Renaissance Theater Shakespeare & Friends

English Renaissance Theater 1300- 1600 -Queen Elizabeth loved theater and revamped the theater world of England -The feudal system of the Middle Ages was falling out -Cities were growing Princes & Rulers were taking back their power

Ren. Th. Cont. -It was the start of permanent theater locations -Still a men only industry, but women are popping up in the travelling theater -People would stand shoulder to shoulder to watch performances -Now, The Court is watching the same plays as the commoners.

Ren Th. Cont. -However, upper-classes are developing private theaters and writing other plays. -Few new plays were being written for public theaters, but there were enough from the previous decades to keep the theaters alive. -Travelling bands of actors were playing by their own rules.

Ren. Th. Cont. Street theater is now a thing: Commedia Dell’Arte is created -Players use the streets and town squares as performance spaces -Travelling carts are now a theater space -Improvisation-based -Lots of set characters and scenarios and the dialogue is then improvised

Commedia Dell’arte

Ren. Th. Cont. The Globe Theater and others like it: -First few buildings were made of wood, not a lot of longevity -They were three stories high and the idea was that from wherever a person was in the audience, they could see the show -On a busy theater day, there would be 10,000 theater goers

The Globe Theater

Ren. Th. Cont. - The same play was rarely done twice in a row, or even twice in a week. - The actors were learning unbelievable amounts of new material all the time - Young boys were used in place of women in productions - Costumes were pricey, so actors typically used contemporary clothing

Ren. Th. Cont. -William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson are the main playwrights -Most were not academics and had no formal education -Marlowe died in a bar fight & Jonson died in a duel. -No ownership of a play, once a company bought it, it was theirs - Many playwrights wrote collaboratively

Ren. Th. Cont. -With so many plays coming out all the time, they relied on the brain power of working in groups -This also meant that they had to split their already miniscule pay -The typical or standard format of the play dialogue was verse - For Shakespeare, Iambic pentameter

Ren. Th. Cont. Genres included: History plays: Richard III, Henry V (Shakespeare) Tragedy: Faustus (Marlowe), Hamlet (Shakespeare) Comedy: Twelfth Night, Midsummer (Shakespeare)