For Elizabethan context visit Elizabethan and Early Stuart Literature, articles drawn from the Encyclopaedia Britannica, written by Lacey Baldwin Smith, Peter B. Ritzma Professor Emeritus of Humanitites, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.

| Historical considerations | Historical background | Biography | Biography 1: Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603) | Biography 2: Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603) | The Virgin Queen | Mary, Queen of Scots | The Great Leader and Orator | The Poet's craft | Elizabethan drama |

| The Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre | The Globe Theatre | Main Features | The stage | Levels of the stage | Actors | Boy actors | Boy actors and Hamlet | Acting in the Elizabethan age | Acting Companies | Elizabethan Costume: Stage costumes | Costumes were used | Costumes for particular plays | Special effects | Songs and music | Conventions of staging in Elizabethan and Jacobean times | Elizabethan Playwrights ! Elizabethan Audience |

Historical considerations:

    England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I attained new levels of power and wealth. It was also a time of uncertainty and danger, from potentially hostile alliances on the part of the continental powers, to continuing religious strife between Catholic and Protestant, to the threat of renewed struggles over the succession to the throne. In a highly patriarchal culture, and particularly in the eyes of Protestants, a female monarch was an anomaly. The success and stability of Elizabeth's rule rested on her subjects's recognition and awe of her sovereignty.

    In this unstable climate, it was in Elizabeth's interest to control the ways in which she was represented to her subjects. She believed, like many Renaissance monarchs, in the idea of royal absolutism, the theory that ultimate power was quiet properly concentrated in her person and indeed that God had appointed her to be His deputy in the kingdom. Opposition to her rule, in this view, was not only a political act but also a kind of impiety, a blasphemous grudging against the will of God. This view of the Queen's power was reiterated in speeches, political tracts, and from the pulpits of churches, where they were incorporated in the Book of Homilies that clergymen were required to read out to their congregations.

    Although she presented herself as a defender of the Protestant nation, Elizabeth also ensured that her subjects would revere her by reaching back to the Middle Ages and to the cult of the Virgin Mary. By defining herself as the Virgin Queen, she appropriated the popular emotion that had throughout England's long Catholic era been attached to Mary, and this allowed her to claim authority outside of conventional gender roles. In this famous portrair, Elizabeth I asserts the identity she had defined for herself by holding a sieve, a traditional symbol of virginity.

Historical background:

    Elizabeth's granfather, Henry Tudor, became King Henry VII of England in 1485. His accession and marriage to Elizabeth of York put an end to the civil wars which had racked England for almost a hundred years. Henry VII concentrated on reducing friction at home and abroad and on establishing a strong, financially secure monarchy.

    He was succeeded in 1509 by his son Henry VIII who married a Spanish princess, Catherine of Aragon. This marriage did not produce a son and so Henry VIII divorced her. The divorce was condemned by the Catholic Church and, gradually, a split developed between the Pope and Henry. Henry died in 1547 and at that time England was still largely, in practice, a Catholic country, though the supreme spiritual authority of the Pope had been challenged, and many Prostestant reformers were eager to spread Protestantism in England.

    Henry VIII was succeeded by his ten-year-old son Edward and his Regents furthered the spread of Protestantism. Edward died in 1553 and was followed to the throne by his half-sister Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon and a devout Catholic. She attempted to restore Catholicism to England but she died childless and was succeeded in 1558 by her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth.

    Elizabeth adopted what might be called a 'middle way' as far as religion was concerned. She broke the link with Rome but retained many of the practices and beliefs of the old. Her 'middle way' satisfied most of her subjects and for the majority of her reign religious strife was avoided. Many different Christian sects became established in England during her reign, however, among them the Puritans who were very critical of the theatre.

Biography: Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603)

    Elizabeth Tudor was born at Greenwich, an estate near London, in 1533. The daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, she was declared illegitimate by Pope Clement VII, who refused to sanction her father's remarriage. Elizabeth was born into a religiously and politically turbulent time. Her half-sister Mary, preceding her on the throne, had instituted England's return to Roman Catholicism via a series of religious persecutions of Protestants that earned her the name Bloody Mary. After Mary died childless in 1558, a twenty-five year old Elizabeth became queen, though not without personal, political, and religious opposition to her rule. The young queen carefully sidestepped the traps in her way, and in a series of shrewd political maneuvers designed to satisfy the majority of her subjects, set England back on a Protestant course and ended a costly war Mary had instigated with France.

Biography 1: Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603)

    Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth, following her mother's execution, was declared illegitimate by parliament (1536), and suffered a lonely childhood, much of it spent in the company of her young brother Edward. She was rigorously educated, studying Latin and Greek under Roger Ascham. The accession of her sister as Mary I in 1553 increased the insecurity of Elizabeth's position for, although herself an opponent of religious extremism, she was seen as the natural focus for the Protestant faction. Accused of involvement in Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion, she was imprisoned briefly in the Tower before being placed under house arrest at Woodstock (1554).

    At her accession in 1558 Elizabeth inherited a nation deeply divided by religious strife. She set about restoring the moderate Anglicanism of her father: Mary's grants to the Roman Catholic orders were reclaimed; the Anglican service was reintroduced (1559) and the 39 articles, formulating the established doctrine of the church, were adopted (1563); an Act of Supremacy defined Elizabeth as supreme governor of the church (1559); and new bishops, including Matthew Parker as archbishop of Canterbury, were appointed. Abroad, the war with France was ended by the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559). Economic reforms included the calling in of the debased coinage of the previous three reigns. Elizabeth appointed as her chief secretary William Cecil, who remained her trusted adviser and friend until his death in 1598. Parliament, anxious to secure the Protestant succession, urged her to marry but she refused, although throughout her reign she used marriage as a diplomatic counter in her relations with France and the Habsburgs. She conducted romantic relationships with a number of men, notably with Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, and, later in life, with Robert Devereux, earl of Essex.

    Ten years of restored stability came under threat when, in 1568, Elizabeth's cousin Mary Queen of Scots sought refuge in England. As a potential Catholic claimant to the English throne Mary became the focus of Catholic conspiracies, such as the northern rebellion (1569). The danger increased in 1570, when the pope excommunicated Elizabeth, absolving her subjects from their allegiance to her. Further conspiracies, such as the Ridolfi plot (1571), developed, but it was not until the discovery of Babington's conspiracy (1586) that Elizabeth was finally persuaded to authorize Mary's trial and subsequent execution for treason, a move she later claimed to regret bitterly.

    Fully conscious of the threat to English independence from the two great Roman Catholic powers, France and Spain, Elizabeth fought shy of European involvements. She gave aid reluctantly to the French Huguenots and the Dutch Protestants and gave only secret consent to Drake's attacks on the Spanish treasure fleets. When Spain at last turned to quell England, the defeat of the Armada made her a legend throughout Europe. However, she would still not be drawn into open war, continuing to endorse the campaign of privateering and raids on Spanish bases, such as that of Essex on Cádiz in 1596.

    As prudent financially as she was cautious diplomatically, Elizabeth financed government from her own revenues and called parliament to vote supplies only 13 times during her reign. Her management of parliament was marked by a willingness to compromise and demonstrated a political skill notably lacking in her Stuart successors. By her cultivation of the image of `Gloriana' and by her evident devotion to the welfare of her subjects, she helped create a national self-confidence that bore fruit in the last 15 years of her reign, notably in literature in the works of such writers as Marlowe, Spenser (whose long allegorical poem The Fairie Queene, is addressed to Elizabeth in her persona of Gloriana), and Shakespeare.

[From: Xreferences, Market House Dictionary of British History, Market House Books Ltd. 1987]

Biography 2: Elizabeth I (1533 - 1603)

    The reign of Elizabeth I, known as "Good Queen Bess," was a golden age for culture, commerce, and English naval supremacy. Elizabeth guided her country through the second phase of the Reformation, settling it upon a moderate Anglican foundation. A worldly Renaissance woman, she was in touch with every side of the nation's activity, from politics, finance, and religion to exploration, literature, and the arts. Her long reign provided stability, in which the country's life flourished as never before.

    Daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace. A clever child, she was carefully educated by Cambridge tutors of moderate Protestant inclinations. Brilliant at languages, she became a good classical scholar and wrote and spoke French and Italian fluently. As queen, this talent enabled her to conduct negotiations personally with foreign envoys. She was striking in appearance, with the red hair of the Welsh Tudors, high cheekbones, and a hooked nose. Like her grandfather Henry VII she was wary, shrewd, calculating though not ungenerous, and at heart humane. Distinctly autocratic, she had a genius for rule and used her femininity to manipulate men for political advantage.

    During the reign of her half-brother Edward VI the handsome Thomas Seymour made unwanted advances towards her. This may have reinforced a fear of sexual intimacy aroused by the earlier execution for adultery of her mother and of her cousin and stepmother Catherine Howard. She was in grave danger during the reign of Mary I, her Catholic half-sister. Implicated in Protestant unrest, Elizabeth was sent to the Tower, very nearly executed, and later banished from court. This experience determined Elizabeth, when queen, never to recognize an heir who might become a focus for opposition. When she did succeed Mary in 1558, she set about reversing the disasters of her half-sister's reign - her bankrupt treasury, her persecution of Protestants, and her defeat in war.

    Protestantism was re-established in 1559 as the national faith, and the Queen spent the rest of her life maintaining and enforcing it in the form of the Church of England. At the same time, she was hostile to Puritan Protestants, who wished to do away with ceremony. At the other extreme Roman Catholics posed a threat to the Anglican faith, but the Acts of Unity and Supremacy of 1559 established a tolerant attitude that lasted until 1570.

    Elizabeth's minister Sir William Cecil (later Lord Burghley) dominated her early reign. He put pressure on her to stamp out French dominance in Scotland. This was achieved by the Treaty of Edinburgh (1560), when Mary, Queen of Scots, renounced her claim to Elizabeth's throne. However, an attempt to regain Calais (lost by Mary I) ended in failure.

    Home affairs were stable for the first decade of Elizabeth's rule. The religious settlement gained strength, and sound policies led to an economic recovery. The expansion of industry and trade, the development of natural resources, and the increase in population, notably that of London, were all features of the new prosperity. Resulting from the strong partnership between Elizabeth and Burghley, these achievements laid the foundation of the Elizabethan Age.

    In 1569 a Catholic rebellion in the disadvantaged north of England challenged Elizabeth's rule and was harshly suppressed. After the pope excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570, her regime became less tolerant towards Roman Catholics, and from the 1580s persecutions increased. The Anglican Church was now firmly identified with English patriotism.

    Elizabeth had done nothing yet to settle the question of the succession, and it was becoming clear that she did not intend to risk marriage. The Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, after making a tragic mess of her rule in Scotland, had taken refuge in England in 1568. Many of Elizabeth's courtiers, both Anglican and Roman Catholic, wanted to marry Mary off to Elizabeth's Anglican cousin the Duke of Norfolk, thus tying her firmly to the English alliance. The intrigue was partly motivated by hostility to Cecil and jealousy of his influence with the queen. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whom Elizabeth loved, was one of those opposed to Cecil, but the queen did not allow her emotions to override her political judgment. She gave Cecil her support against the majority of the nobles in council - a move popular with her people. When Norfolk continued his design to marry Mary and then became involved in a conspiracy with the papal agent, Roberto di Ridolfi, he was found guilty of treason and executed in 1572, leaving Cecil in an even stronger position. Cecil's remarkable partnership with Elizabeth lasted for 40 years until his death in 1598, when he was succeeded by his son, Robert. The administration of both resulted in farsighted and consistent government that procured permanent benefits for the country. Mary continued to be a threat, and after being the focus of several plots against Elizabeth, she was executed in 1587.

    In the years 1569-72 there was a showdown with Spain, which ended the old Anglo-Spanish alliance. The break was over the Low Countries, where Philip II of Spain was using savage measures to suppress a revolt against his rule. Meanwhile, Spain had overthrown Sir John Hawkins's persistent attempts to share in its Caribbean trade, maintaining its monopoly of the New World and the Pacific. When Spanish ships carrying the pay for Philip's troops in the Netherlands took refuge at Plymouth, Elizabeth chose to avenge Hawkins's losses and had the ships seized. This put an end to Spanish repression of the Dutch but further soured relations with Spain.

    Elizabeth had both a geographical and a financial interest in the search for a northern passage to the Far East around Russia or North America, which dominated the 1570s. The voyages to the northeast opened up Russia's first direct contact with western Europe, resulting in diplomatic exchanges with Ivan the Terrible. Elizabeth also backed Martin Frobisher's voyages to find a northwest passage around Canada and - against Cecil's wishes - personally supported Francis Drake's voyage (1577-80) around the world. In the 1580s she backed Walter Raleigh's efforts to colonize Virginia with English settlers. The name Virginia was a direct mark of homage to Elizabeth, who was known as the "Virgin Queen."

    The maritime and colonial conflict with Spain moved into open war after 1585 when, by the Treaty of Greenwich, Elizabeth pledged England to support the Dutch struggle for independence. She disliked the necessity and hated war, but was determined to suppress Spanish aggression. At this time the navy reached a fighting strength and efficiency not rivalled again until the rule of Oliver Cromwell, and it astonished Europe by defeating the great Spanish Armada in 1588. At the height of the invasion threat, Elizabeth appeared before the army at Tilbury, riding on a white horse and wearing a white plume, to make her famous speech. The long war reached a second peak in 1596 with the capture of Cádiz by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, Elizabeth's last favourite and Leicester's stepson. She intended him to take Leicester's place in the state, but his failed attempt to crush resistance in Ireland, his intrigues to further the accession of James of Scotland to her throne, and finally his open rebellion in 1601 resulted in her decision to have him executed. The strain of this event sapped her will to live. She had had similar difficulty over Norfolk's execution and that of Mary, Queen of Scots - forced upon her by Cecil, and her whole council - which had given her a temporary breakdown. She died at Richmond. With the possible exception of Catherine II (the Great) of Russia, Elizabeth I may be regarded as the greatest woman ruler in history.

From Xreference, The Penguin Biographical Dictionary.

The Virgin Queen

    Elizabeth learned to turn her unmarried state and gender into an asset. She ruled through a combination of adroit political manipulation and imperious command, all the while enhancing her authority in the eyes of both court and country by means of an extraordinary cult of love. Ambassadors, courtiers, and parliamentarians all submitted to her. Those who approached her generally did so on their knees and were expected to address her with the most extravagant compliments; she in turn spoke, when it suited her to do so, in a comparable language of love. The court moved in an atmosphere of romance, with music, dancing, plays, and the elaborate, fancy-dress entertainments called masques. The queen adorned herself in gorgeous clothes and rich jewels. When she went on her summer "progresses", ceremonial journeys through her land, she looked like an exotic, sacred image in a religious cult of love. Her cult drew its power from cultural discourses that ranged from the secular (her courtiers could pine for her as a cruel Petrarchan mistress) to the sacred (the veneration that under Catholicism had been due to the Virgin Mary could now be directed toward England's semi-divine queen).

    Elizabeth never married, but throughout her reign, she used her perceived eligibility as a foreign policy tool. A dynastic marriage between the Queen of England and a foreign ruler would forge an alliance powerful enough to alter the balance of power in Europe, and so the English court hosted a steady stream of hopeful rulers. Elizabeth played her romantic part with exemplary skill, sighing and spinning the negotiations out for months and even years. Most probably, she never meant to marry any of her numerous suitors, as such a decisive act would have meant the end of her independence and the end of the marriage game by which she played one power off against another. Her flirtation with Catholic suitors, for example, kept King Philip II of Spain, a Catholic, from taking direct military action against England for several years, by which time England was able to meet and repel the invading Spanish Armada.

Mary, Queen of Scots

    Beset by Catholic and Protestant extremists, Elizabeth lived with continual fears of conspiracy, rebellion, and assassination. Many of the fears swirled around Mary, Queen of Scots, who had been driven from her own kingdom in 1568 and had taken refuge in England. Her presence, under a kind of house arrest, was the source of intense anxiety and helped generate continual rumors of plots, some of them real, others imaginary, still others circulated by the secret agents of the government's intelligence service. The situation worsened after the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of Protestants in France (1572); after Spanish imperial armies invaded the Netherlands to stamp out Protestant rebels; and after the assassination of Europe's other major Protestant Leader, William of Orange (1584). The Queen's life seemed to be in even greater danger after Pope Gregory XIII's proclamation in 1580 that the assassination of the great heretic Elizabeth (who had been excommunicated a decade before) would not constitute a mortal sin. When Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham unearthed another assassination plot in the correspondence between the Queen of Scots and the Catholic Anthony Babington, Mary's fate was sealed. After vacillating, a reluctant Elizabeth signed the death warrant in 1587, and her cousin was beheaded.

The Great Leader and Orator

    One of Elizabeth's finest moments was at Tilbury in August of 1588. Despite the armada's defeat, English people still feared an invasion from Spain, and in a speech to soldiers in Tilbury, Elizabeth eased their fears. Dressed in a white gown and a silver breastplate, she declared that although some of her councilors had urged her not to appear before a large crowd of armed men, she would never fail to trust the loyalty of her faithful and loving subjects. Nor did she fear the Spanish armies. “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of England, too.” In this celebrated speech, Elizabeth displayed many of her most memorable qualities: her self-consciously histrionic command of grand public occasion, her subtle blending of magniloquent rhetoric and the language of love, her strategic appropriation of traditionally masculine qualities, and her courageous persona. She died in 1603.

    Queen Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558 and ruled England until 1603. Her reign brought stability to the country and with stability came prosperity. In order to see how importan peace and order were to the Elizabethans, it is useful to contrast Elizabeth's reign with the insegurity and unrest of earlier ages.

The Poet's craft

    Besides exercising her remarkable political skills as a ruler, Queen Elizabeth was also the dominant cultural presence of the brilliant era named for her, the inspiration and subject of countless poems, dedications, and works of art. Hers was a uniquely English embodiment of the female power associated with such biblical and mythological heroines as Judith, Esther, Diana, and Minerva. Elizabeth was a well-educated woman who took pride in displaying her considerable knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages and her wide reading in the classics, begun under the tutelage of Roger Ascham and other humanist scholars. Her own writing includes speeches on several state occasions; poetic translations of selections from the Psalms, Petrarch, Seneca, and Horace; prose translations from Boethius, Plutarch, and the French Protestant Queen Margaret of Navarre; and a few original poems. The original poems known to be hers deal with actual events in her life.

    One of the most fashionable poetic traditions in the sixteenth century was that of the Petrarchan, or Italian sonnet, and Elizabeth draws on that tradition, though not specifically on that form, in "When I Was Fair and Young." The Petrarchan sonnet was primarily a form employed by male writers in which the man contemplates, laments, and attempts to overcome the painful distance separating him from the woman he worships. It is interesting, then, to consider what happens when a woman writes a poem that owes some debt to the Petrarchan sonnet. For one thing, the poem's point of view is entirely different. Instead of listening to the man as he gazes at his beloved, we hear a woman speaking about what it is like to be the object of so much adoring male attention. The poem speaks from the position of the passive beloved, rather than from that of the active lover, except that Elizabeth manages to take over all of these conventional positions in such a way that her passivity becomes the very first sign of her ultimate power and control and then, ironically, the means by which Cupid conquers her.

Elizabethan drama:

    Records of drama in English go back to the Middle Ages, a period in which numerous 'Miracle' and 'Morality' plays were written. Such plays were often based on biblical themes, especially those involving such miraculous events as the saving of Noah and his family in the ark, or those from which a clear moral could be drawn. Medieval plays were usually written to coincide with such religious festivals as Christmas or Easter and they were often performed in, or near, the church, with most of the community taking part either actively, by playing roles, or passively, as members of the audience.

    In the medieval period drama was an integral element in the structure of society. It was an extension of Christian ritual and was meant to make a strong impression on all who participated in the performance. Audiences were meant to be awed by the power and wisdom of God, inspired by the faith and courage of holy men, frightened by the fate of evil doers and amused by the folly of mankind. Drama was thus meant to have a cathartic effect, that is it was intended to improve the members of the audience by giving them an outlet for such emotions as greed, hatred, lust, pity. They were encouraged to sympathise with a character often called Everyman who represented all men in their journey through life. The drama of the time, like Everyman himself, had a universal appeal. It was written, not for a small élite, but with all members of the society in mind.

    In the early sixteenth century the close relationship that had previously existed between Church and State began to change. Individual Christian sects had distinctly different attitudes to the role of drama in society. It was tolerated by Catholics but condemned by Puritans who wished to 'purify' the religious beliefs and attitudes of the time and to encourage people to give up worldly pleasures so that they might attend to spiritual matters. Puritanism grew stronger, especially in towns and cities, in the second half of the sixteenth century and people connected with drama -writers and actors- had to struggle against growing opposition. Elizabethan dramatists often criticised Puritanism in their plays and there is some evidence of such criticism in several of Shakespeare's plays, including Twelfth Night. Puritanical opposition to the theatre eventually succeeded in curtailing freedom of speech in drama when it sponsored the Licensing Act which was passed by Parliament in 1737.

    In Shakespeare's day, however, the theatre had the support of the Court and many dramatists, including Shakespeare, continued the medieval tradition of producing plays which appealed to all classes and to different levels of intelligence and education.

    By the time Shakespeare began to write, traditional conceptions about the order of the cosmos, and about the human place in the cosmos, had begun to be shaken. In 1543, Copernicus had published his work arguing that the earth revolved around the sun, while Machiavelli had challenged the notion of a divinely ordered state through his new conception of politics based on the realities of power. European explorations continued to redraw the map of the known world in radical ways. Nevertheless, older paradigms for understanding the cosmos, such as the Ptolemaic model of the universe, in which the earth was the center of a system of concentric spheres, continued to exert a powerful hold on European thought. For a poet, the metaphoric power of the older model, in which the soul inhabited the body, while the body was the very essence of a fallen earth, contingent and eternally besieged by sin, continued to be indispensable. In Sonnet 146, when Shakespeare used this powerful and traditional metaphor of the soul as center of a sinful earth, he was drawing on intellectual precepts that were not only deeply held in his time, but also, increasingly, bitterly contested.

The Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre

    In the earliest years of theatres, they were built outside the city limits, as they were not allowed within the city walls. In addition, this way the city governors had no jurisdiction over them. In 1576 the first theatre building was constructed. It was erected by James Burbage (father of Richard Burbage), and was aptly named "The Theatre". It was an enclosed wooden structure built in Finsbury Fields, outside London.

    'The Elizabethan theatre form derived from the inn yards and animal baiting rings in which actors were accustomed to perform in the past. These theatres were circular wooden buildings with a paved courtyard in the middle open to the sky. A rectangular stage jutted out into the middle of this yard. Some of the audience stood in the yard (or 'pit') to watch the play. They were thus on three sides of the stage, close up to it and on a level with it. Such a theatre could hold about 3,000 spectators. The yards were about 80ft in diameter and the rectangular stage approximately 40ft by 30ft and 5ft 6in high. Shakespeare called such a treatre a 'wooden O' in the Prologue to Henry V (line 13).

    The stage itself was partially covered by a roof or canopy which projected from the wall at the rear of the stage and was supported by two posts at the front. This protected the stage and performers from inclement weather, and to it were secured winches and other machinery for stage effects. On either side at the back of the stage was a door. These led into the dressing room (or 'tiring house') and it was by means of these doors that actors entered and left the stage. Between these doors was a small recess or alcove which was curtained off. Such a 'discovery place' served, for example, for Juliet's bedroom when in Act IV Scene 4 of Romeo and Juliet the Nurse went to the back of the stage and drew the curtain to find, or 'discover' in Elizabethan English, Juliet apparently dead on her bed. Above the discovery place was a balcony, used for the famous balcony scenes of Romeo and Juliet (II.2 and III.5), or for the battlements of Richard's castle when he is confronted by Bolingbroke in Richard II (III.3). Actors (all parts in the Elizabethan theatre were taken by boys or men) had access to the area beneath the stage; from here, in the 'cellarage', would have come the voice of the ghost of Hamlet's father (Hamlet, II.1.150-82).

    On these stages there was very little in the way of scenary or props - there was nowhere to store them (there were no wings in this theatre) nor any way to set them up (no tabs across the stage), and, anyway, productions had to be transportable for performance at court or at noble houses. The stage was bare, which is why characters often tell us where they are: there was nothing on the stage to indicate location. It is also why location is so rarely topographical, and much more often symbolic. It suggests a dramatic mood or situation, rather than a place: Lear's barren heath reflects his destitute state, as the storm his emotional turmoil.

    None of the plays printed in Shakespeare's lifetime marks Act or scene divisions. These have been introduced by later editors, but they should not mislead us into supposing that there was any break in Elizabethan performances such as might happen today while the curtains are closed and the set is changed. The staging of Elizabethan plays was continuous, with the many short 'scenes' of which Shakespeare's plays are often constructed following one after another in quick succession. We have to think of a more fluid and much faster production than we are generally used to: in the prologues to Romeo and Juliet (line 12) and Henry VIII (line 13) Shakespeare speaks of only two hours as the playing time. It is because plays were staged continuously that exits and entrances are written in as part of the script: characters speak as they enter or leave the stage because otherwise there would be a silence while, in full view, they took up their positions. (This is also why dead bodies are carried off: they cannot get up and walk off.)

    In 1608 Skakespeare's company, the King's Men, acquired the Blackfriars Theatre, a smaller, rectangular indoor theatre, holding about 700 people, with seats for all the members of the audience, facilities for elaborate stage effects and, because it was enclosed, artificial lighting. It has been suggested that the plays written for this 'private' theatre differed from those written for the Globe, since, as it cost more to go to a private theatre, the audience came from a higher social stratum and demanded the more elaborated and courtly entertainment which Shakespeare's romances provide. However, the King's Men continued to play in the Globe in the summer, using Blackfriars in the winter, and it is not certain that Shakespeare's last plays were written specifically for the Blackfriars Theatre, or first performed there.' (Lynn and Jeff Wood)

The Globe Theatre

    The first public theatre in London was built in 1576: The Theatre, at Shoreditch. The first theatre was built it according to the Elizabethan courtyards: There were galleries and boxes around the walls where the wealthy sat, and like the courtyard of an inn, it had no roof and so performances were cancelled when the weather was bad. The 1576 Theatre and those built afterwards differed from the courtyards in that they contained a large stage -often called 'apron stage' because of its shape - which jutted out from one wall into the auditorium. The poorer members of the oudience were called 'groundlings' and they stood around the stage throughout the performance. These 'groundlings' paid only a penny to get in, but for wealthier spectators there were seats in three covered tiers or galleries between the inner and outer walls of the building, extending round most of the auditorium and overlooking the pit and the stage. The large apron stage was not curtained from the audience and there was no scenery on it. Indications of where the scene occurred were built into the words of the play.

    The Globe Theatre was built in 1598-99. In 1598 The Theatre was dismantled and reconstructed on the south side of the Thames, where it became known as the Globe Theatre. The first recorded performance was of Julius Caesar in September 1599. Many of Shakespeare's plays were written for and performed at the Globe, which burnt down in 1613. It was rebuilt in 1614, only to be destroyed by Oliver Cromwell's Puritan troops thirty years later.

By 1608, Shakespeare's company had moved to Blackfriar's Theatre, an indoor space with much more sophisticated stage machinery than was available at the Globe although they seem to have continued to perform here as well. The change can be appreciated in plays from Shakespeare's later years, which need more elaborated staging effects, such as s storm at sea and the descent of the gods, in The Tempest and Cymbeline respectively.

    The new Globe: if you want to get an idea of what the original Globe Theatre was like, the best thing to do is to visit the new Globe Theatre which was opened in 1997 about two hundred yards from the original site. It has lime plastered walls and a thatched roof, imitating the original in every possible detail.

    If you would like to know more about what's on at the Globe you can visit the following website: Shakespeare's Globe, or the Globe Web, also for extra information you can visit: Shakespeare's Globe Research Database, A guide to the original Globe The New Globe - The rebuilding of Shakespeare's Globe. This site, sponsored by the University of Reading (UK), is dedicated to providing background information on Shakespearean performance in original conditions. Centred around the construction of a replica of the Globe playhouse in London, it includes pages devoted to the original Globe and other playhouses in Early Modern London, reports and photographic documentaries on reconstruction and performances at the New Globe, and also some practical information. These pages form part of the Renaissance Texts Research Centre's support to the Globe project, which won it a Queen's Anniversary Award for Further Education in 1998.

Main Features:

    A typical Elizabethan unroofed public playhouse, firstly had a raised platform as a stage, and on three sides of this was a yard, an open area for standing audience members. Surrounding the stage and the yard were two or three gallery levels fully furnished with seats. Behind the stage was a back wall with 2 or 3 doors (or curtained doorways). These doorways provided the actors exits and entrances from backstage. A gallery, where musicians often sat, supported the back wall. Above this gallery was a tower, which acted as a storage area for machinery. From the top of this tower, a trumpet would signal a play's commencement and a flag would indicate that a performance was taking place.

    The stage and its surroundings adopted the Spanish theatre's architectural backdrop. Above the stage was a canopy, on whose ceiling a blue sky with golden stars was painted. This canopy was suitably called the "heavens" and was supported by columns of classical design.

The stage:

    The Elizabethan stage was an adaptation of medieval conventions. For example, the Elizabethan stage platform originated in the medieval unlocalized plateau, and the facade of the Elizabethan stage had evolved from the mansions of medieval religious drama.

    The Elizabethan stage also made use of trapdoors in the stage platform, and machinery in the towers, which was used to lift and move performers. Props, like beds, thrones, and altars were not used to show a scene's locale but to simply aid the action.

    According scholarly research, the basic details of the Elizabethan theatre were these:

Levels of the stage:

    The lowest level used trap doors for devils, ghosts, graves, and ditches. The second level was the main stage for the most important scenes. The third level was the balcony used for anything from a mountain to a city wall. The fourth level was just under the roof where a series of pullys could send down angels or thunderbolts or birds etc. The highest level was a room aloft for the musicians.

Actors:

    Actors:All female parts were played by males (young men before voices changed). Actors had to have a good memory, strong voices, abiltiy to fence, dance, sing, and do slight of hand. [ In 1656, Mrs Coleman was the first English woman to act (in a private performance of William Davenant's The Siege of Rhodes. Up to then women's roles had traditionally been played by boys.].

Boy actors: Some of the differences between then and now

    In Shakespeare's time, girls and women were not allowed to act on stage. All the female parts therefore had to be played by boys. Indeed, in Elizabethan and Jacobean times there were troupes of boy actors who played every part in a dramatic performance.

    The boy trainees would, of course, eventually be able to play men's parts but during their apprenticeship, while they were young and when their voices hadn't broken, they played female parts. They often entered the profession between the ages of ten and thirteen, some of them continuing to play women's parts until they were in their late teens or early twenties.

    There may be some questions you would like to ask about these boy actors. You may have asked some of the following questions:

    1) How would young teenage actors be able to play parts of mature women like Cleopatra? : Nobody really knows the answer to this question, because there is very little written evidence about which boy actors played which parts. Cleopatra, with her 'infinite variety', would have been an incredibly difficult part to play and it seems likely that the play was not very successful when it was first written. We don't know the details, but it is at least possible that the play was not very successful because there wasn't a boy who could play the role effectively. It's also possible, however, that the more mature female parts were played by either older boys or less masculine-looking men.

    2) How effective would they be? Would the audience be convinced? : They must have been generally effective because most of the plays were successful and Elizabethan audiences were much less polite and accommodating than our own, so they would soon have made their displeasure felt. The possibility that the acting might be ineffective is, however, hinted at by Cleopatra when she says that if she's captured by Caesar:

    3) What sort of physical contact would there be between the boy playing a woman and the man with whom she was engaged in a love scene?: There would only be formal physical contact between actors such as Romeo and Juliet. Remember that in the most famous love scene in Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet are separated by one of them being on the balcony while the other is on the ground! In many cases the contact would be no more than the touching or kissing of a hand.

    4) What was the attitude of the Elizabethans towards boy actors?: The attitudes of the Elizabethans varied enormously. The puritans disapproved of everything to do with plays and acting. They claimed that all sorts of unlawful heterosexual relationships were carried on by the players, encouraged by the words of the plays.

    Oddly they don't seem to have worried about the possibility of homosexual relationships, which would seem to have been a much more likely result of men watching boys play female parts. The playgoers themselves were quite at ease with seeing boys play female parts. Of course, it's worth remembering that since the Puritans didn't actually go to see the plays themselves, they didn't know the truth of the situation anyway.

    5) Did the lack of realism of having a boy play a female part matter?: Not really, because the Elizabethan stage was unrealistic anyway. They didn't have scenery or complex sound effects to suggest realistically what they were describing. They didn't separate themselves from the audience by curtains. Since their audiences didn't expect realism in these ways, they could cope well with unrealistic boy actors. The power of Shakespeare was in the words.

    However, all this doesn't mean that the boy actors didn't need considerable powers in order to play their parts successfully. They would need:

    Far from the image the Puritans give, boy actors were well looked after by the companies they worked for. They lodged with the families of senior actors, where they were fed and clothed, as well as being trained in their art.

Boy actors and Hamlet:

    If you're studying Hamlet, the whole business of acting is obviously of special importance, because of the mousetrap play-within-the-play. There's lots of evidence from Act 2, scene 2 about actors in general and boy actors in particular:

Acting in the Elizabethan age:

    In Shakespeare's age there were companies of boy actors, who were taken from choir schools and trained as actors as an offshoot of elocution or voice training.

    These companies rivalled the adult companies such as the King's Men and they are referred to by Rosencrantz in Hamlet as 'an aery of children, little eyases, that cry out on the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for 't'.

    Shakespeare, so far as we know, never wrote a play specifically for child actors. Have a look at the information below about boy actors within adult companies, such as the ones Shakespeare worked in.

    There were certain obvious differences between boy actors, trained as part of their education, and the actors in the main adult companies.

Acting Companies:

    Two kinds of acting companies existed during the Elizabethan era. These were adult companies and boys' choirs. The latter consisted of a group of choirboys who were conducted by a choirmaster (who received all profits). They performed in court chapels.

    The other company consisted mainly of 12 to 25 adult men. No women were allowed on stage, so young boys played the female roles. Many of the main actors were shareholders in the company and received a share of the profits.

    As apprentices, young boys were apprenticed from the age of 10 years to a senior actor, who would train him in performance, provide him with toom and board and receive his apprentice's wage until he came of age and became an independent actor.

    To survive, acting companies had to perform often to secure a constant income. They also had to have a large repertory of plays to perform, so as to keep the limited amount of audience members coming back.

    All Elizabethan acting companies had to be under patronage of various nobles, otherwise they were referred to as "masterless men", classified as vagabonds or rogues.

    Two main acting companies performed in London theatres, and these were the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and the Admiral's Men.

    Shakespeare was part of the Chamberlain's Men, whose patron was the Lord Chamberlain and who were run by Richard Burbage. The actors in this company owned shares within it as well as their playhouse and its properties.

    The Admiral's men, patronaged by Sir Admiral and run by Alleyn, had no shares in their company. They paid rent for the use of a theatre to Henslowe, who also paid them salaries.

Elizabethan Costume: Stage costumes

    If stages were bare in Elizabethan times, the costumes were elaborate to make up for it. Because costumes were so sumptuous, this emphasised the difference between the actor himself, who would be poor and not noble, and his rich appearance. This fitted in well with the theme that most obsessively recurs in Shakespeare's plays - the theme of appearance and reality.

Costumes were used:

Costumes for particular plays:

    Hats were important in establishing status in Elizabethan society. The taller the hat, the more important the person wearing it. A working man would wear a flat cap or bonnet, a gallant a tall hat with a plume. Hats were always taken off in the presence of a lord or king. However, Elizabethan noblemen wore their hats indoors, so when Hamlet tells Osric, the foppish courtier, to put his bonnet back on, he is showing that Osric is being ridiculously respectful in keeping his hat off in front of Hamlet.

    Nowadays costumes are chosen with great care for particular reasons. Some of the aspects that might be taken into consideration when choosing costumes:

    The Elizabethans, however, didn't think in this way at all. When they painted pictures of medieval people, they tended to dress them in Elizabethan costume. In the same way, they would have performed plays about medieval times, such as Richard II, in Elizabethan costume. They didn't worry about consistency. They made full use of the costumes they had. So they would have a Roman dressed in a toga, but surrounded by soldiers in Elizabethan costume.

    They would use the same costumes for entirely different circumstances. They might dress a Roman emperor in a particular costume and then use the same costume for a contemporary character.

    Elizabethan costume fundamentally consisted of Elizabethan dress. No matter the period of the play, actors always wore contemporary costume. However, according to a character's racial or national stereotype, characteristic accessories would be added to the outfit. This included a breastplate and helmet for Roman soldier, a turban for a Turk, long robes for Eastern characters, gabardines for Jews and a dress for a Moor. The costumes were elaborate but not historically authentic.

    Costumes accounted for a majority of companies' expenses especially their maintenance. In Elizabethan theatre, processions, battles and celebrations were the order of the day and vibrant color and pageantry was exhibited.

Special effects:

    Death scenes were realistically gory. A pig bladder would be filled with blood under white costumes. Disemboweling scenes used animal organs. Putting an eye out would be portrayed by a grape falling to the floor.

    Shakespeare could make little or no use of artificial light in his plays, and for most of his career he was writing plays for a theatre which simply had a galleried wooden wall behind the actors; painted 'flats' and extravagant decoration of the set were not used until later in the history of the theatre. What Shakespeare did have was music, discussed below in this section, and other sound effects which the plays suggest could be brought to bear on the audience with relative ease. Thus thunder and rushing wind, guns firing and the sounds of battle were available as sound effects. Just as in the 1982 London production of Henry IV Part I actors provided animal noises for the yard of a country inn, so no doubt the actors of Shakespeare's company would have been similarly skilful in providing live sound effects. Costume blood, primitive make-up, and excellent costumes were other stage effects available to Shakespeare, as were the devices of a trap door and a curtained alcove from which spirits and ghosts could appear, and into which they could vanish.

Songs and music:

    Songs and music can play a vital role in Shakespeare's plays. Music has always been an attractive feature to an audience, as the popularity of musicals testifies, and the Elizabethan audience were no different. Songs can take many shapes and forms in Shakespeare's plays. The songs in Twelfth Night are very closely matched to the text, and make a direct comment on the characters and the action that is taking place at that moment. Thus Feste's first song in the play is about youth and how it does not last, and is sung directly at Sir Toby Belch, an ageing delinquent who is trying to drown the realisation of impending old age with drink. However, the songs in As You Like It seem to bear no relation to the text, and appear to have been put there simply to amuse and entertain. Similarly, the Witches' songs in Macbeth are so intrusive and out of character that most editors assume they were written by someone other than Shakespeare, and added in later. A different category of song is seen in the snatches sung by the Fool in King Lear, which are more often than not a satirical comment on the action.

    As regards music, it was clearly used by Shakespeare as a stage effect. It signifies the presence of the supernatural in Antony and Cleopatra, probably announced the entrance of royalty in the processions so beloved of the Elizabethan theatre, and was a major device for suggesting the noise and tumult of battle. It has even been suggested that there was almost continual music throughout Shakespeare's plays, as is the case in many modern films or television serials, to add atmosphere and mood to the action. This theory still has to be proven.

Conventions of staging in Elizabethan and Jacobean times:

    The open air theatres of the later 16th Century were supplemented by. Below are some of the features of the new theatres:

    The introduction of the new indoor theatres meant that there were considerable differences at times between the style of plays in the older, amphitheatre-style theatres and the new indoor ones. Some of these differences are listed below.

    1) The older theatres tended to show more physical action, such as fencing and slapstick, the indoor theatres concentrated more on wit and subtlety of wording. The Taming of the Shrew, an early play, depended a lot on physical action and slapstick. Twelfth Night, a mature comedy, depended a great deal on subtlety of language. It was staged before the Queen at Whitehall Palace in January 1601.

    2) Song and music were much more features of the newer theatres, as they were of plays staged in private halls. Twelfth Night, is also a good example of a play with lots of song and music. The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last plays, which was written for performance in the indoor theatre, is also much dependent for its atmosphere and effects on song and music.

    3) Noisy effects were scaled down in the indoor theatres, e.g. drumming and fireworks. Noisy effects obviously only work in an open air setting. The noisy effects that might have been used in the open air, such as the firing of cannons, were not required in the indoor theatres. When the Globe burnt down, the fire was started by some lighted paper coming from a cannon being fired in a performance of Henry VIII.

    4) Intervals between acts were introduced in the indoor theatres, whereas the open-air theatres tended to play without a break. There were no breaks in the open air performances. When the indoor theatres were used, the candles had to be replaced at intervals as they burnt down and this led to breaks at the ends of acts.

Elizabethan Playwrights

    The very well known Elizabethan playwrights were Shakespeare, Marlowe and Jonson. Others, somewhat lesser dramatists included John Fletcher and John Webster. For a playwright they often needed to sell between 4 or 5 plays a year. Once a company bought a play, it was that company's property and the playwright gained no further income.

    The life of a play lasted between one and two years, depending on its popularity. A company learnt a new play about every 17 days, and after a play's main performance, it was later performed after a few weeks' intervals until they were dropped from the repertory.

    At one stage, during a four-week period in the autumn of 1595, 15 different plays were performed. Plays were usually performed at 2pm, as it was not too warm yet there was sufficient light.

Elizabethan Audience: What kind of people went to the theatre in Shakespeare's time?:

    1) We know from the pricing system that a social spectrum of people visited the theatre. In the open air theatres the prices varied from one penny to stand round the stage, to sixpence for a box. In the private theatres the standard entrance fee was sixpence and a stool on the stage itself cost another sixpence.

    2) Lots of people, especially Puritans, complained about the immoral people in playhouses, but the evidence suggests that in fact little crime was committed there.

    3) The audience at the Globe was probably far more varied, including the richest and the poorest, while the audience at the Blackfriars generally consisted more of those of rather higher social status; this was inevitable because the indoor theatres were more expensive.

    4) Audiences would include such people as landed gentry, doctors, lawyers, gentlemen, servants and working people of all kinds. In other words, there was a much more varied audience than for most of our theatres today.

    5) Gallants were conspicuous at Blackfriars, where on one occasion there was a row because a gallant sat on the stage and obscured the view of a Captain escorting an Earl's wife.

    The audience members came from all walks of life: men and women, infants and adults. To enter the theatre, one penny was paid and the person was entitled to stand in the yard before the stage (and was referred to as grounding). An extra penny allowed them to sit in the first floor gallery and another penny another gallery higher. It is possible the amount of audience members reached into the thousands.

    As performances were often three hours long, their behavior became very rowdy, the audiences did not keep quiet, or arrive on time, or remain for the whole performance. They joined in, interrupted, even getting on the stage. Talking during dull moments, joviality and the selling of food added up to great commotion actors had to deal with!. Plays were preceded and followed by jigs and clowning.

    The crowd was large and enthusiastic. There were people called groundlings,commoners, who paid one penny to sit in front. They actually had the best seats unless it rained. The audience would paritcipate by cheering, hissing, or throwing rotten vegetables. A flag announced performances daily.

    The audience was not looking for relism in the stage. 'Plays were written for this stage, but there is also a sense in which they were written by this stage. The material and physical circumstances of their production in such theatres had a profound effect upon the nature of Elizabethan plays. Unless we bear this in mind, we are likely to find them very strange, for we will read with expectations shaped by our own familiarity with modern fiction and modern drama. This is, by and large, realistic; it seeks to persuade us that what we are reading or watching is really happening. This is quite foreign to Shakespeare. If we try to read him like this, we shall find ourselves irritated by the improbabilities of his plot, confused by his chronology, puzzled by locations, frustrated by unanswered questions and dissatisfied by the motivation of the action. The absurd ease with which disguised persons pass through Shakespeare's plays is a case in point: why does no-one recognise people they know so well? There is a great deal of psychological accuracy in Shakespeare's plays, but we are far from any attempt at realism.

    The reason is that in Shakespeare's theatre it was impossible to pretend that the audience was not watching a contrived performance. In a modern theatre, the audience is encouraged to forget itself as it becomes absorbed by the action on the stage. The worlds of the spectators and of the actors are sharply distinguished by the lighting: in the dark auditorium the audience is passive, silent, anonymous, receptive and attentive: on the lighted stage the actors are active, vocal, demonstrative and dramatic. (The distinction is, of course, still more marked in the cinema.) There is no communication between the two worlds: for the audience to speak would be interruptive; for the actors to address the audience would be to break the illusion of the play. In the Elizabethan theatre, this distinction did not exist, and for two reasons: first, performances took place in the open air and in daylight which illuminated everyone equally; secondly, the spectators were all around the stage (and wealthier spectators actually on it), and were dressed no differently to the actors, who wore contemporary dress. In such a theatre, spectators would be as aware of each other as of the actors; they could not lose their identity in a corporate group, nor could they ever forget that they were spectators at a performance. There was no chance that they could believe 'this is relly happening'.

    This, then, was communal theatre, not only in the sense that it was going on in the middle of a crowd but in the sense that the crowd joined in. Elizabethan audiences had none of our deference: they did not keep quiet, or arrive on time, or remain for the whole performance. They joined in, interrupted, even getting on the stage. And plays were preceded and followed by jigs and clowning. It was all much more like our experience of a pantomime, and at a pantomime we are fully aware, and are meant to be aware, that we are watching games being played with reality. The conventions of pantomime revel in their own artificiality: the fishnet tights are to signal that the handsome prince is a woman, the Dame's monstrous false breasts signal that 'she' is a man.

    Something very similar is the case with Elizabethan theatre: it utilised its very theatricality. Instead of trying to persuade spectators that they are not in a theatre watching a performance, Elizabethan plays acknowledge the presence of the audience. It is addressed not only by prologues, epilogues and choruses, but in soliloquies. There is no realistic reason why characters should suddenly explain themselves to empty rooms, but, of course, it is not an empty room. The actor is surrounded by people. Soliloquies are not addressed to the world of the play: they are for the audience's benefit. And that audience's complicity is assumed: when a character like Prospero declares himself to be invisible, it is accepted that he is. Disguises are taken to be impenetrable, however improbable, and we are to accept impossibly contrived situations, such as barely hidden characters remaining undetected (indeed, on the Elizabethan stage there was nowhere at all they could hide.)

    These, then, are plays which are aware of themselves as dramas; in critical terminology, they are self-reflexive, commenting upon themselves as dramatic pieces and prompting the audience to think about the theatrical experience. They do this not only through their direct address to the audience but through their fondness for the play-within-a-play (which reminds the audience that the encompassing play is also a play) and their constant use of images from, and allusions to, the theatre. They are fascinated by role playing, by acting, appearance and reality. Things are rarely what they seem, either in comedy (for example, in A Midsummer Night's Dream) or tragedy (Romeo and Juliet). This offers one way to think about those disguises: they are thematic rather than realistic. Kent's disguise in Lear reveals his true, loyal self, while Edmund, who is not disguised, hides his true self. In As You Like It, Rosalind is more truly herself disguised as a man than when dressed as a woman. The effect of all this is to confuse the distinction we would make between 'real life' and 'acting'.'

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