English theatres and performances at the close of the XVIth century

English theatres and performances at the close of the XVIth century

From the beginning the sixteenth century, there had been in England numerous companies of actors playing either London or in provincial towns. But they were regarded by many people as “ rogues and vagabonds” and their social status was very uncertain until 1572, when it was provided that actors “belonging to any baron of this realm or any other personage of greater degree” should be authorized “to play, under the hand and seal of arms of such baron or personage”. In accordance with this edict, all theatrical troupes put themselves under the protection of some powerful personage: the company would bear its protector’s name, and the players be called his “servants”. Performances were at first given in inn-yards, the actors playing on a platform erected on trestles; later on, regular theatres were built. In London the hostility of the Common Council was keenly felt by the companies of actors, who evaded all difficulties by carrying their “trade” outside the walls of the city; in 1576, James Burbage, a member of the Earl of Leicester’s company, erected a theatre, the Curtain, was raised near by. Later on, theatres were built in the borough of Southwark: the rose , in 1592, the Swan, in 1596, and the Globe, in 1599; with the latter the name of Shakespeare in especially associated. The English theatres were circular (Shakespeare, in Henry V, describes the house as “this wooden O”), the outside being hexagonal or octagonal. The pit was a sort of yard strewn with rushes, open to the weather, where people would stand, smoking, drinking beer or wine, eating nuts or apples, sheltering themselves from the rain if the weather was bad, in their ample cloaks. Around the pit were galleries in which the wealthier patrons were seated. The young lords and “gallants” would sit on stools or benches at the back of the stage, which consisted of a floor laid on trestles, and was usually covered, partly at least, by thatched roof. In the floor of the stage there was a trap allowing of the appearance and disappearance of ghosts.

The scenery was rudimentary: a few pieces of “arras” (= tapestry hanging for the walls of a room, generally with figures and scenes woven in colour, so called from Arras, a town famous for the making of this tapestry), some hangings, a small number of “movable properties” which served mainly for emblems (a tree for a forest, a pasteboard rock for a cliff, etc.), and the imagination of the audience did the rest. If, in the course on a play, the action was removed from one place to another, a board would be produced bearing in big letters the name of the locality whither the spectators’ imaginations must resort. The companies of actors did not comprise any women: the feminine parts were played by boys whose voices had not yet broken.