Riassunto esame Letteratura inglese, Prof. Cavone, libro consigliato Storia del teatro Inglese dalle Origini al 1660, Anzi

The Elizabethan theatre (1558-1649)

The expression Elizabethan theatre refers to the theatre of part of Elizabeth’s I reign (1558-1603), all the reign of James I (1603-1625) and the reign of Charles I (1625-1649). The beginning year is 1576, the year in which the first public theatre was built, that is The Theatre, and the end is 1642 when theatres were closed by Puritans. In the course of a few years, the theatre spread from being an occasional entertainment for a small minority to becoming the most socially widespread of the arts. The Queen loved the theatre, while the Protestants hated it, because they considered it the embodiment of evil and of Satan.

Characteristics of the Elizabethan theatre

The Elizabethan theatre is characterised by three phases:

• The first phase, including the University Wits (Lyly, Peele, Nashe, Lodge, Greene and Marlowe), is marked by faith in the human creativity;
• The second phase is marked by the passage of the century, the crisis of values and by the political situation in which the old queen, the last Tudor queen, dies without heirs and leaves the reign to James VI of Stuart, king of Scotland. Pessimism dominates the scene and the tragedy, that by Shakespeare, reaches its highest moments. This phase includes of course Shakespeare but also other playwrights such as Jonson, Chapman, Middleton and the twin stars, Beaumont and Fletcher;
• The third and last phase coincides with the reign of Charles I. Pessimism gives place to indifference, resignation and search for new balances or lost harmonies: the romances dominate the scene.

Two features distinguish the Elizabethan theatre from the European contemporary one: its relation to the native tradition and the fact that the classic rules are ignored, giving importance instead to the mixture of comic and tragic elements. This is also a feature of miracle and morality plays whose main themes couldn’t be changed because they derived from the Bible. They were cycles following a city’s itinerary and means to develop morality because they represent the fighting between good and evil.

Influences and styles

Elizabethan playwrights borrowed from popular sources, from folk traditions, or from material already familiar through older plays, ballads or sermons. From the medieval Mystery and Morality Plays came certain features that are to be found in the new theatre:

• The tendency to think of a play as a kind of animated sermon where the characters and situations are allegorical types;
• Scenes of vivid caricature and realistic comedy;
• The mixture of comedy and tragedy;
• The concept of the influence of the stars;
• The classical influence: the medieval and popular heritage is put together with the classical influence promoted by Humanism.

The English theatre was also influenced by the “Italian commedia dell’arte”, by the works of Machiavelli in the themes of horrors, unnatural crimes, vice and corruption, by the Greek theatre, by the Latin poet and philosopher Seneca in the division of the play into five acts and finally Thomas Kyd’s very popular “The Spanish Tragedy” which mixed the typical Senecan revenge play full of ghosts and horror. Kyd also added the “play within the play” (the plot includes the staging of a play whose audience is composed of actors) as a device to verify the truth of a message concerning the characters of the real play. This device was used by Shakespeare in Hamlet.

The Structure of Theatres and the Companies

Until James Burbage built the first theatre outside the walls of the City of London in 1576, Elizabethan players had no stable home. Permanent theatres were circular and octagonal. Within the outer walls, there were three tiers of roofed galleries, looking down on the stage and the yard where the poor spectators stood. The stage was in front of the yard so that when the house was full the players were surrounded on three sides. Over the stage, the roof protected the players from the rain. The Elizabethan playhouse was small. A tiring house, the place where the actors changed their clothes, was at the rear of the stage. Behind the stage, there was an inner stage which was used only for specific purposes, such as for Juliet’s tomb. The Elizabethan stage had no general curtain. Apparently, there was no scenery and plays were acted in daylight so that the Elizabethan actors had to act without the lighting, sound effects which are typical of the modern stage. The action was continuous, there was no interruption. The most famous public playhouses were The Curtain, The Red Bull and The Globe (1599).

The private theatres were different from the public ones for their structure and for the capacity. Moreover, the cost of the ticket was more expensive than that of the public one. The most famous one was the Blackfriars, which in 1608 became the property of the company of King’s Men, to which Shakespeare belonged.

Most information about the organization of Elizabethan theatre came from the Diary written by Philip Maslowe. The companies were made up of young boys who had female roles until their voice allowed it. This situation changed in 1660 when with the Restoration women began to have the possibility to play. The most important companies of this period are:

• The Leicester’s Men;
• Sussex’s Men;
• Lord Strange’s Men;
• Queen’s Men;
• Chamberlain’s Men, which then became King’s Men founded in 1594, to which the big actor Richard Burbage belonged.

The writing of the play was made by a playwright of the company: the writer was at the same time an actor, as in the case of Shakespeare. Actors and playwrights sometimes worked together and they became sharers. Since the copyright didn’t exist a lot of plays circulated illegally. However, there was the so-called “Stationers’ Register” which was a register of dates and titles of the plays written in the Elizabethan period.

The Elizabethan actor was a busy man. He had little time for long and elaborate preparations. There were no women actresses, the parts of young women were acted by boys. As regards the public, to understand the public of the Elizabethan theatre we have to refer to the social classes of the society. There were mainly four social classes: the aristocracy, the class of the citizens, the class of the landowners and finally that of the artisans. The public of the theatre was made up of all the members of the social classes. The theatre was also an activity which was well-accepted by women: they were all illiterate and theatre was the only activity which gave them the possibility to get in contact with culture.

The University Wits

The university wits can be considered the most important playwrights of this period. They were young artists who came in contact with the classical theatre and the Italian one.

John Lyly

Lyly’s works are rich in Latin questions. His most important drama is “Euphes: The Anatomy of Wit” which is a play of a great success and gave origin to the term “Euphuism”. The most important features of this play are grace, classic quotations and chivalrous conversations rich in alliterations, antithesis and rhetoric questions. It is a play marked by a style which is useful to understand the customs and traditions of that period. The play has a sequel which is “Euphes and his England” in which the main character is the same young boy who moves from Naples to London in order to better his own upbringing.

Lyly was influenced in his way of writing by a lot of Italian authors. Another important play is the comedy “Mother Bombie” whose plot is too difficult to be understood because there are continuous changes of people with disguises. It is the only realistic and contemporary comedy Lyly had ever written. He died in 1606. The elegance and the refinement of Lyly’s language surely influenced Shakespeare’s way of writing. His literary activity has been appreciated because he has been able to express human passion without falling into vulgarity.

George Peele

George Peele attended the “grammar school”. In 1588 he wrote a drama which was inspired by a contemporary fact: the battle of Alcazar. His best works are “The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabea” which is a dramatization of a Bible’s episode marked by a great refined poetic language and “The Old Wives Tale” in which fantasy and reality are put together with a surprising effect.

Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe

Robert Greene is the most anguished among the University Wits. He can be defined a Maudit poet. He wrote 5 plays but the most important one he wrote was that with Nashe “A Looking Glass for London and England”. Another important play by Nashe is “Summer’s Last Will and Testament” in which the ghost of Will Summer appears, a fool of Henry VIII, and dances with other characters. In the moment in which Will has to sing, his lament is about disease, plague and death which is considered the only possibility to escape from the sufferings of the world.

Thomas Lodge

He is the only among the University Wits who had a quiet and normal life.

Robert Wilson

The most important themes in his plays and in the Elizabethan theatre are nationalism, anticlericalism and fear for the catholic subjects. His most remembered play is “The Three Ladies of London” in which the main characters are four crooks which embodied Dissemblance, Fraud, Usury and Simony.

Christopher Marlowe

Among the University Wits, Marlowe is the one who merits more attention for the success he achieved during his life. He was born in Canterbury in 1564. He left university and established himself as the most important playwright of the period. It is often said that Marlowe enjoyed challenging accepted ideas and that he may have been involved in activities that were anti-Church or heretical. He died in 1593 maybe assassinated during an argument in a tavern. All his contemporary colleagues admired him for the extraordinary use he made of the blank verse.

His plays show his personal rebellion against the dark Middle Ages, the concepts of sin and salvation; they are the first to embody the true spirit of the Renaissance, concentrating on man as opposed to God. The most important themes of these works are: the lust for power, the desire to surpass the old restrictions of the Church, the limitations of knowledge and the demands of ambition. Marlowe’s works also represent a departure from the didactic spirit of the Morality Plays and his characters are no longer personifications of virtues or vices, but are enriched with human passions and faults.

Dramatic Masterpieces of Christopher Marlowe

• Dido, Queen of Carthage: This tragedy, written during his college days, is marked by a strong Classicism. The tragedy narrates Aeneas’ adventures. Dido falls in love with him. But Aeneas’ destiny is to found Rome and so he is forced to leave Dido in order to fulfil this goal. Dido decides to kill herself. This is the only tragedy by Marlowe which is about the theme of love but it contains also elements which are typical of Marlowe’s production: exuberance of the images, the emotive tension, and the ability to evoke the sense of the horror.
• Tamburlaine the Great: It was the tragedy which made Marlowe famous and admired by London’s public. Tamburlaine was a drama which inspired the interest in the Orient. The main character is a sovereign, Timur of Samarcanda. He is at the beginning a simple shepherd who has to overcome some obstacles in order to become a powerful man. He is considered a sun and a God, even if he accomplishes massacres and unthinkable violence. In the second part of the tragedy, he kills himself because of the suffering from the death of his wife. The public considers him in a different way, that is as a man who has to find a solution for the contrast between will and reason. The tragedy is also the first English play in which the blank verse is used successfully, even if it will be used with a natural rhythm in the tragedy Edward II.
• The Jew Of Malta: This is a tragedy in which a new theme appears, which will be developed in the following tragedies, as in “Edward II”: the “policie” that is the capacity to manipulate the reality and the destiny of man through intelligence, force and craftiness. The main character is Barabba, a Jewish who accomplishes violent crimes because he has been deprived of all its properties by the Christians. This is also a tragedy of loneliness.
• Edward II: There are doubts about the real paternity of this play. This is not a historical drama as the title could suggest. In this play pessimism reigns and only death has the power to solve all the conflicts.
• The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: The play is based on the legend of a German astrologer of the 16th century who has sold his soul to the devil in order to have superhuman powers and knowledge in this life. Marlowe’s Faustus is the typical Renaissance intellectual who has rejected philosophy, law, physics and religion in his desperate search for absolute control over nature. He agreed to give his soul to the devil, Mephistopheles, in return for twenty-four years of unlimited power of knowledge. During these years the devil must serve him and give him what he wants, including money and beautiful women; at the end of the period the devil takes Faustus’s soul to Hell. Though Doctor Faustus is regarded as a Morality Play, it is different from the medieval play Everyman, where Death is a character and God is harsh and vindictive. Faustus does not believe in predestination and life after death. According to him, philosophy and theology are restrictive. Faustus considers his pact with Mephistopheles as the only means of fulfilling his ambitions.

In the Elizabethan theatre, there was also another type of tragedy, that is the revenge tragedy, a tragedy in which the main theme was the revenge which leads to the death of the assassins and the avenger himself. The most important elements to be found in this kind of tragedy are ghosts, revenges, victims, madness. These are the elements marking the scheme proposed by Kyd in his play “The Spanish Tragedy” whose plot is too difficult to be summarized. The play is the beginning of a change in the English theatre because it explores themes which have not been faced till that moment such as the concept of honour, tyranny and rebellion, human and divine revenge. The mixture of themes in Kyd will be retaken by other authors such as Shakespeare.

George Chapman

His most important tragedies face French themes and have the main subject Henry III. His heroes are alone and fight to save their freedom. His most important play is a comedy called “All Fools” which is inspired by three comedies by Terence. The plot is about an aggressive father who is taken for a ride by his sons.

William Shakespeare

The 16th century saw the rise of the sonnet in Great Britain, composed of fourteen lines. It was composed of an octave plus a sestet: the octave presents and develops a subject, then there is a turning point introduced by words like “but, and, if”, while the sestet contains the solution of the problem or personal reflections. (This is the Italian form). The general subjects were love, faith, great passions for eternal beauty. When we speak about a sonnet, it is very essential to refer to the most important and remembered playwright, poet, dramatist and so on of the English literature that is William Shakespeare.

William Shakespeare was not a University Wit. He can be defined just a genius even if he didn’t invent anything. He probably knew Plutarch because the plot of “Julius Caesar” is literally taken from him. But at the end, although the clear reference to an original plot, Shakespeare was able to create an original play. He was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. William attended the local Stratford Grammar School where he learnt Latin and became familiar with the classical writers but his father prevented him from continuing studying classical writers: this is why we hardly find in his works classical references. At the age of 18 he married Anne Hathaway and had three children, Susannah and two twins a girl and a boy who died at the age of 11. Shakespeare decided to leave his wife and his children and started a very successful career: in 1593 the theatres of London were closed because of the bubonic plague, during this period he wrote private plays. When the theatres reopened he became the main playwright of the most popular acting company in London, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men: during these years 1594-1599 he wrote “Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1595), “Romeo and Juliet” and “Richard II” (1595) and “The Merchant of Venice” (1596). In 1599 he became part owner of the most prestigious public playhouse in London, the Globe. When he was 52 years old, he decided to come back to Stratford where he died.

He experimented with all the dramatic genres. Shakespeare considered his works not as art but as merchandise. The dramatic trade was based on competition among companies. He wrote 36 plays, divided into comedy, tragedy and historical tragedy.

Shakespeare the Poet

Shakespeare decided not to use the Italian form for the sonnet but he employed three quatrains and a final couplet. The sonnets by Shakespeare can be divided into two sections. The first one is addressed to a “fair youth” where the poet urges the young man, who is probably Shakespeare’s young patron, to marry, to preserve his virtues through his children and he speaks about the destructive power of time and moral weakness. The second section is addressed to a dark lady or black woman who is irresistibly desirable. The style of the sonnets is characterized by a rich and vivid descriptive language.

Shakespeare the Dramatist

All the plays do not belong to a unique genre, but most plays are marked by the blending of genres, showcasing Shakespeare's versatility and mastery in drama.