LONDON AND
ELIZABETHAN
THEATER
Drama terms
• Tragedy: A drama which recounts an important series of
events in the life of a person of significance: events
resulting in unhappy catastrophe; the whole is treated with
great dignity and seriousness.
• Aristotle’s purpose of tragedy: To arouse emotions of
pity and fear and thus to produce in the audience a
catharsis of these emotions.
Drama terms
• Catharsis: (Aristotle calls it “proper purgation”)
Spectator’s emotional conflicts are temporarily resolved
and his inner agitations stilled by opportunity to expend
fear and pity on a tragic hero.
Drama terms
• Foil: contrast; anything (a character, for example) that
serves by contrast to set another character off, i.e. a
villian figure making the hero look better by comparison.
• Tragic irony: That form of dramatic irony in which a
character in a tragedy uses words which mean one thing
to him and another to those better acquainted with his real
situation, especially when he is about to become a victim
of Fate.
Drama terms
• Paradox: Stylistic device used for dramatic
impact (“fair is foul, and foul is fair”); a statement
which while seemingly contradictory or absurd
may actually be well-founded or true.
• Parody: A composition burlesquing or imitating
another, usually serious, piece of work. Designed
to ridicule in nonsensical fashion one or to
criticize, by brilliant treatment, an original piece of
work.
Drama terms
• soliloquy: A speech of character in a play delivered while
the speaker is alone and calculated to inform the
audience or reader of what is passing in the character’s
mind. “If it were done.” “Is this a dagger.”
Elizabethan theater
• No theaters in the early 16th century
• Groups of actors got together and performed in innyards;
traveled around in London or throughout the countryside
• The government discovered that illegal activities were
going on within the crowds
• In the mid-1500’s, the government decided that inns and
actors needed licenses
Elizabethan theater
• Began building theaters across the River Thames
(outside of London) to escape taxes
• The area was known for the “seedy” practices of
bear/bull baiting, prostitution, etc.
• 1576: The first theater built called (aptly) “The
Theater
• Richard Burbage headed the Earl of Leicester’s
men
Elizabethan theater
• 1599: The Globe theater
• “The Bear Garden”: bear and bull-baiting
• By 1591 the theaters were closed every Thursday
by law to strengthen the popularity of bull and
bear-baiting
• Master of the Revels: fellow in charge of the
theaters;
• the Queen or government officials could close the
theaters for any purpose
• The theaters were closed during the plague
Bull Baiting
• Bull baiting was a contest in which trained bulldogs
attacked tethered bulls. The bull, with a rope tied
around the root of his horns, would be fastened to a
stake with an iron ring in it, situated in the center of
the ring. The rope was about 15 feet long, so that the
animal was confined to a space of 30 feet diameter.
The owners of the dogs stood around this circle, each
holding their dog by its ears, and when the sport
began, one of the dogs would loosed. The bull was
baited for about an hour. Bull-Baiting and BearBaiting was extremely similar, except that Bull-Baiting
was more common in England due to the scarcity and
cost of bears.
Bear Baiting
• Bull baiting was a contest in which the bear was chained to a stake by one hind leg or by the
neck and worried by dogs. The whipping of a blinded bear was another variation of bearbaiting. Queen Elizabeth attended a famous baiting which was described by an Elizabethan
chronicler called Robert Laneham as follows:
• "... it was a sport very pleasant to see, to see the bear, with his pink eyes, tearing after his
enemies approach; the nimbleness and wait of the dog to take his advantage and the force
and experience of the bear again to avoid his assaults: if he were bitten in one place how he
would pinch in another to get free; that if he were taken once, then by what shift with biting,
with clawing, with roaring, with tossing and tumbling he would work and wind himself from
them; and when he was loose to shake his ears twice or thrice with the blood and the slaver
hanging about his physiognomy."
Inside the theater
Balcony or
roof used for
seating,
musicians, or
“indoor”
scenes
Theater
only 86 feet
long, but
would fit up
to 2,300
people
Common folks
or
“groundlings”
stood around
the stage and
interacted with
the cast; had
no shelter from
weather or use
of restroom
facilities
Elizabethan theater
• Theater companies had little scenery or special effects
• Words were vital to visualize the setting
• Actors were interactive with the audience
Credits
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http://ise.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/images/Bullfight.JPG
bull baiting
http://www.sedgleymanor.com/graphics/bull_baiting.jpg
bull baiting 2
http://imagesource.allposters.com/images/pic/BRGPOD/1
09528~Bear-Baiting-Posters.jpg
bear baiting
http://www.fhaugsburg.de/~harsch/anglica/Chronology/16thC/Shakesp
eare/sha_glo3.jpg
The swan