1. Renaissance Theater
Shakespeare & Friends

2. English Renaissance Theater
-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

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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

6. Commedia Dell’arte

7. 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

8. The Globe Theater

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

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