ELIZABETHAN
& JACOBEAN
THEATRE
Influences on the Development
of the Elizabethan Theatre
Medieval Stagecraft
Protestant Reformation
Tudor Pageantry
Renaissance Learning and Ideas
Influence of Medieval Theatre
 Eager audience
 Established tradition of theatre and
actors
 MYSTERY AND MORALITY
PLAYS:
 Mixing of high seriousness and
low comedy
 FOLK PLAYS:
 Pagan remnants: fairies and
sprites
 Feast of Fools
 INTERLUDES:
 Humanistic debates
Medieval Concepts of Tragedy
De casibus: tragedies of fortune
Tragedy is less the result
of individual action than a
reflection of the inevitable
turning of Fortune's wheel.
Fortune, traditionally
female because of the
association of women with
the moon and
changeability, has two
faces, one benign, one
severe.
Held between Christmas
and Epiphany,
particularly on New
Year's Day
The ruling idea of the
feast was the reversal of
status.
The celebrations were
relics of the ancient
ceremonies of birth and
renewal which took place
at New Year and involved
a temporary overturning
of all values.
Feast of Fools
Feast of Fools
The Ass, a widespread feature of the festival, was a mixture of
Celtic, Roman and Christian traditions, for the Ass is at once a
relic of ancient magical cults, a fertility symbol, a symbol of
strength and the epitome of stupidity.
The Protestant Reformation
Elizabeth (ruled 15581603) worked out a
compromise church that
retained as much as
possible from the Catholic
church while putting into
place most of the
foundational ideas of
Protestantism.
Mystery and Morality
plays were outlawed as
they taught Roman
Catholic doctrine
1588: Defeat of the Spanish Armada
The Battle of Gravelines: at which the
English Fleet dispersed the Spanish Armada
 The disgrace to
Spain damaged its
prestige
 England's star was
on the rise.
 Elizabeth took the
defeat of the Armada
as a sign of divine
blessing
 English patriotism
and devotion to the
Queen soared :
history plays
Tudor Pageantry
A hybrid dramatic form of
literature, ritual, and politics,
Royal entries and aristocratic
entertainments -- fashionable
literary forms were turned to the
service of national propaganda
Pageants
Full of spectacle:
 Parades music, dance, elaborate
 Masques staging, fireworks
Composed by the bright young men
who haunted the court in hopes of
securing political office.
Renaissance
 Rebirth of Classical knowledge and ideals
 Roman theatre as model
 Humanistic Ideas
 Universities
 Oxford
 Cambridge
 Inns of Court
Influence of Roman Theatre
 5 act structure
 Comedy: Plautus and
Terence
 Plots
 Stock characters
Tragedy: Seneca
 Revenge motif
 Irony
 Use of ghosts
 Violent spectacle
Elizabethan Stock Characters
 Senex: old man in authority
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
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Miles gloriosus: braggart soldier
Shrew: sharp-tongued woman
Clever servant
Machiavel: political schemer
“Calumniator believed” : a liar who is believed
Idiotes: a malcontent
Parasite: a “moocher”
Pedant: in love with the sound of his
own didactic voice
 Young Lovers
 Fools and clowns
Early Senecan Tragedies
Gorbuduc by Thomas Sackville and
Thomas Norton
The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd
Play within a play from
The Spanish Tragedy
Humanism:
from Morality to Chronicle
It was the aim of the humanists to educate those who
ruled in wise and virtuous government.
How do you teach a king? Very tactfully . . .
The effectiveness of the morality play was attractive to
humanists, who changed the nature of the moral from
religion to political virtue without changing the
techniques of the drama.
 Theatre was a natural medium for the humanists to use
in educating the king, for plays were frequently
performed at Court.
Chronicle or History Plays
Explore the workings and legitimacy of kingship
What is a good King?
Historical exemplars (Lear, Macbeth, Julius Caesar)
Often turn into tragedies
Types of Plays
 Chronicle or History
Plays
 Comedies
 Romantic
 Pastoral
 Feast of Fools
 Social
 Humors
 Tragedies
 Senecan Revenge
 De casibus -- turn of
Fortune
 Fatal flaw
 Romances
 far-away adventures
 Any combination of the
above
“The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, comedy, history,
pastoral,pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical historical,
scene individable or poem unlimited.” -- Hamlet
University Wits
University-educated playwrights, noted for their
learning and clever language
George Peele (1556-96)
Thomas Lodge (1558-1625)
Thomas Nashe ( 1567-1601)
Robert Greene (1560-92): best known
as first Shakespearian critic
 John Lyly (1554-1606)
MA from Cambridge
Established blank verse as
dramatic medium:
“Marlowe’s mighty line”
Overreacher
Tragedies:
Christopher Marlowe
1564-93
 Tamburlaine
 Dido Queen of Carthage
 Dr. Faustus
 Edward II
 Massacre at Paris
 Jew of Malta
“Quod me nutrit me destruit”
That which nourishes me, destroys me
Killed in a brawl
Ben Jonson
1572-1637
Educated at Westminster
School -- no university but
the most learned of
playwrights
Important comedies of
humor include: Every
Man in His Humor,
Volpone, The Alchemist,
Bartholomew Fair
 Wrote and staged court
masques with Inigo Jones
 Celebrated poet and
conversationalist:
“Sons of Ben”
After Abraham van Blyenberch, 1618.
©National Portrait Gallery, London.
COMEDY OF HUMORS
 The comedy of humours presents characters with a single
attribute so exaggerated that they become caricatures.
 Derives from the Latin humor, meaning "liquid." Renaissance
theory held that the human body contained a balance of four
humours. When properly balanced, these humours were thought
to give the individual a healthy mind and a healthy body
 Humors:
Volpone at Carter Barron Theatre
 Choleric: yellow bile -argumentative, angry
 Sanguine: blood -cheerful, active
 Phlegmatic: phlegm -thoughtful, passive
 Melancholy: black bile -melancholic
Jacobean Tragedy
 A sense of defeat
 A mood of spiritual despair
 The theme of insanity, of man pressed
beyond the limit of endurance
James I
 Moral confusion ("fair is foul and foul is fair") that
threatens to unbalance even the staunchest of heroes.
 This sinister tendency came to a climax about 1605 and was in
part a consequence of the anxiety surrounding the death of Queen
Elizabeth I and the accession of James I.
 While the Elizabethans affirned life, the Jacobeans were possessed
by death.
Jacobean Dramatists
John Webster (c.1580-c.1632)
Thomas Middleton (1580-1627)
Francis Beaumont (c. 1585-16)
John Fletcher (1579-1625)
Cyril Tourneur (c.1575-1626)
John Ford (1586-c.1639)
Elizabeth Cary (c. 1585-1639)
John Webster
c. 1580-c.1625
Son of a London tailor,
member of Merchant
Taylors’ Company
Collaborated on several
plays with Thomas Dekker
and John Marston
Fame rests on two tragedies,
The White Devil and The
Duchess of Malfi
Bob Hoskins and
Helen Mirren in
The Duchess of Malfi
Acting Companies
1590 -- 1642: approximately 20 companies of actors in
London (although only 4 or 5 played in town at one
time)
More than a hundred provincial troupes.
Companies usually played in London in the winter and
spring and to travel in the summer when plague ravaged
the city
Members:
Shareholders
Apprentices
Hired men
Boy Actors
No women on the English stage in Shakespeare's day.
The parts of women were acted by child actors--boys whose
voices had not yet changed.
Whole acting companies were created with child
performers: the Children of the Chapel Royal, and the St.
Paul's Boys. The children's companies played regularly at
Court.
The Puritans, who disapproved of the theatre in general,
were particularly scandalized by boys cross-dressing as
women.
 Largely Puritan leaders
of the City of London
disapproved of the
theatres.
 The Privy Council was
wary of the political
comment often present
in topical plays.
 Censorship under the
direction of the Master
of Revels was strict.
 In 1596 the City
Corporation ordered
the expulsion of players
from London and the
closing of the inntheatres.
 Theatres moved across
the River
Censorship
William Shakespeare
April 23, 1564-April 23, 1616
 Born in Stratford-upon-Avon
 Married Anne Hathaway in 1582
at age of 18
 3 children: Susanna (1583) and
Hamnet and Judith (1585)
 1585-92: “the lost years”
 1595 record of membership in
Lord Chamberlain’s Men
Early Works: prior to 1594
 History Plays:
Henry VI: 1,2,and 3
Richard III
 Poetry: Venus and Adonis, The Rape of Lucrece, sonnets
 Plautine Comedy:
A Comedy of Errors
 Courtly Comedy:
Two Gentlemen of Verona
 Farcical/problem Comedy:
The Taming of the Shrew
 Senecan Revenge Tragedy:
Titus Andronicus
 Romantic Tragedy:
Romeo and Juliet
Lord
Chamberlain’s
Men
Originally formed under the patronage of Lord Strange, but
when he died in 1594, the players found a patron in Henry
Carey, the Lord Chamberlain.
Performed at the Theatre and the Curtain
1599 moved to the newly built Globe. By 1600 they had
emerged as the leading theatrical company in London
1603 became the King's Men under a royal patent from
James I. The company continued successfully until the
Puritans closed the theatres in 1642.
The Globe
 Built by the Burbages in 1598
for the Lord Chamberlain’s
Men
 Burned down in 1613 during
production of Henry VIII
 Rebuilt 1614
The New Globe: opened 1997
Blackfriars Theatre
Theatre
Interiors
Sketch of the Swan Theatre
Popular Success: 1595-1600
 Comedies:
Love’s Labour’s Lost
 A Midsummer’s
Night’s Dream
 Much Ado About
Nothing
 As You Like It
 Twelfth Night
 The Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
Histories:
King John
Richard II
Henry IV:
1,2
Henry V
Tragedies:
Julius
Caesar
Hamlet
Anne Hathaway’s Cottage
Stratford
New Place, Stratford,
from a print of 1880,
purchased by Shakespeare in
1597
17th-century LONDON
from a view by Claes Jansz Visscher
A Darker Vision: 1601-1607
 Problem Plays:
All’s Well That Ends Well
 Measure for Measure
 Troilus and Cressida
 Tragedies:
 Othello
 King Lear
 Macbeth
 Antony and Cleopatra
 Coriolanus
Final Works: 1608-1612
 Tragedy: Timon of Athens
Romances:
Cymbeline
 Pericles
 The Winter’s Tale
 The Tempest
Collaborations with John Fletcher:
 Henry VIII
 Two Noble Kinsmen
Shakespeare was buried on April 25, 1616 in Holy Trinity Church,
Stratford, where he had been baptised just over 52 years earlier
Good friend for Jesus sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here!
Blest be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones
First Folio: 1623
The first collected edition of
Shakespeare's plays.
Included thirty-six plays,
eighteen of which had never
been published before
The editors of the volume,
Shakespeare's fellow actors
John Heminge and Henry
Condell, arranged the plays in
three genres: Comedies,
Histories, and Tragedies.