English Renaissance Theatre

-Verismilitude
-Decorum
-Moral lesson- “to please and instruct”
-The Three Unities -time, place and action
-Five act structure
-Separation of genres

-Mixed neoclassical, medieval, and uniquely english elements
– Disregarded neoclassical unities
– Episodic structure
– Mixture or serious and comic elements
– Appealed to all classes and levels of education
-Varied plot sources:
–Classical material( mythology and history)
–Contemporary popular literature
–English history

– Early point of attack
-Chronological organization
-Basic unit is short scene
-No act structure
-Multiple plots and subplots
-No restrictions upon time and place
-locale only specified in dialogue when important to action
-Mix of serious and comic elements and characters
-Blank verse more often than rhymed verse

– Plot need not be original
– Plot sources can be combined
– No visual realism
– Period authenticity not required
– Audience could be directly acknowledged
– Female characters, but no female actors

– Thomas Kyd
– John Lyly
– Robert Greene
– Christopher Marlowe

– Popularized revenge tragedy
– The spanish Tragedy
– Many Senecan devices – ghosts, asides, soliloquies , 5 act structure

– A secret murder, usually of a good ruler by a bad one
– A ghostly visitation of the murder victim to a kinsman, generally a son
– A period of intrigue or plotting, in which the murderer and the avenger scheme against each other, with a slowly rising body count.
– A descent into either real or feigned madness by the avenger or one of the auxiliary characters
– An eruption of general violence at the end , that utterly decimates the dramatis personae, including the avenger

– Wrote for children’s companies
– Specialized in Italian-style pastorals
– Mixed classical mythology with English subjects and characters
-Witty, expressive dialogue

-Wrote pastoral comedy for the adult companies
-Resourceful heroines
-Disguised characters

-Developed the “chronicle” or history play
– Edward 2
-Constructed a choherent story of diverse historical elements
rearrangent and telescoping of events to create clear causal structure

Ben Jonson
William Shakespeare

– Professional playwright/actor of public theatre
– Active from 1592 – 1612
– Interweaving of multiple plots
– Episodic structure

– Quarto
–individual plays
— Texts vary
– Folio
— Collection of all Shakespeare’s plays
— Published in 1623

– Comedies and court masques
– More conscious than Shakespeare of classical models and neoclassicism
– More popular and respected than Shakepeare
– Didactic and moralizing
– First “poet laureate’ of England – given royal pension in 1616

– Boys from court chapels and choir colleges
– Plays used as training in elocution and deportment
– Neoclassical form
– Appealed to educated, sophisticated audiences
– Most respectable type of theatrical troupe

-professional actors
-English renaissance ( Elizabethan) form
-Appealed to audience of all classes and backgrounds
– Not particularly respectable

– The Lord Chamberlain’s Men
-The Lord Admiral’s Men

-Sponsorship
-Licensing
–Acting companies by the Crown
–Performances by local government
-Censorship
–Religious Plays banned in
— Master of the Revels

– The theatre
– The Curtain
– The Swan
– The Rose
– The Globe
– The fortune
– The hope
The 2nd Globe

-two separate stories
– First
–A non-biblical story about a thief,Mak who steals a sheep from three shephards. The thief and his wife try to deceive the shepherds by pretending the sheep is their son. The shephards are fooled at first but then discover the thief’s deception.
— The storyline switches to the familiar one of the three shepherds being told of the birth of christ by an angel and being told to go to bethlehem

-The play uses allegorical characters to show what man must do to gain salvation of christ. it is the account of the life of Everyman, who represents all mankind.