Elizabethan theatre

The simple definition of Elizabethan theatre and drama is that it is drama written
during the reign of Elizabeth I, but that is absurdly simplistic: Elizabethan drama is
much more than that.

Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland reigned from 1558 to 1603, during the time
when Europeans were starting to break out of the cultural constraints imposed by the
medieval Church. Great thinkers across Europe were courageously directing their
eyes away from the face of God and turning them towards the mind, the form and the
ideas of human beings in a huge humanistic movement. Instead of just accepting the
flat, two dimensional assumptions about life, God, the planet and the universe itself
that the Church pedalled, they were challenging those assumptions. This led to a
blossoming of new perceptions in every area of human endeavour – art, music,
architecture, religion, science, philosophy, theatre and literature. Artists, composers,
scientists and writers looked back beyond the darkness of fourteen centuries and took
their inspiration from the humanist qualities in Greco-Roman culture.

The Renaissance flowered right across Europe but had different emphases in the
different European cultures – it was religion and philosophy in Germany, for
example; art, architecture and sculpture in Italy. And in England, it was Elizabethan
theatre drama. All through the Middle Ages English drama had been religious and
didactic. When Elizabeth came to the throne most of the plays on offer to the public
were Miracle Plays, presenting in crude dialogue stories from the Bible and lives of
the saints, and the Moralities, which taught lessons for the guidance of life through the
means of allegorical action. They were primarily dramas about God, not about people.

By the time Elizabeth’s reign ended there were over twenty theatres in London, all
turning over several plays a week – plays that were secular in their nature, and about
people. That represented a complete revolution in theatre, and makes Elizabethan
theatre distinct. What changed at that time was that the theatre became a place where
people went to see, not dramatised lectures on good behaviour, but a reflection of
their own spirit and day-to-day interests. They wanted to laugh and to cry – to be
moved, not by divine reflection, but by human beings doing good and bad things just
as they did – loving and murdering, stealing, cheating, acting sacrificially, getting into
trouble and behaving nobly: in short, being human like themselves.
This new Elizabethan theatre scene attracted writers of great calibre who thought of
themselves simply as craftsmen – in the same way as coopers or wheelwrights did,
and not ‘great writers,’ as we think of them today. But even so, most of the theatre
writers of Elizabethan England have not been equalled during the four centuries since
that time. There was a lot of money to be made feeding this huge new appetite for
plays, and good playwrights who played their cards well and made good contacts – as
Shakespeare did – became rich.
So when we look back at Elizabethan drama from the twenty-first century what do we
see? We see, for the first time, stage presentations of the human experience. We see
acts of great nobility by flawed heroes – a great theme of Greek tragedy – perfected
by Shakespeare in such plays as Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear etc. We see human
beings at their meanest level; we see psychological studies of the human character,
such as the psychopathic Iago in Othello; we see the exploration of the deepest human
emotions, such as love in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra. Although
most of the plays of the Elizabethan period have an underlying Christian assumption,
because of the culture of the time in which they were written they are essentially
humanist – in tune with the Renaissance spirit of the time.
In Elizabethan drama, because it is about people rather than God, we see a lot of
humour. Again, modelled on the Greek comedies, the humour is perfected by the likes
of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson with their memorable comic characters and their
satirical look at their own time, as well as light-hearted social comedies. In
Shakespeare’s plays there is humour even in the darkest plays, such as the frequent
‘laugh’ lines in Hamlet. Shakespeare more or less invented a form of drama that
mixed all genres, so that his tragedies contain comic elements, his comedies tragic
elements, and his histories contain both. In Shakespeare’s case the winds of
Renaissance gave him the freedom to reflect all aspects of human beings in his plays,
and he wrote plays that have not only lasted for four hundred years but which have
very rarely (if at all) been bettered during that time.
Towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign playwrights were developing new themes and
techniques which led to the distinctive Jacobean theatre with its more crusty, violent
plays that focused on the human being’s capacity for selfishness, dramatised in in-
depth representations of ambition and its effects.

Important definitions in drama

1. Anagnorisis/recognition: point in the play during which the tragic hero

experiences a kind of self-understanding; the discovery or recognition that
leads to the peripeteia or reversa

2. Antagonist: the character who opposes the protagonist.

3. Catharsis: a purgation of emotions. According to Aristotle, the end of

tragedy is the purgation of emotions through pity and terror.

4. Dramatic irony: the words or acts of a character may carry a meaning

unperceived by the character but understood by the audience. The irony
resides in the contrast between the meaning intended by the speaker and the
different significance seen by others.
5. Foil: any character in a play who through contrast underscores the
distinctive characteristics of another, particularly the protagonist.

6. Freytag's pyramid:

3. Climax
of action:
the
turning
point in
the
action,
 the crisis
at which
the rising
action
turns and
becomes
the falling
action

2. Complication: 4. Falling
the part of a plot action or
in which the resolution:
entanglement exhibits
cause by the the failing
conflict of fortunes
opposing forces of the
is developed. hero

1. Exposition:
introductory 5. Denouement:
material that the unraveling
gives the of the plot of the
background of play
the play

7. Hamartia: tragic flaw

8. Hubris: overweening pride or insolence that results in the misfortune of the

protagonist of a tragedy. Hubris leads the protagonist to break a moral law,
attempt vainly to transcend normal limitations, or ignore a divine warning with
calamitous results.

9. Peripeteia/reversal: reversal of fortune for the protagonist--from failure to

success or success to failure.

10. Proscenium or proscenium stage: an arch that frames a box set and
holds the curtain, thus creating the invisible fourth wall through which the
audience sees the action of the play.

11. Protagonist: the chief character in a work

12. Stock character: conventional character types whom the audience

recognizes immediately. Examples: the country bumpkin, the shrewish wife,
the braggart soldier

13. Thrust or apron stage: A stage that projects into the auditorium area,
thus increasing the space for action; a characteristic feature of Elizabethan
theaters and many recent ones.

14. Tragic hero: According to Aristotle, the protagonist or hero of a tragedy

must be brought from happiness to misery and should be a person who is
better than ordinary people--a king, for example. In "Tragedy and the
Common Man," Arthur Miller argues that the ordinary man can also be a tragic
hero.

15. Unity of time, place, and action ("the unities"): limiting the time, place,
and action of a play to a single spot and a single action over the period of 24
hours.

Chorus

Chorus, in drama and music, those who perform vocally in a group as

opposed to those who perform singly. The chorus in Classical Greek drama
was a group of actors who described and commented upon the main action of
a play with song, dance, and recitation. Greek tragedy had its beginnings in
choral performances, in which a group of 50 men danced and
sang dithyrambs—lyric hymns in praise of the god Dionysus. In the middle of
the 6th century BCE, the poet Thespis reputedly became the first true actor
when he engaged in dialogue with the chorus leader. Choral performances
continued to dominate the early plays until the time of Aeschylus (5th
century BCE), who added a second actor and reduced the chorus from 50 to 12
performers. Sophocles, who added a third actor, increased the chorus to 15 but
reduced it to a mainly commentarial role in most of his plays (for an example
of this role as shown in the play Oedipus the King). The chorus in Greek
comedy numbered 24, and its function was displaced eventually by
interspersed songs. The distinction between the passivity of the chorus and
the activity of the actors is central to the artistry of the Greek tragedies. While
the tragic protagonists act out their defiance of the limits subscribed by the
gods for man, the chorus expresses the fears, hopes, and judgment of the
polity, the average citizens. Their judgment is the verdict of history.

Prologue, a preface or introduction to a literary work. In a dramatic work,

the term describes a speech, often in verse, addressed to the audience by one
or more of the actors at the opening of a play.
The ancient Greek prologos was of wider significance than the modern
prologue, effectually taking the place of an explanatory first act. A character,
often a deity, appeared on the empty stage to explain events prior to the action
of the drama, which consisted mainly of a catastrophe. On the Latin stage, the
prologue was generally more elaborately written, as in the case
of Plautus’s Rudens.

In England, medieval mystery plays and miracle plays began with a homily. In
the 16th century, Thomas Sackville used a dumb show (pantomime) as a
prologue to the first English tragedy, Gorboduc; William
Shakespeare began Henry IV, Part 2 with the character of Rumour to set the
scene, and Henry V began with a chorus. The Plautine prologue was revived
by Molière in France during the 17th century.

While the use of prologues (along with epilogues) waned in the English
theatre after the Restoration period, they persisted in various forms across the
world’s theatres and were used effectively in such 20th-century plays
as Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie and Jean Anouilh’s Antigone.

Epilogue, a supplementary element in a literary work.

The term epilogue carries slightly different meanings in nondramatic and

dramatic works. In the former, the epilogue is the conclusion or final part that
serves typically to round out or complete the design of the work. In
this context it is sometimes also called an afterword. In a dramatic work, the
epilogue is a speech, often in verse, addressed to the audience by one or more
of the actors at the end of a play, such as that at the end of Henry VIII, a play
often attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher:

’Tis ten to one this play can never please

All that are here. Some come to take their ease,
And sleep an act or two; but those, we fear,
We have frighted with our trumpets; so ’tis clear,
They’ll say ’tis naught; others, to hear the city
Abused extremely, and to cry, “That’s witty!”
Which we have not done neither. That, I fear,
All the expected good we’re like to hear
For this play at this time is only in
The merciful construction of good women;
For such a one we show’d ’em. If they smile,
And say ’twill do, I know, within a while
All the best men are ours; for ’tis ill hap,
If they hold when their ladies bid ’em clap.

The epilogue in a play, at its best, is a witty piece intended to send the
audience home in good humour. Its form in English theatre during the
Renaissance was established by Ben Jonson in Cynthia’s Revels (c. 1600).
Jonson’s epilogues typically asserted the merits of his play and defended it
from anticipated criticism.

Who Was Christopher Marlowe?

Christopher Marlowe was a poet and playwright at the forefront of the 16th-century
dramatic renaissance.
While Christopher Marlowe's literary career lasted less than six years, and his life
only 29 years, his achievements, most notably the play The Tragicall History of
Doctor Faustus, ensured his lasting legacy.

Early Years

Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury around February 26, 1564 (this was the
day on which he was baptized). He went to King's School and was awarded a
scholarship that enabled him to study at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from late
1580 until 1587.

Marlowe earned his bachelor of arts degree in 1584, but in 1587 the university
hesitated in granting him his master's degree. Its doubts (perhaps arising from his
frequent absences, or speculation that he had converted to Roman Catholicism and
would soon attend college elsewhere) were set to rest, or at least dismissed, when the
Privy Council sent a letter declaring that he was now working "on matters touching
the benefit of his country," and he was awarded his master's degree on schedule.
Marlowe as a Secret Agent?

The nature of Marlowe's service to England was not specified by the council, but the
letter sent to Cambridge has provoked abundant speculation, notably the theory that
Marlowe had become a secret agent working for Sir Francis Walsingham's
intelligence service. No direct evidence supports this theory, but the council's letter
clearly suggests that Marlowe was serving the government in some secret capacity.

Surviving Cambridge records from the period show that Marlowe had several lengthy
absences from the university, much longer than allowed by the school's regulations.
And extant dining room accounts indicate that he spent lavishly on food and drink
while there, greater amounts than he could have afforded on his known scholarship
income. Both of these could point to a secondary source of income, such as secret
government work.

But with scant hard evidence and rampant speculation, the mystery surrounding
Marlowe's service to the queen is likely to remain active. Spy or not, after attaining
his master's degree, Marlowe moved to London and took up writing full-time.

Early Writing Career

After 1587, Marlowe was in London, writing for the theater and probably also
engaging himself occasionally in government service. What is thought to be his first
play, Dido, Queen of Carthage, was not published until 1594, but it is generally
thought to have been written while he was still a student at Cambridge. According to
records, the play was performed by the Children of the Chapel, a company of boy
actors, between 1587 and 1593.

Marlowe's second play was the two-part Tamburlaine the Great (c. 1587; published
1590). This was Marlowe's first play to be performed on the regular stage in London
and is among the first English plays in blank verse. It is considered the beginning of
the mature phase of the Elizabethan theater and was the last of Marlowe's plays to be
published before his untimely death.

There is disagreement among Marlowe scholars regarding the order in which the
plays subsequent to Tamburlaine were written.

Some contend that Doctor Faustus quickly followed Tamburlaine, and that Marlowe
then turned to writing Edward the Second, The Massacre at Paris, and finally The
Jew of Malta. According to the Marlowe Society's chronology, the order was
thus: The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, Edward the Second and The Massacre at
Paris, with Doctor Faustus being performed first (1604) and The Jew of Malta last
(1633).

What is not disputed is that he wrote only these four plays after Tamburlaine, from c.
1589 to 1592, and that they cemented his legacy and proved vastly influential.

Plays

'The Jew of Malta'

The Jew of Malta (fully The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta), with a
prologue delivered by a character representing Machiavelli, depicts the Jew Barabas,
the richest man on all the island of Malta. His wealth is seized, however, and he fights
the government to regain it until his death at the hands of Maltese soldiers.

The play swirls with religious conflict, intrigue and revenge, and is considered to have
been a major influence on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The title character,
Barabas, is seen as the main inspiration for Shakespeare's Shylock character
in Merchant. The play is also considered the first (successful) Black comedy, or
tragicomedy.

Barabas is a complex character who has provoked mixed reactions in audiences, and
there has been extensive debate about the play's portrayal of Jews (as with
Shakespeare's Merchant). Filled with unseemly characters, the play also ridicules
oversexed Christian monks and nuns, and portrays a pair of greedy friars vying for
Barabas' wealth. The Jew of Malta in this way is a fine example of what Marlowe's
final four works are in part known for: controversial themes.

'Edward the Second'

The historical Edward the Second (fully The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable
Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud
Mortimer) is a play about the deposition of England's King Edward II by his barons
and the queen, all of whom resent the undue influence the king's men have over his
policies.

Edward the Second is a tragedy featuring a weak and flawed monarch, and it paved
the way for Shakespeare's more mature histories, such as Richard II, Henry
IV and Henry V.

It is the only Marlowe plays whose text can be reliably said to represent the author's
manuscript, as all of Marlowe's other plays were heavily edited or simply transcribed
from performances, and the original texts were lost to the ages.
'The Massacre at Paris'

The Massacre at Paris is a short and lurid work, the only extant text of which was
likely a reconstruction from memory, or "reported text," of the original performance.
Because of its origin, the play is approximately half the length of Edward the
Second, The Jew of Malta and each part of Tamburlaine, and comprises mostly
bloody action with little depth of characterization or quality verse. For these reasons,
the play has been the most neglected of Marlowe's oeuvre.

Massacre portrays the events of the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre of 1572, in
which French royalty and Catholic nobles instigated the murder and execution of
thousands of protestant Huguenots. In London, agitators seized on its theme to
advocate the murders of refugees, an event that the play eerily warns the queen of in
its last scene. Interestingly, the warning comes from a character referred to as
"English Agent," a character who has been thought to be Marlowe himself,
representing his work with the queen's secret service.

'Doctor Faustus'

Marlowe's most famous play is The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus, but, as is the
case with most of his plays, it has survived only in a corrupt form, and when Marlowe
actually wrote it has been a topic of debate.

Based on the German Faustbuch, Doctor Faustus is acknowledged as the first

dramatized version of the Faust legend, in which a man sells his soul to the devil in
exchange for knowledge and power. While versions of story began appearing as early
as the 4th century, Marlowe deviates significantly by having his hero unable to repent
and have his contract annulled at the end of the play. He is warned to do so
throughout by yet another Marlowe variation of the retelling--a Good Angel--but
Faustus ignores the angel's advice continually.

In the end, Faustus finally seems to repent for his deeds, but it is either too late or just
simply irrelevant, as Mephistopheles collects his soul, and it is clear that Faustus exits
to hell with him.

Arrest and Death

The constant rumors of Marlowe's atheism finally caught up with him on Sunday May
20, 1593, and he was arrested for just that "crime." Atheism, or heresy, was a serious
offense, for which the penalty was burning at the stake. Despite the gravity of the
charge, however, he was not jailed or tortured but was released on the condition that
he report daily to an officer of the court.
On May 30, however, Marlowe was killed by Ingram Frizer. Frizer was with Nicholas
Skeres and Robert Poley, and all three men were tied to one or other of the
Walsinghams--either Sir Francis Walsingham (the man who evidently recruited
Marlowe himself into secret service on behalf of the queen) or a relative also in the
spy business. Allegedly, after spending the day together with Marlowe in a lodging
house, a fight broke out between Marlowe and Frizer over the bill, and Marlowe was
stabbed in the forehead and killed.

Conspiracy theories have abounded since, with Marlowe's atheism and alleged spy
activities at the heart of the murder plots, but the real reason for Marlowe's death is
still debated.

What is not debated is Marlowe's literary importance, as he is Shakespeare's most

important predecessor and is second only to Shakespeare himself in the realm of
Elizabethan tragic drama.