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The Medieval Drama
Probably
in the 10th century, the first true "dramatic" action took place after a
four century dramatic hiatus: the Church had banned dramas in the 6th
century. The "Visitatio" (visit to the sepulcher) reenacted the
Other similar actions came to be presented in the church; however, there's a continuing argument as to whether such dramatic action led to what can be described as "theatre" outside the church, that is, in the market place or village greens (that the drama grew until the church could no longer contain it, that it became ever more secular, is a simplistic and misguided notion as to the origin of the English drama).
The development may have been simultaneous rather than evolutionary.
Certainly in the secular world, the court jester and troubadour continued
the tradition of the player, by singing, juggling, doing acrobatic feats and
such. A change in how the church viewed Christ also takes place about the 10th century, with the humanity--and especially the death--of Jesus being reasserted. Depictions of the crucifixion and his suffering became paramount. In 1311, Clement V implemented the feast of Corpus Christi, confirming a papal bull from nearly 100 years earlier that asserted the real presence of Christ in the mass--the dogma of transubstantiation. The celebration was to fall, depending on Easter Sunday, between May 23 and June 24 (June 4 to July 6 on the modern calendar). What were to become the plays of Corpus Christi probably began with the host being carried through the streets by a priest and procession. This procession was expanded to include tableaux vivants, living pictures, in which people recreated a biblical scene--such as the sacrifice of Isaac--on the back of pageant wagons pulled by oxen. These living pictures eventually were enlarged in numbers until many scenes from the bible were paraded past a largely illiterate populace; thus the Mystery Plays (as we have come to call them, since they depicted the mysteries of salvation and God's plan for humanity) were meant to be instructional and edifying.
One hundred years after the implementing of the feast of Corpus Christi the
pageants had grown as civic as well as religious celebrations, with so many
biblical scenes enacted that the celebration began at 4:30 a.m. and
continued well past dark. Each wagon probably stopped at prearranged
stations as they wended through the streets of towns such as York,
Wakefield, Coventry, or Beverly, so that one play was performed many times
in the course of a day.
Some scholars of the medieval drama have suggested that they also lined up
for one performance that moved from wagon to wagon in a fixed location at
day's end. Whatever the actual logistics of their performances, the
mysteries became sophisticated theatre, with "professional" involvement,
where the necessity of merging commerce and religious pageantry
intertwined. The trade guilds were given the responsibilities of funding
and casting particular pageants. This association was made relevant to
their craft: the carpenters' union, for example, depicted the crucifixion of
Christ, the boat makers enacted the story of Noah and the ark, the butchers
enacted Abraham and Isaac, etc.
These stilted, and, for those who will admit it, boring plays were in no way equal to the beauty and grandeur of the pageants but were far more specific and quotidian in their moral statements (there are exceptions; the moralities in fact are good theatre when performed--reading them is deadly). The morality plays were, for the most part, the precursors to the Elizabethan stage with the vice character in particular enlarged into the role of clown or tragedian.
Whereas biblical figures such as God, Satan, or Christ are largely fixed in
definition because of their stature, their mythological proportions--and
thus not the stuff of good dramatization--the vice figure, the companion to
Satan, was pliable and could be developed. Shakespeare's Iago represents an
excellent example. The
old medieval stage of Place-and-scaffolds, still in use in Scotland early in
the sixteenth century, had fallen into disuse; the kind of temporary stage
that was dominant in England about 1575 was the booth stage of the
marketplace?a small rectangular stage mounted on trestles or barrels and
"open" in the sense of being surrounded by spectators on three sides. The
stage proper of the booth stage generally measured from 15 to 25 ft. in
width and from 10 to 15 ft. in depth; its height above the ground averaged a
bout 5 ft. 6 in., with extremes ranging as low as 4 ft. and as high as 8
ft.; and it was backed by a cloth-covered booth, usually open at the top,
which served as a tiring-house. About
1575 there were two kinds of building in England, both designed for
functions other than the acting of plays, which were adapted by the players
as temporary outdoor playhouses: the animal-baiting ring or "game house" (beargarden
or bull ring), examples of which are recorded in pictorial and other records
as standing on the south bank of the Thames opposite the City of London in
the 1560s; and the inn, rather the "great inn," which, like the
animal-baiting house, constituted a "natural" playhouse?presumably a booth
stage was set up against a wall at one side of the yard, with the audience
standing in the yard surrounding the stage on three sides. The price of
admission was gathered as each spectator entered to the "house." It
is customary to distinguish two major classes of permanent Elizabethan
playhouse, "public" and "private." The terms are somewhat cloudy, but what
they designate is clear enough. In general, the public playhouses were
large, "round," outdoor theatres, whereas the private playhouses were
smaller, rectangular, indoor theatres. (An exception among public
playhouses in the matter of roundness was the square Fortune of 1600.) The
maximum capacity of a typical public playhouse (the Swan or the Globe) was
about 3,000 spectators; that of a typical private playhouse (the Second
Blackfriars or the Phoenix), about 700 spectators. At
the public playhouses a majority of spectators stood in the yard for a penny
(the remainder sitting in galleries and boxes for two pence or more),
whereas at the private playhouses all spectators were seated (in pit,
galleries, and boxes) and paid sixpence or more. Originally, the boys?
companies exclusively used the private playhouses, but this distinction
disappeared about 1609 when the King's Men began using the Blackfriars in
winter as well as the Globe in summer. Originally
the private playhouses were found only within the City of London (the Paul's
Playhouse, the First and Second Blackfriars), the public playhouses only in
the suburbs (the Theatre, the Curtain, the Rose, the Globe, the Fortune, the
Red Bull); but this distinction disappeared about 1606 with the opening of
the Whitefriars Playhouse to the west of Ludgate. Public-theatre
audiences, though socially heterogeneous, were drawn mainly from the lower
classes--a situation that has caused modern scholars to refer to the
public-theatre audiences as "popular"; whereas private-theatre audiences
tended to be better educated and of higher social rank?"select" is the word
most usually opposed to "popular" in this respect. John Brayne built the Red Lion in 1567
outside the city walls of London in an area called the ?Liberties,? thus
free from the jurisdiction of the city of London, which was most certainly
the first open-air theatre used primarily for playing, as opposed to the
rooms or courtyards that the various inns about London provided for
playing. While some argument exists as to whether the Red Lion was the
first building used exclusively for playing (did it also serve a function
much like the inns about the roads leading into and out of London, or serve
for other sport, such as bear-baiting?), nonetheless Brayne had playing in
mind as its chief activity. In any event, it must have been successful,
because Brayne and his brother-in-law, James Burbage, built the Theatre in
1576, a playhouse used exclusively for playing. It too found a home outside
the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and the city councilmen, and was quickly
followed by other entrepreneurs who built their own playhouses, such as the
Curtain, close by the Theatre, where Romeo and Juliet and other plays
of Shakespeare would find an audience. Thus, in Shakespeare?s day, there
existed many playing venues: some of which recalled the simple stages and
single curtains used by small, traveling companies who performed at fairs,
or fields, or anywhere they could gather an audience; the inns, which were
constant hubs of activity and provided a yard and balcony above; the great
halls found in the manors about England, which provided raised stages and
upper rooms; the halls at the Inns of Courts in London, where young men went
to study law and which provided shelter, as did the great halls in manor
houses, against inclement weather. So, too, the actors and theatre
entrepreneurs of England, who had attended school where classical training
included plays, staged in the great halls of the Merchant Taylors School,
Oxford, or Cambridge. In sum, when Shakespeare was born, there were
numerous venues for playing that provided the traditions from which the
permanent theatres of his day drew; as both player and writer, Shakespeare
inherited the amalgam of what worked best and was most desirable, from both
the player?s and the audience?s points of view. James
Burbage, brother-in-law and partner to John Brayne, was father to the famous
actor Richard Burbage of Shakespeare's company; it was he who built the
first permanent theatre in London, the Theatre, in 1576, probably adapting
the form of the baiting-house to theatrical needs, but knowing as well how
well the inn yards served players and viewers. He built a large round
structure very much like a baiting-house but with five major innovations in
the received form. First, he paved the ring with brick or stone, thus
paving the pit into a "yard." Second,
Burbage erected a stage in the yard: his model was the booth stage of the
marketplace, larger than used before with posts rather than trestles. Third,
he erected a permanent tiring-house in place of the booth. Here his chief
model was the screens passage of the Tudor domestic hall, modified to
withstand the weather by the insertion of doors in the doorways.
Presumably, the tiring-house, as a permanent structure, was inset into the
frame of the playhouse rather than, as in the older temporary situation of
the booth stage, set up against the frame of a baiting-house. The gallery
over the tiring-house (presumably divided into boxes) was capable of serving
variously as a "Lord's room" for privileged or high-paying spectators, as a
music-room, and as a station for the occasional performance of action
"above." Fourth,
Burbage built a "cover" over the rear part of the stage, supported by posts
rising from the yard and surmounted by a "hut." And
fifth, Burbage added a third gallery to the frame. The theory of origin and
development suggested in the preceding accords with our chief pictorial
source of information about the Elizabethan stage, the "De Wit" drawing of
the interior of the Swan Playhouse (c. 1596). It
seems likely that most of the round public playhouses--specifically, the
Theatre (1576), the Swan (1595), the First Globe (1599), the Hope (1614),
and the Second Globe (1614)?were of about the same size. James
Burbage designed the Second Blackfriars Playhouse of 1596,
and he built his playhouse in the upper-story Parliament Chamber of the
Upper Frater of the priory. The Parliament Chamber measured 100 ft. in
length, but for the playhouse Burbage used only two-thirds of this length.
The room in question, after the removal of partitions dividing it into
apartments, measured 46 ft. in width and 66 ft. in length. The stage
probably measured 29 ft. in width and 18 ft. 6 in. in depth. In
the private-theatres act-intervals and inter-act music were customary from
the beginning. A music-room was at first lacking in the public playhouses,
since public-theatre performances did not originally employ act-intervals
and inter-act music. About 1609, however, after the King's men had begun
performing at the Blackfriars as well as at the Globe, the custom of
inter-act music seems to have spread from the private to the public
playhouses, and with it apparently came the custom of using one of the
tiring-house boxes over the stage as a music-room. The
drama was conventional, not realistic: poetry was the most obvious
convention, others included asides, soliloquies, boys playing the roles of
women (femininity is suggestive of the differences of mind and behavior
between men and women in Shakespeare?yet, unlike the Victorians' myth that
the boys were not involved in sexual situations, they clearly were) battles
(with but three or four participants), the daylight convention (many scenes
are set at night, though the plays took place in mid-afternoon under the
sky), a convention of time (the clock and calendar are used only at the
dramatist's discretion), the convention of "eavesdropping" (many characters
overhear others, which the audience is privy to but the overheard characters
are not), and movement from place to place as suggested by the script and
the audience's imagination. Exits were strong, and when everyone departed
the stage, a change of scene was indicated. There was relatively little
scenery, and costumes?for which companies paid a great deal of
money--supplied the color and pageantry. There
was often dancing before and after the play?at times, during. Jigs were
often given at the end of performances by the clowns: not mere dances, they
were comprised of songs and bawdy knockabout farces filled with commentaries
on current events. After 1600, they fell into derision and contempt and
were only performed at theatres such as the Red Bull, which catered to an
audience appreciative of the lowest humor and most violent action. The
clowns were the great headliners of the stage before the great tragedians of
the late 1580s, such as Ned Alleyn. Still, every company had a top clown
along with the tragedian?Shakespeare?s company was no exception: Will Kempe
was the clown until forced out of the company in 1599, to be replaced by
another famous clown, Robin Armin. The
Repertory system was demanding?besides playing six days a week, a company
would be in continual rehearsal in order to add new plays and to refresh old
ones in their schedule. A player would probably learn a new role every
week, with thirty to forty roles in his head. Over a period of three years,
a tragedian such as Edward Alleyn, lead player for the Admiral's Men, would
learn not only fifty new parts but retain twenty or more old ones as well
over a three-year period. What
remains is some information on the most remarkable playhouse of its day,
both for its beauty and its owners: the Globe Theatre, constructed in 1599
on the south bank of the Thames, which was, like the theatres constructed to
the north, outside the purview of the city of London. This unique playhouse
found its inception in the older Theatre, owned by James Burbage. The land,
however, was leased. The Burbage family had quarrels with the owners of the
land, sparking an oft-told tale of son Richard beating off the landowner?s
sons while spouting great poetry learned from the stage. In any case, while
the landowner was out of town, the Theatre was torn down under the direction
of Peter Street in the dead of winter in 1599, and either ferried or slid
the timbers across the Thames toward a new home. All the major support beams were marked
by Street and his men in order to reconstruct the basis for the new Globe
enterprise, which came about six months later. With three galleries, a
tiring house, spacious yard for the penny public, it was soon turned into
the most sumptuous public playhouse in London. As for viewers, the penny
public ?pit? would hold approximately 1000 standing patrons, while just as
many, and perhaps up to 1500, could watch from the three levels. Eight people shared in the expenses of
constructing the new playhouse, and thus shared in its profits: the sons of
James Burbage, Richard and Cuthbert, each owned 25%, while five actors,
Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Will Kempe, and William
Shakespeare, each owned 10%. Cuthbert alone was not an actor; thus, 6
players constituted the owners, paying themselves, the rent on their
building, and all other costs from their profits from playing and their
shares in the venture. The other, less obvious advantage, perhaps, is that
in his capacity as dramatist Shakespeare could write specifically for these
men and for this space, constructing his plays with a familiarity that few
enjoyed. In 1613, during a performance of
Henry VIII, the thatch roof of the Globe theatre caught fire from the
sparks of a fired canon. A second Globe appeared on the foundations of the
first. Acting
Companies: 1559: Licensing of plays enacted:
companies such as the Earl of Worcester, Warwick (primarily tumblers),
Lord Strange's Men (also tumblers and acrobats) 1574: Earl of Leicester's Men patented 1583: Queen's Men established, taken
from Leicester, Oxford, Sussex, Derby, and Henry Lord Hunsdon (all
provincial, touring companies) c. 1585: Second Lord Strange's Men 1585 Lord Admiral's 1592-93 (First) Earl of Pembroke's 1594 Chamberlain's Men (playing
alternately with Admiral's at Newington Butts) 1597 (Second) Pembroke's Shakespeare
may have begun with Alleyn's company (Admiral's/Strange's conglomerate, in
1591, and then gone with Pembroke's, then Chamberlain's. (Some lesser known companies: Earl of
Hertford's, Lord Norris', Morley's)
Need more information on publishing practices, Shakespeare's language, the stage, etc.? Myriad Shakespeare sites exist on the web; one of the newest, least intimidating may be found at http://web.archive.org/web/20050413023723/http://www.ciconline.org/bdp1/.
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visit of the two Marys and Martha to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning.
Priests took the parts of the women, as the angel inquires of them, "Whom do
you seek?" Their answer is met with "He is risen." The action is simple
though moving, and the dialogue was chanted (obviously in Latin).
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