Chapter 5
Creating a Professional Theatre
Creating a Professional
Theatre
 Revived interest in the classical world included Greek
and Roman plays and theatrical practices
 The Renaissance understanding of the classical theatre
was severely limited and often distorted.
 Educated people began to perceive alternatives to
medieval practices,
 playwrights began to write plays that imitated or
adapted classical subjects and forms or that mingled
medieval and classical elements.
Roman theatre at Amman, Jordan
Creating a Professional
Theatre(cont’d)
 During the sixteenth century, disputes over church
doctrine and practice led to secessions from the
Roman Catholic Church and the formation of several
Protestant sects.
 Forbidden to perform plays on religious subjects, the
theatre had to become secular, and for its subjects it
turned to classical literature, historical chronicles, and
legends.
Sacred Heart Church in Bowie,
Maryland, established in 1729
Creating a Professional
Theatre(cont’d)
 To survive, professional groups had to
 be able to play often,
 have a stock of plays sufficiently large and varied to
keep the limited available audience coming back,
 have a performance space large enough.
 Had to own or control their own costumers, scenery,
and other production elements.
 Had to assemble a company of actors and
production personnel.
Kneehigh, Miracle and the Hall for
Cornwall - the trinity of Truro
professional theatre
Creating a Professional
Theatre(cont’d)
 Technically, actors became “servants” of these
patrons and therefor were no longer master less.
 During Shakespeare’s time the acting companies had
such titles as the Lord Admiral’s Men, the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men, and the King’s Men as indications
of their legal status.
 Patronage brought little financial support.
Creating a Professional
Theatre(cont’d)
 Despite these problems, by 1600 English acting
companies were creating what many consider the
greatest theatrical era the world has known.
Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre
were opponents of the children's
companies
Shakespeare and the Globe
Theatre
 Others included Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe,
Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, and John Webster, all of
whom contributed to making the years between 1585
and 1642 exceptionally fertile.
 Shakespeare’s plays were not collected and
published until several years after his death.
Video link of
Shakespeare In
Love
Shakespeare and the Globe
Theatre(cont’d)
 The stage was sheltered by a roof
(“the heavens” or “the shadow”) supported
by two posts near the front of the stage platform.
 At the back of the stage
 multilevel façade.
 On the stage level,
 at least two large doors permitted exits and entrances and
served as openings through which stage.
 The second level of the façade
 an acting space used to represent balconies ( as in Romeo
and Juliet), windows, battlements, or other high places.
Video link of
Romeo and Juliet
Shakespeare and the Globe
Theatre(cont’d)
 This stage was an adaptation of medieval conventions.
 Most characters were clothed in Elizabethan garments
appropriate to their rank, age, and profession.
 Elizabethan theatre included a considerable musical
element.
Video link of
The Merchant of
Venice
Shakespeare and the Globe
Theatre(cont’d)
 Elizabethan acting companies
 learned quickly how to make the theatre fully
professional and sufficiently attractive and remunerative
to support a large number of persons.
 The other important ingredient was the playing
audience
 among whom backgrounds and tastes varied
considerably.
 It is representative of Elizabethan drama in its story,
structure, and conventions
 But one of the world’s great tragedies,
it is superior to most plays of its time.
Video link of
Elizabeth: The
Golden Age
Hamlet
 Like Oedipus the King, Hmalet concerns a man
charged with the duty of punishing the murderer of a
king. But Shakespeare uses a broader canvas than
Sophocles and includes within his drama more facets
of the story, more characters, and a wider sweep of
time and place.
 Shakespeare organizes his action with great skill
Video link of
Hamlet
Hamlet(cont’d)
 Shakespeare skillfully interweaves this main plot with
the subplot concerning Polonius and his family.
 All of the main characters in Hamlet are drawn from
the nobility or aristocracy.
 Many people consider Hamlet to be among the most
demanding roles ever written for a tragic actor,
 in part because the actor must project one set of
attributes and responses to the characters and another
to the audience.
Hamlet 劇照
Hamlet(cont’d)
 Like Hamlet, Ophelia is sensitive, having little
knowledge of the world, and is easily led by her father,
Polonius.
 Claudius is doubtless suave and charming, otherwise it
would be difficult to understand how he is able to
deceive so many people.
 Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry is generally
recognized as the finest in the English language.
John William Waterhouse's
"Ophelia"
Hamlet(cont’d)
 Probably the most important element in
Shakespeare’s dialogue is figurative language.
 Shakespeare’s language makes special demands on
the actor.
 The action of Hamlet occurs in many places
 Shakespeare envisioned them all in terms of stage
properties, costumes, and the movement of the actors.
David Tennant Hamlet on
Stage.
Hamlet(cont’d)
 Costumes added to the visual effect
 Sounds also added to the overall effect
 Hamlet is rich in implications,
 which concern the shock of betrayal by those one has most
trusted.
 Another set of implication concerns
 the nature of kingship and the need to rule oneself before
attempting to rule others.
 The English public theatre continued most of the
practices of Shakespeare’s day until 1642,
 when civil war brought the forced closure of all theatre until
1660.
Hamlet 劇照
The Theatre Experience in
Renaissance Italy(cont’d)
 Another of the theatre’s great eras occurred in Italy
during the Renaissance.
 In mounting these festival,
 the Italian drew on classical sources, especially De
Architectural by Vitruvius (a Roman architect of the first
century B.C.)
 who described how a theatre is laid out, as well as the
setting appropriate to three kinds of plays: tragedy,
comedy, and pastoral.
The theatre was the final design by the Italian Renaissance
architect Andrea Palladio
The Theatre Experience in
Renaissance Italy(cont’d)
 Because they had no permanent theatres, the Italians
at first set up temporary performance spaces, usually
in large halls of state.
 The principles of perspective drawing had been
developed during the fifteenth century.
 The acceptance of perspective scenery is of profound
importance,
 because it signaled a movement away from the formal
and architectural stage to the representational and
pictorial stage.
The Theatre Experience in
Renaissance Italy(cont’d)
 The Greek, Roman, and Elizabethan stages
 all had in common a formalized architectural façade as
the basic background for all plays.
 Terms upstage and downstage
 From this need came the proscenium arch, used to
frame the stage opening(the “picture-frame stage”).
 The desire to shift scenery was inspired by the love of
spectacle and special effects,
 which the Italians exploited primarily in intermezzi
(interludes) between the acts of regular plays
Renaissance theatre
The Theatre Experience in
Renaissance Italy(cont’d)
 The appeals of intermezzi were eventually absorbed
into opera,
 a new from that originated in the 1590s out of attempts to
re-creat the relationship between music and speech
found in Greek tragedy.
Elizabethan Stage
Commedia dell’Arte
 Improvisation, a distinguishing feature of commedia,
 facilitated by the use of the same characters in all the
plays performed
 by the same troupe
 by the same actor always playing the same role with its
fixed attributes and costume.
 The stack character, commedia’s best-known feature,
can be divided into three categories: lovers, masters,
and servants.
Commedia dell'arte
Commedia dell’Arte(cont’d)
 Three masters recurred most often: Pantalone, Dottore,
and Capitano.
 The most varied of the commedia types were the
servants ( the zanni – the origin of the English word
zany ).
 Of the zanni, Arlecchino(Harlequin)eventually
became the most popular, although originally he was
of minor importance.
Pantalone, Dottore, and
Capitano
Commedia dell’Arte(cont’d)
 Harlequin’s most frequent companion
 a cynically witty, libidinous, and sometimes cruel servant.
 A commedia troupe averaged ten to twelve
members(seven or eight men and three or four
women).
 Commedia was most vigorous and popular in the
years between 1575 and 1650,
 but it continued into the last half of the eighteenth
century.
For other uses, see Harlequin (disambiguation). "Arlecchino" redirects
here. For the opera by Busoni, see Arlecchino (opera).
Commedia dell’Arte(cont’d)
 Although numerous scenarios have survived from the
period when commedia was at its peak, they are too
bare in outline to convey the flavor of a commedia
performance.
Claude Gillot – Commedia Dell´arte
The Servant of Two Masters
 Goldoni wrote The Servant of Two Masters in 1745 for a
Venetian commedia dell’arte troupe that permitted
him to write out all of the dialogue.
 Goldoni’s Pantalone has none of the miserly traits
typical of the character in earlier scenarios, and
Brighella has been deprived of his libidinous and cruel
traits.
Video link of
The Servant of Two
Masters
The Servant of Two
Masters(cont’d)
 The plot of The Servant of Two Masters relies on
disguise, coincidence, misunderstanding, and
withheld information.
 Goldoni is a master of plot development
 The most important character is Truffaldino, who has
all of the characteristics of Arlecchino – being both
clever and stupid, wearing a black mask and
particolored costume, and carrying a slapstick.
Riz's Blog Review: "The Servant of Two Masters" at Yale Rep
The Servant of Two
Masters(cont’d)
 He also has the greatest number of opportunities to
improvise lazzi:
 dealing with the porters who carry the trunks.
 Opportunities to improvise comic business are also
provided other characters.
 Goldoni wrote for a company that performed in a
public theatre of the kind then typical:
 box, pit, and gallery arrangement of the auditorium, and
picture-frame stage with wing-and-drop, perspective
scenery.
A. Bryan Humphrey (left) as Pantalone, Sara Kathryn
Bakker as Beatrice, and David Ivers as Truffaldino in The
Servant of Two Masters, 2003.
The Servant of Two
Masters(cont’d)
 The Servant of Two Masters does not achieve a high
level of characterization or social commentary, but
Goldoni was not seeking profundity.
THE SERVANT OF TWO MASTERS By Carlo Goldoni
The French Background
 The Development of French theatre
 had been interrupted by the civil wars that grew out of
religious controversy in the sixteenth century and
recurred in the seventeenth.
 Although Richelieu and others favored them, these
rules were not widely known or accepted in France
until 1636, when The Cid by Pierre Corneille (1606-1684)
became the most popular play yet written in Fance)
French Theatre Buildings
The French Background
 Richelieu in 1641 had the first theatre in France with a
proscenium arch erected in his own palace.
Portrait of Cardinal Richelieu, 1637, Philippe
de Champaigne
Moli’ere and 17th-Century
French Theatre Practice
 Just as Corneille and Racine set the standard for
tragedy, Moli’ere(1622-1673) set the standard for
comedy. Moli’ere began his career as an actor in
1643.
 Like Shakespeare, Moli’ere was involved in every
aspect of the theatre. He was head of his own
company,
 its principal actor, and its principal playwright.
 He was not part owner of a theatre, however.
French Theatre in the 17th Century
Moli’ere and 17th-Century
French Theatre Practice
 Despite the differences between the Elizabethan and
French stages, their acting companies had many
features in common.
 Casting was simplified because each actor played a
limited range of roles.
 By the 18th century, actors were being hired according
to “line of business”(according to the type of
characters they played) and remained in those lines
throughout their careers.
Repertory companies
Moli’ere and 17th-Century
French Theatre Practice
 In France, actors were expected to furnish their own
costumers, a major expense for the actors.
 As on the Elizabethan stage, most costumes were
exceptions, especially for Near Eastern, Moorish, and
classical characters.
 The scenic demand of regular comedy and tragedy
were simple.
 Ordinarily, in compliance with the neoclassical rules, the
plays were set in one place and required no scene
changes.
Sir John Gilbert's 1849 painting: The Plays of William
Shakespeare, containing scenes and characters from
several of William Shakespeare's plays.
Moli’ere and 17th-Century
French Theatre Practice
 Because the theatre was now indoors, lighting was a
concern. The available illuminants were candles and
oil lamps.
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 These were the prevailing practices during the years
1658-1673, when Moli’ere performed in Paris.
Model of 17th Century French Theatre with Lighting
Constellation
Tartuffe
 Tartuffe is concerned with religious hypocrisy.
 The play’s title character denounces others for their
pursuit of worldly pleasure while privately seeking those
pleasure for himself.
 The most likely target of Moli’ere satire was the
Company of the Holy Sacrament
 a secret society of the time, whose purpose was to
improve morals by being ”spiritual police” who spied on
the private lives of others.
 Moli’ere read Tratuffe to several persons before it was
produced in 1664.
Tartuffe, by Moliere
Tartuffe(cont’d)
 Whether or not Moli’ere had the Company in mind, he
was clearly thinking of groups like the Company
 who feel that they alone can discern true piety from false,
creating conditions under which hypocrites flourish.
 The conflict in Tartuffe is established quickly in the
opening scene, as Madame Pernelle, Orgon’s mother,
storms out of the house while denouncing the entire
household for failing to appreciate Tartuffe’s piety.
Alan Stocks as loyal
& Eithne Browne as
Madame Pernelle
Tartuffe(cont’d)
 Orgon’s role is the one most evenly distributed
throughout the play.
 Although the Tartuffes of the world are dangerous, they
can exist only because of the Orgons, because the
success of the wicked depends on the gullibility of the
foolish.
 When Tartuffe is finally unmasked, Orgon’s character
remains consistent; failing to see the difference
between hypocrisy and piety.
Tartuffe, Orgon and Damis
Tartuffe(cont’d)
 Little indication is given of the age or physical
appearance of the characters.
 Because Moli’ere wrote with his own company in mind
and directed the play, he did not need to specify
every detail in his script.
 In Tartuffe
 Moli’ere uses the verse form that by that time had
become standard in French drama
 the alexandrine( twelve-syllable lines, with each pair of
adjacent lines rhyming.
In Molière's great comedy, the consummate hypocrite Tartuffe
(played by John Rensenhouse at Court Theatre) sets his sights
on Elmire (Deanna Dunagan), his host's wife.
The Elizabethan, Italian, and
French Traditions
 Although Shakespeare and Moli’ere are among the
world’s great dramatists and were separated in time
by only a few years, they worked within different
theatrical traditions.
 During the Restoration, several of Shakespeare’s plays
were adapted to make them conform more nearly to
the neoclassical ideal.
 For example, at the end of Nahum Tate’s adaptation of
King Lear(1681) only the wicked people died; Lear,
Gloucester, and Kent retired to the country, and Cordelia
and Edgar married and became the rulers of England.
King Lear mourns Cordelia's death, James Barry, 1786–1788
The Elizabethan, Italian, and
French Traditions(cont’d)
 English theatre between 1660 and 1700, a period
usually referred to as the Restoration,
 was noted principally for its comedy of manners.
 Which focused on the amoral behavior and witty verbal
exchanges of the rich and idle upper class.
 Restoration comedy was concerned above all with
sexual conquests, advantageous marriages( in which
live played little part), the latest fashions, and a
seeming determination to be shocked at nothing
A husband and wife engage in a merry war betwixt the sexes
in 'Restoration Comedy'
The Elizabethan, Italian, and
French Traditions(cont’d)
 Commedia dell’arte influenced many European
playwrights.
 The degree of its influence on English writers of
Shakespeare’s day is still debated, but it was clearly
evident in 18th century English theatre, especially in
pantomimes.
 Commedia’s influence on Moli’ere and other French
playwrights is undeniable
 this influence continued throughout the 18th and into the
19th century, even after commedia had ceased to be a
separate form
Commedia dell'arte troupe Gelosi in a late 16th-century
Flemish painting.
The Elizabethan, Italian, and
French Traditions
 By the 18th century, although there were still obvious
differences, among the theatres of various European
countries, they shared the same basic conventions.
 The theatre had made the transition from festival
offerings to professional, secular entertainment.
Poster for a 1908 production of Verdi's 1871 opera Aida,
performed by the Hippodrome Opera Company of Cleveland,
Ohio, USA