The History and Rise of Professional Theatre

Roman Spectacles
• Public Spectacle
o Plays and farces on stage
o mimes and acrobats in streets
o popular sporting events in amphitheatres
▪ Races, gladiatorial contests etc.
• Occasions:
o military triumphs,
o political victories,
o milestones in emperors’ personal lives,
o many feast days associated with gods
• Material Evidence
o No surviving texts or scripts
o 15 sites [St Albans]
o No indication that amphitheatres used for anything but spectacle
o 4th century calendar:
▪ 101 days allotted to theatrical entertainment & 10 more to amphitheatre

Roman Theatre
• Followed lead of Greek dramatists
o Plautus and Terence comedy
▪ coarsened domestic comedy and made it more physical,
o Seneca for tragedy (revenge)
• No evidence that such plays reached Britain

Early Christians and Theatre

• Not sympathetic to theatrical performance
o Tertullian condemned everything that was fabricated as corrupt, sinful, part of
a demonic plot to cloud mankind’s vision:
▪ ‘Demons with the purpose of attracting many away from his Lord and
binding him to their own service, achieved their purpose by granting him
the artistic talents required by the shows.’
▪ “Christians are forbidden the theatre . . . where . . . the best path to God’s
favour is the vileness of the Atellan gestures or the buffoon in woman’s
clothing . . . in His law it is stated that a man is cursed who attires himself
in female garments; what then must be his judgment on the pantomime,
who is trained up to play the woman!”
o St Augustine – ditto…

LITURGICAL DRAMA
• Medieval Entertainment
o singing and chanting of bards and minstrels before a liege lord and feasting
thanes
o Mimes
▪ Occasional ecclesiastical prohibitions
• 789: corporal punishment and exile to any player who
counterfeited a priest;
 • 7th century onwards, clerics were repeatedly forbidden ever to
participate in such entertainments

LATIN LITURGY
• Detailed, organizing principle for entire year in service of God
o Prayers for every occasion
o Directions for sacred rites and sacramental practices, including incantations,
dialogue, music and dress

• Codified liturgy of the church might be considered the earliest kind of medieval drama.

Earliest plays outside the Liturgy

• Hrothsvita (abbey of Gandersheim, Germany)
o 6 Latin plays
o Earliest formal drama experiments
▪ Issues of morality, chastity and sainthood
▪ The Fleury Playbook
o 10 plays

• …in Britain
o 1119, St Albans
▪ Geoffrey, schoolmaster in Dunstable
• Attempted to stage a “play of St Catherine” (ludus de sancta
Katerina)
• Borrowed copes from monastery
• Fire broke out, destroying vestments
• For penance, Geoffrey became a monk
• th th
12 to 14 centuries
o Universities established in major cities (Oxford, Cambridge)
o Several bawdy Latin comedies survive
o Knowledge of classical traditions and texts obvious:
▪ Plautus
▪ Terence
▪ Menander
▪ Ovid

Medieval Drama

Mystery Plays
• 12th century
• Theology: “mystery” = mystery of Christ's redemption of mankind
• Festivals of Corpus Christi were instituted in 1264
o In late May or June, the celebration of the Real Presence - Coventry (18 miles
from Stratford), York and Wakefield
• Cycle Plays
o Authors assumed to be priests
o Manuscripts of complete cycles have survived from:
▪ York (about 48 pageants),
 ▪ Chester (24 pageants),
▪ Wakefield (32 pageants).
▪ The N-Town plays (42 pageants),
• derive from East Anglia, but obscure composition and history of
performance
o Essentially religious, but also registered contemporary political, doctrinal,
ideological, economic and aesthetic concerns
o Dual purpose:
▪ To instruct
▪ To delight

Non-Cycle Plays
• Miracle or Saint Plays
• Morality Plays
• Biblical or Secular history plays

Miracle Plays
• about lives of saints
o Conversion
o Miracles
• Purpose: didactic
o Performed to celebrate feast days of patron saints
• suppressed by Protestants after the Reformation
• 1576 – last mystery/miracle play performed in the south
o ONLY TWO SURVIVING TEXTS

Morality Plays - Protestant Drama

• Morality plays – secular, allegories
o Everyman
o Virtues/Vices - characters
• Not restricted to festivals
o 5 plays survive, 3 in one manuscript
• Suppressed the performance of religious plays
o “Catholic theology is evil”
o Trinity on stage = blasphemy

Royal Proclamation of 1559

• prohibited “unlicensed interludes and plays, especially those touching upon matters of
religion and policy”
• “Permit none to be played wherein either matters of religion or of the governance of
the estate of the commonweal shall be handled or treated, being no meet matters to be
written or treated upon but by men of authority, learning, and wisdom, nor to be handled
before any audience but of grave and discreet persons.”

Professional Actors
• 1150 -1170 – first mention
• small groups of multitalented players
o secular or religious plays
o singing
 • low reputations
• 1200
o Earl of Rochester (Rendall) saved by actors from the Welsh
o Became the first patron
• 1339
o Roman Catholic Bishop Brandeson ordered a stop to "defiled" plays.
• 1425
o Lord of Gloucester became a patron of professional players

Patronage
• necessary for several reasons:
o plagues restricted movement, and players needed an invitation and permission
to enter a city
o Players = vagrants / vagabonds and as such were not allowed into the cities
o Secured an existence for the players and their troupes

The Players
• All male troupes - boys played female roles – cross-dressing
• Origins in moral reasoning:
o women were slaves
o would corrupt young men
• If a woman was found on stage, the theatre would be closed and fined
• 1528 - the first woman on English stage (French company)

The Elizabethan Period

The Mayor Play

• 1559
• Drew on morality plays (Puritan mayors)
• Special performance for the mayor
o “Vagabonds” not allowed into Puritan cities without permission
• 1572 –
o An Act restraining vagabonds, including wandering entertainers, was passed
unless they had a patron or city
• Companies grew because of this

The Theatre
• First playhouse built for professional players in 1576
• Built outside the city walls
o city had no jurisdiction
o Near brothels, bear-baiting pits etc.
• Growing companies too difficult to finance – needed a way to generate more money
• Two systems of governing the troupes:
o Autocratic troupe owner – Philip Henslowe
o All equal shareholders (Lord Chamberlain’s Men)
• early players - called "joculatories" or players, never tragedians
• probably not professional plays - but school plays
• Professional plays belonged to companies and were not published (stiff competition)
The Competition
• 4 companies existed at the time
o Earl of Leicester’s Men
o Lord Strange's Men.
o Chamberlain's Men (King’s Men in 1603)
o Admiral's Men.
• good plays were privy to espionage and plagiarism
• A need for professional playwrights

Theatre Structure
• open-aired and round shaped
• divided into three parts, corresponding to the three parts of the universe:
o upper stage - heaven,
o the main stage – earth
o the trap door under the stage - hell

Enemies of the Stage…

o “Go to plays if you will learn how to be false and deceive your husbands, or
husbands their wives, how to play the harlots to obtain one’s love, how to ravish,
how to beguile, how to betray, to flatter, lie, swear, forswear, how to allure to
whoredom, how to murder, how to poison, how to disobey and rebel against
princes, to consume treasures prodigally, to move to lusts, to ransack and spoil
cities and towns, to be idle, to blaspheme, to sing filthy songs of love, to speak
filthily, to be proud...”
John Northbrooke

The New Kid on the Block…

• 1587 (?) – Shakespeare arrives in London (why?)
• Playwrights at the time: Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene –
• Greene took offence at Shakespeare – calling him an “upstart Crow”

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men

• Only company to perform Shakespeare’s plays from 1594 onwards
• 1599 – The Globe – own theatre
• 1603 – become The King’s Men
• 1608 – Blackfriars (indoor theatre)

Shakespeare’s Contribution to Drama

• 5 Act plays
• Characters - multitude
• Large stage – both intimate (soliloquys) and public, e.g. possibility of eavesdropping
• Interplay of reality and imagination
• All of his plays, irrespective of settings, comment on contemporary English society and
issues
• History plays – educational for the wider masses
o Raising patriotic sentiments

Shakespeare’s Sources
• Use of Greek and Roman comedies
 • Use of medieval texts
• Chronicles
• Borrowed plot lines from other existing plays

Unique:
• His combination of elements
• His development of characters /personalities
• The new life breathed into the plots and characters

Tools for Reading Shake:

Pay attention to the following and it should help you understand the plays better:

• Opening scene – usually addresses the themes

• Active v passive characters
• Boundary-crossing characters
• Mirroring between the plots
• Sacrifice figures left outside the happy ending
• Figure of Grace
• Appearance v Reality (things are never as they seem)