also loathing the
theater
as
vain,
empty
entertainment) the actors built the first London theater. It was named simply Theater, built in
Finsbury, now part of London, but at the time to the north of the city, outside the city walls (and
outside the city’s jurisdiction). The first performance of Romeo and Juliet was staged there. It was
in the shape of an amphitheater, made of wood, with three galleries for the more noble guests, and
a yard (called the pit) for the groundlings. The stage, sometimes called proscenium, was about one
meter high, and thrust into the audience, so that the viewers surrounded the actors from three sides,
resulting in a more connected experience compared to that of modern theaters. Unlike in the image
above, the space below the stage, called cellarage, was closed with boards on three sides facing
the audience, and, in some theaters, it was reachable from the stage through doors in the stage
itself, called trap doors.
Behind the stage, there were tiring rooms for the actors to change costumes, prepare, rest. It is
often speculated that behind the centrally placed pillars was a small niche, sometimes referred to
as inner stage where intimate scenes (tomb scene in Romeo and Juliet, or Queen’s bedchamber in
Hamlet). Above it, leaning against the pillars on one side and the tiring rooms on the other side,
was a large porch, the upper stage, or music room, where scenes on city walls or balconies were
put (Ghost on city walls in Hamlet, not to mention the obvious balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet).
The nether part of this porch, visible to viewers, was sometimes painted with representations of
the Sun, Moon, stars, and was referred to as heaven. From this upper porch, supernatural beings
would be lowered onto the stage (Ariel in The Tempest), whereas the trapdoors would have been
used for infernal creatures, such as Mephistopheles from Marlow’s Faustus, or for tombs.
The theater was mostly open to the skies, except for the space above the inner room, covered by
the ‘shade’ to protect the actors’ costly costumes, and the galleries, which had their own roofs in
some theaters, to protect richer guests from the rain.
After the lease for the land on
which the Theater was built
expired in 1597, and the
landowner refused to extend the
lease, the actors disassembled
it, plank by plank, beam by
beam, and used the material to
build the famous Globe (1599)
the theater were Shakespeare’s
company (Lord Chamberlain’s
Men) performed. Before all
that, Philip Henslowe, a loan
shark and a businessman, built
his theater the Rose in 1588,
where Cristofer Marlowe’s
company performed (Lord
Admiral’s Men, they were called) and where the famous actor Edward Alleyn performed the roles
of Faustus, Tamburlaine, Jew of Malta, perhaps even of Hieronimo from Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy.
Admiral’s Men later moved to Henslowe’s theater Fortune (1600). Other London theaters of the
time included The Curtain (1597) where
Shakespeare’s company performed in the
space between the deconstruction of the
Theater and the construction of Globe.
Then, there was also the theater named
Swan (even the names of these first
theaters, such as the Rose or Swan,
remind one of names of old inns) built in
1595, pictured to the right.
Dutchman de Vit noted that there were
five theaters in London, giving plays
every day, of which the most notable one
is the Swan, capable of receiving three
thousand viewers. Some scholars indeed
estimate the capacity of the Globe and the
Swan to be between 2 and 3 thousand
viewers. A popular stage, indeed – a
golden age of the theater, which, like the
Golden race of Hesiod’s Theogony, is
most likely never to return.
Shakespeare’ Globe caught fire during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII (a canon was
used improperly) in 1613 and burned to the ground. It was rebuilt the following year, worked until
1642 when all theaters were closed, and was recently reconstructed not far from its original
position. Shakespeare’s company, like Marlow’s, had its own great actor, Richard Burbage, the
son of James Burbage who originally built The Theater: it was for him that Shakespeare wrote his
major tragic roles, presumably. Shakespeare alone wrote in his company, though he also acted,
and had shares of the business, like the other members of the company.
Sons of James Burbage actually bought the previously mentioned private theater Blackfriars in
1596, but it was only in 1609 that Lord Chamberlain’s Men (now King’s Men) began performing
there. This marked the transition toward modern theater-like conditions: closed space, artificial
lightning, stage effects, frontal only view of the stage, smaller capacity of about 600 viewers, all
of them sitting down, and more expensive tickets (from half a schilling to two and a half schillings,
or 6 to 30 times more expensive than those of the public theaters).
Bare bone summary
• Itinerant troops, inns yards,
audience
• Same structure with public
theaters
• Outside the city, open to the sky,
proscenium, pit, galleries
• Theater, Romeo and Juliet,
Globe
• Henslowe, Rose, Fortune
• Companies of actors: Lord
Chamberlain’s vs Lord
Admiral’s Men
• Actors Edward Alleyn vs
Richard Burbage