Renaissance Theater
EN207
Marymount University
Dr. Howe
Spring 2011
Cultural Context:
Feudal, ChurchGoverned Medieval
Period
Cultural Context:
Growing Reformation
(15th Century—hinge
between Medieval and
Renaissance)
General Cultural Trends in the Medieval Period
Growing Protestant Reformation (Protestant Reformation also affected theatrical
performance)
 At the end of Medieval period, reformers targeted theater as idolatrously
representational, associated with the pleasures of the flesh. This
antitheatricalism would persist into the Renaissance and beyond (during the
Puritan Commonwealth from 1642-1660, playhouses closed)
 Gradual increase in the significance of the vernacular characteristic of the
Reformation meant-->
 Accessibility of language, play of language, increase in artistry and innovation,
new forms of drama under impulse of economic competition
Gradual shift of power from clergy to laity (secularization, which would mark
Renaissance theater as well)
 Gradual shift in theatrical performance sites from inside-outside church, more
associated with civic performance and communal rites (leading to
professionalization in the Renaissance, with the demise of feudalism)
 Actors less associated with church, more associated with skilled labor
 Patronage moved away from church, toward aristocracy
Performance spaces became more static by end of period, developing, in the
Renaissance, into PURPOSE-BUILT THEATERS that were ENCLOSED
Weakening of rigid feudal social and political structures, with the rise of
capitalism and secularization
Prohibitions against Theater
Theater allows us to contemplate ourselves, to examine our
communities, to speculate on alternative possibilities—if we take the
challenge. It helps shape us into who we are as individuals in a
community.
Sometimes theater is expressly forbidden for precisely these
reasons. Performance is not static—it happens between audiences
and stages; in theater, especially earlier or politically radical forms of
theater, this sense of movement can enable and model politicaland
social dissent. Theater can therefore be dangerous.
Strongest deterrent to theater in general tends to be religion, despite
what some critics see as a close relationship between religious and
theatrical practice. This is one reason, why Medieval theater was so
closely controlled by and allied to the Church (though it could never
be fully policed).
Prohibitions against Theater: Religious
and Moral
Some believe that, especially in Christian countries, the
antagonism of religion toward theatrical performance derives from
the second commandment
Possibility of sickness and contamination are issues; real (or
inflated) concerns translate easily into moral metaphors
In some cultures and some periods, theater associated with
something “unclean” or even heretical.
Partly because such promiscuous, performative spaces are
difficult to police...
The Early Modern Theater
Cultural Context
Tudor Period: (1485-1603)
Henry VII to Elizabeth
Elizabethan (1558-1603)
Stuart Period:
Plymouth
Jacobean (1603-1625)
Carolinean (1625-1649)
Act; Commonwealth (1649-1660)
Restoration (1660-1685)
Charles II (1660-1685)
James II (1685-1688)
1517: Reformation begins/Luther
1588: Spanish Armada
605: Gunpowder Plot
1620: Pilgrims land in
1649: Charles I beheaded
1662: Act of Uniformity; 1673: Test
1686: Tolerance
1665, 1666: Fire, Plague
1681: Exclusion Crisis
1689: Bill of Rights
Reformation
 Feudal to capitalistic society
 Unrest and conflict: negotiation btw “divine right of kings and
liberty of people” (Thomson 192)
 Birth of a truly professional theater; also meant decline of
truly popular/populist theater; increasingly becomes a high
cultural activity
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Major developments in Renaissance Theater History: Court Pageantry,
Progresses, and Household Players
Developed in part from Medieval processionals, adapted for the civic demands of
an early modern state

Machiavelli: A prince “at convenient seasons of the year, ought to keep the people
occupied with festivals and shows.” To calm the masses? To reaffirm power?
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The “progress”--a monarch's parade or procession through his or her dominions,
displaying self, wealth, power to public (Thomson 175, 190)
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Court pageantry marks a delight in representation, but also expensive “selfadvertisement” and tactics for enacting the “claim[s] to political power” (Berthold
368)
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Household players: liveried precursors to professional actors in England; provided
powerful families entertainment, also went on tour, representing powerful families
(opportunities for spying!) Warwick's Men, Leicester's Men, etc. to King's and
Duke's Men, professional troupes given patents after Restoration
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Tudor legislation moved increasingly to limit unlicensed or strolling players, in part
to control the “masterless men” (Thomson 179).
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Acting and the Law
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Under Elizabeth I, acting becomes a lawful and legal profession
(1572); yet, highly regulated (Master of Revels, 1574 act) and
subject to suspicion--actors were alternately classified as vagrants
or “vagabonds and sturdy beggars,” and as servants of noblemen.
The 1572 Poor Law classed actors in the same section as
vagabonds, rogues and wandering beggars and therefore required
them to be attached to a household theatre company and have
the patronage of a nobleman. Professional theater companies
evolved from household players.
As “servants,” actors could avoid some legal prohibitions, like
sumptuary laws; yet, another 1572 act forbade “the unlawful
retaining of multitudes of unordinary servants by liveries, badges,
and other signs and tokens (contrary to the good and ancient
statutes and laws of this realm),” which meant that some actors
were turned away.
Professional actor had a “secure,” if somewhat transgressive and
threatening, “position in the structure of society” (Berthold 394)
Some things have double the ill, both naturally in spreading the
infection [of the plague], and otherwise in drawing God's wrath and
plague upon us, as the erecting and frequenting of houses very
famous for incontinent rule [italics added] out of our liberties and
jurisdiction.
—Nicholas Woodrofe, lord mayor of London in 1580
Playhouses were regarded not merely as a breeding ground for the
plague but as the thing itself, an infection “pestering the City” and
contaminating the morals of London's apprentices. Theatres were
viewed as houses of Proteus, and, in the metamorphic fears of the
city, it was not only the players who shifted shapes, confounded
categories, and counterfeited roles. Drama offered a form of
“recreation” that drew out socially unsettling reverberations of the
term, since playhouses offered a place “for all masterless men and
vagabond persons that haunt the highways, to meet together and to
recreate themselves [italics added].” The fear was not that the
spectators might be entertained but that they might incorporate
theatrical means of impersonation and representation in their own
lives—for example, by dressing beyond their station and thus
confounding a social order reliant on sumptuary codes to distinguish
one social rank from another.
—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”
In 1572, in fact, players were defined as vagabonds—criminals
subject to arrest, whipping, and branding unless they were “liveried”
servants of an aristocratic household. Burbage's company and
others used this loophole in the law to their advantage by
persuading various lords to lend their names (and often little more)
to the companies, which thus became the Lord Chamberlain's or the
Lord Strange's Men. Furthermore, “popular” drama, performed by
professional acting companies for anyone who could afford the price
of admission, was perceived as too vulgar in its appeal to be
considered a form of art.
—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”
Major developments in Renaissance Theater History:
Professional Theater
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First professional, secular drama developed in the Renaissance; by
late 16th century, theater “had become an established part of city life”
(Berthold 391); popular entertainment that embraced a variety of
ranks and classes. Cost for admittance to an open air playhouse: 1
penny
Actors and managers could become wealthy; early modern “star
system” developed, which would continue well into the modern
period
Companies were organized like guilds and businesses; all takings
went into a common pool, from which shareholders who put up
money for performances recouped expenses; extra went to actors
Some actors were also shareholders
Playwrights didn't own their plays; sold copyright to a principal who
then made money from performances. Actually received very little
money, unless a member of the company or a shareholder.
Plays were commodities, and actors, entrepreneurs (Thomson 181)
Elizabethan Theater: Censure of the Stage
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Stephen Gosson, Playes Confuted in Five Actions (1582)
Thomas White (1577): theater a sink of iniquity that “set a-gog: theft and
whoredom; pride and prodigality; villainy and blasphemy”
Master Rainoldes, Th'overthrow of stage-playes (1599), a diatribe
specifically against crossdressing in the theater
Some censure legitimate: opportunities for lawlessness and violence,
congestion of traffic, encouragement of disreputable taverns, and danger
of the spread of the plague. Theaters were often closed throughout the
period, often in times of political turmoil or when contagions were feared.
Some less so: blasphemy of cross-dressing; 1580, an earthquake, and
1581, resurgence of the plague: signs from god (one churchman wrote
that the theater caused these disturbances); chastised as “popish”
(especially when discovered that the Church had used theater to teach
scriptural history in Medieval period)
Increasing suspicion of acting as deliberate deception; “sensitivity about
the very idea of impersonation” (Thomson 187)--CHIEFLY B/C OF
THREATS TO AUTHORITY. CAN AN ACTOR PLAY A KING?
The Elizabethan Theater
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Two forms: private and public, as usual! (Private: some court functions, plays
performed for/by private families, or in schools)
Public theaters: octagonal ring-like structures; roofs weren't added until
Jacobean period (Thomson 192)
BUT, enclosed—this lead to more accuracy in moneytaking; the first box
office (Thomson 178)
First permanent building designed purposely for theater: 1567, The Red Lion
(Stepney)1576 ;, James Burbage built The Theatre (Shoreditch); 1577, The
Curtain [all these men were entrepreneurs, marketeers interested in profit]
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On the right bank of the Thames (Southwark): The Rose (1587), the Swan (c.
1595), and the Globe (1599), built from timbers of the original Theatre
Located in “the liberties” of London, its outskirts—areas free from certain
authorities (Steven Mullaney)
When performances were to occur, playhouses would fly flags: white for
comedies, black for tragedies
"Hope Theatre: London theatres c. 1600." Online Map/Still. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Feb. 2008
<http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-2974>.
The “liberties or suburbs” of early modern London bear little
resemblance to modern suburbs in either a legal or a cultural sense.
They were a part of the city, extending up to 3 miles (5 km) from its
ancient Roman wall, yet in crucial aspects were set apart from it; they
were also an integral part of a complex civic structure common to the
walled medieval and Renaissance metropolis, a marginal geopolitical
domain that was nonetheless central to the symbolic and material
economy of the city. Free, or “at liberty,” from manorial rule or
obligations to the crown, the liberties “belonged” to the city yet fell
outside the jurisdiction of the lord mayor, the sheriffs of London, and
the Common Council, and they constituted an ambiguous geopolitical
domain over which the city had authority but, paradoxically, almost no
control.
—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”
Viewed from a religious perspective, the liberties were marked as
places of the sacred, or of sacred pollution in the case of the city's
lepers, made at once holy and hopelessly contaminated by their
affliction. From a political perspective, the liberties were the places
where criminals were conveyed for public executions, well-attended
and sometimes festive rituals that served to mark the boundary
between this life and the next in a more secular fashion. From a
general point of view, the margins of the city were places where
forms of moral excess such as prostitution were granted license to
exist beyond the bounds of a community that they had, by their
incontinence, already exceeded.
—Steven Mullaney, “Shakespeare and the Liberties”
‘Long View' of London from
Southwark, Wenceslaus Hollar, 1647.
Note the clearly visible—and
labeled—Globe, as well as the nearby
Bear Garden.
"Southwark: view of London from Southwark." Online Photograph. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Feb. 2008
<http://www.britannica.com/eb/art-11110>.
The Material Stage
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Round/octagonal structure with three tiers of spectator galleries and the pit;
small, people were crowded together; but, rowdy and loud.
Social background and ability to pay dictated where members of the public sat or stood
in a theatre.
- Groundlings/Pit: 1 penny admission
- Covered bench seats in upper galleries: 2 pennies
- “Lords' rooms” next to the balcony, overhanging the stage: 6 pennies, a day's wages
for a highly skilled worker
Proscenium stage (thrust stage—as opposed to simple platform, more
playing space than on Continental stages; less “raking,” no perspective
scenery [203])
 Gallery above stage supported by pillars (for musicians, noble patrons,
upper stage for acting)
 Above gallery, windowed loft (trumpeters, etc)
 Behind stage, dressing rooms accessible by doors; also where actors
entered/exited
 Very few props, very little if any scenery; essentially a bare stage
 Played in contemporary dress; rich patrons could afford rich clothes for
actors; sumptuary law exemptions (Thomson 170)
 No women on stage, though women did attend performances regularly
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Jan de Witt, Dutch visitor to
England in 1596, describes the
Rose and the Swan as the
finest of the four London
playhouses.
This is a Renaissance drawing
of the Swan made for him from
his notes—the only extant
visual contemporary record of
an Elizabethan theater (outside
of maps, which frequently
shows their locations).
Note the trumpeter in the loft,
the flag announcing a
performance, the Lords' seats,
the three tiers of bench seating,
the pit, and the proscenium
stage.
The Material Stage
Bare stage, few props, daytime performances (3:00-6:00pm)
 Mood had to be created by actor himself and the words he speaks
 Called “spoken decor”--a “crucial stylistic feature of the Elizabethan
stage” (Berthold 403)
 Playwrights used it for both aesthetic and practical purposes, and
actors used it to capture the audience
 The crowd “was silent only if the actors silenced it” (Thomson 181)
 Midsummer Night's Dream: the Rude Mechanicals' inept, overdrawn
attempts to paint a night scene and describe an actor as a wall:
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Pyramus
O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!
O night, which ever art when day is not!
O night, O night! alack, alack, alack,
I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot!
And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!
Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,
Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!
Other Considerations:
Because outdoor (noise from city, Thames) and populated by unruly
crowds (rotten fruit thrown at bad actors), acting likely dependent on a
clear, “penetrating voice and widely visible gestures” (Berthold 401)
Some evidence that bombast and ranting becoming less acceptable, but
definitely not absent—especially in tragedies
In comedies, low humor was enjoyed by all classes; NOT SIMPLE
“COMIC RELIEF”!!! (Thomson 189, 190-191), though theater moving in
direction of “high culture” by way of professionalization/gentrification
Significant gestures still very choreographed and meaningful, a practice
that continues into the Restoration period—not “realistic” acting by our
standards
No stage lighting
Relatively less stage machinery—trap doors were used, and some
cranes, but in general relatively unspectacular (unlike Continental
Renaissance and Medieval performance)
By this time, England had become a Protestant nation
Jacobean and Stuart Court Theater
 Under James II and Charles I, strict regulation of political topics in drama (Thomson
195)
 Elaborate masques “celebrat[ed] the serene authority of a King” (Thomson 196) were
the most “significant early Stuart contributions to the development of English theatre”
(196), not because of the drama, but because of the “theatrical conduct” of the event
itself.
 Members of the court—women included—performed roles in an elaborate “courtly
ritual” (196); example of Charles I becoming part of Salmacida spolia (201)
 Gave an “illusion of security” belied by the rebelliousness and popular appeal of the
public theaters, and of the very real political tensions of the period.
Masque/antimasque—order/disorder harmonized and neutralized (200)
 Very expensive, elaborate, stylized (198)--Inigo Jones
 “the acme of theatrical elitism” (199); Hierarchy, perspective...
Antitheatricalism continued to grow
 William Prynne (201-2); Court theater “reeked of Catholic ritual”; “corrputing guile of
women” (201)
 Harshly punished by Charles I [Gunpowder plot, Catholic intolerance; Charles I
tyranny—execution, itself a theatrical event (203)
Interregnum
 Some theater, but not much; public theaters closed
 1655, Lord Mayor's pageant reestablished, Davenant lured back to stage an opera
(204)