Welcome, welcome, one and all to the Classic English Literature Subcast! Please do take your seats and silence your devices. Refreshments are available at the kiosks. The show is about to begin!
Well, not quite yet. We’re about to embark on a multi-episode discussion of one of the most fertile periods of English literature – that of the Renaissance theatre. This is the period that gives us Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and, of course, William Shakespeare, among others. Before we settle into an examination of the writers and the most influential plays, I thought it meet to set down in our tables a bird’s-eye view of the development and culture of early modern playgoing. So this is not really a show about the literature itself, but rather a look at the context in which that literature was written, performed, and enjoyed.
Back in podcast episode 18, we looked at the birth of English drama in the Middle Ages and the roots of that drama in medieval religious performances. You’ll remember we talked about the mystery plays, dramatic reenactments of stories from the Bible, particularly focusing on events surrounding the life of Christ and salvation history. We also discussed miracle plays, which depicted the lives of saints and their miraculous deeds. Morality plays, like Everyman, personified moral attributes and depicted characters facing moral dilemmas, allegorically representingthe struggle between good and evil.
Performed by members of craft guilds, these plays were an essential part of religious festivals and processions and did much to instruct a largely illiterate population in Christian dogma.
II noted, too, that Classical drama did not directly influence medieval English drama, but by the Renaissance, the rediscovery and popularity of ancient Greek drama had an impact on English scribblers I, especially the works of playwrights like Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus. Roman comedies and tragedies, especially those by Seneca, Terence, and Plautus, also influenced early English playwrights, as translations and adaptations of Roman plays began to circulate during this period.
Developing from the classical oeuvre more directly, Italian playwrights of the early modern era gained popularity in England, especially the works of Commedia dell'arte, which influenced the development of English comedy. Folk traditions and festivities lent an indigenous flavor to Elizabethan theatre. Traveling actors and minstrels roamed the country, performing at fairs, markets, and other public gatherings, entertaining audiences with songs, dances, and simple dramatic skits.
The hub of cultural activity, attracting artists, musicians, and intellectuals, was the royal court. As we’ve seen in previous episodes, courtiers competed for the queen's favor, and talented individuals found opportunities to showcase their skills and gain patronage. Untalented individuals were cast into the outer darkness where there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth. At this time, patronage played a crucial role in supporting artists, writers, and playwrights. Wealthy nobles and members of the royal court, including the Lord Chamberlain, Queen Elizabeth, and King James, provided financial support and protection to artists and companies of actors. Theater companies, like those of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and others, relied on such patronage. In return for their support, these patrons were often entertained by exclusive performances and plays written to honor them or their families. We call this propaganda – a cabal of elites in the theatrico-political complex.
But the theater also attracted the newly affluent middle-classes who demanded entertainment and cultural participation. At the bottom of the social scale, the groundlings or the stinkards, were also avid theater-goers, paying a penny to stand at a performance. So theaters, catering to a diverse audience, were vital social spaces, fostering a sense of communal identity and providing a platform for the expression of diverse perspectives.
The first permanent theater built in London, imaginatively called the Theatre, was constructed in 1576 by James Burbage, a renowned actor and entrepreneur, in the Shoreditch area. It was an open-air amphitheater, as plays were staged in natural daylight, with a circular or octagonal shape, designed to accommodate a large number of spectators. The stage was at one end, and the audience surrounded it on three sides. The Curtain Theatre, another early permanent open-air playhouse, came up the following year nearby in Curtain Close. These fellas busted hump coming up with catchy names, huh? The greatest writers in history, and they come up with Theater and Curtain. The Lord Chamberlain's Men, a prominent acting company that later became the King's Men, with William Shakespeare as one of its members, operated here.
Then Philip Henslowe, a thrusting entrepreneur, established the Rose Theatre in 1587 in Bankside, Southwark. Fun fact: it’s the first theater to be purpose-built entirely as a playhouse, rather than adapting existing structures. The builders favored a polygonal shape and a thatched roof, could hold perhaps 1500 punters and included some special machinery for mind-boggling effects.
And, of course, The Globe, the most famous of all Elizabethan theaters, was erected in 1599 on Bankside by the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men) using timber from The Theatre, which had been dismantled due to a dispute with the landlord, a Mr. Allen, about renewing the lease. Yes, Shakespeare and his crew, armed with daggers, clubs, and verbal irony, actually, by the dark of a Christmastime night, stole the wood and set up a new kip. The wooden-O could hold up to 3,000 people. Other theatres followed, like the Fortune, the Swan, and the Hope, and eventually indoor theaters like Blackfriars came into vogue for a more discriminating clientele, not to mention the effects that could be created with artificial light.
As I have suggested, each of these venues housed a particular acting company or troupe, who worked together under the leadership of a patron or manager to produce and perform plays. These were all-male affairs – women were not permitted on the English stage for another century. This was not, as many suppose, a law to preserve public modesty and moral rectitude. Rather it was simply a business custom modeled on the medieval guild system: a gendered closed shop. Actors were usually employed full-time and had a repertoire of plays, included a mix of historical plays, tragedies, comedies, and romances, that they performed regularly. The most renowned actors, the "leading players,” were the main attractions and received higher pay and prominence, just like our movie stars today. Companies would also have their comic actors – their clowns (but not like the deeply unsettling circus variety) – who were often given free rein to improvise parts or perform interludes to keep the audience happy. The company also included supporting actors, apprentices, and crew members responsible for costumes, stage management, and other aspects of production.
While permanent theaters were becoming the norm, touring performances were still vital to dramatic culture, and necessary when those urban venues had to be closed due to plague. And let’s not think London was the only city with playhouses. Bristol, Norwich, and York had regional theatres and companies, and these, too, could be highly itinerant.
We tend to think of theater as a bit high-brow nowadays, something for the brie-nibbling champagne-sipping elite. But in the 16th century, drama was at best middle-brow and theatre attendance was definitely slumming it among the hoi polloi. Playhouses were businesses – just as today – but back then they lacked the pretentious conceit that the art was a higher calling. Witness the fact that so few scripts survive from the period. In general, even the writers saw their jobs as hack-work, ephemeral. Few were concerned enough to even publish their manuscripts (Ben Jonson's rather crass middle-class ambition notwithstanding). There was, however, a thriving black market for bootleg scripts, cobbled together from notes taken by an enterprising audience member or clandestine meetings with members of the company.
No, the raison detre of the great Renaissance theater was bums on seats – get the punters in. So, sex, violence, scandal, and as many genital puns per minute as possible were the order of the day. And you wanted those bums on seats as often as possible, so you had to have a variety of plays ready to go, maybe even one for each day of the week, so folks would come back again and again. Given the immense pressure such a volume of material demands, it should not surprise that playwrights frequently collaborated. This otherwise completely quotidian observation sometimes causes a hand-wringing anxiety in those who wish to believe that Shakespeare, for instance, was a solitary genius, channeling the eternal verities of the cosmos on the mountaintop. It also encourages deluded conspiracy theorists who assert that Shakespeare didn’t write the works attributed to him. We know that Billy the Bard collaborated with George Peele, Thomas Kyd, John Fletcher, and Nashe, Wilkins, and Middleton. This in no way diminishes the great human achievement of the plays. Is a Beatles song any less great because both Lennon and McCartney contributed to it? Stuff and nonsense!
And as for the Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare conjectures, here is my opinion, arrived at after a life of study and consideration: it’s absolute arse-water. It doesn’t deserve any greater attention than that – no need to be fair and balanced, to present both sides of the issue. It’s simply bollocks. And while I’m here, to those who offer their custom to tinfoil haberdashers, allow me to assure you that the Pyramids did not store Israelite grain, the earth is round, Stonehenge is not an alien helipad, the Titanic lost a game of chicken with an iceberg, the CIA did not shoot President Kennedy, Princess Diana died in an automobile accident, Area 51 is an air force base in a giant litter box, 9/11 was an outside job, the moon landing was real, and professional wrestling is as fake as claims of a stolen American election. Peace be with you.
Hmm . . . seemed to have veered off point a bit here, but it needed to be said. Where was I? Ah, the theatregoing experience. Yes, it was not a toffee-nosed affair in the Elizabethan world. It was quite declasse, as I say, slumming. The London theatres, for instance, were not built within the city of London proper, but just outside, so city laws against vice did not obtain. Playhouses occupied the same spaces as gambling dens, brothels, taverns, and fighting pits. These were early modern red-light districts featuring sex workers of all descriptions and inclinations, heavy drinking, and bloodsports such as bull-baiting, bear-baiting, and cockfighting (in which the roosters frequently competed, I am told on good authority). A wonderland in which decadence, depravity, dissolution, degradation, and delight roiled the senses. Such districts also gained something of a cosmopolitan flavor as foreign visitors sought to unwind on the wild side of town. Bad behavior is truly universal.
Google some images of the era's prominent writers, but don’t let the frilly collars, puffy pants, and tights fool you. These were hard men: Ben Jonson killed an actor in a duel – tore a six inch in hole in the guy; Kit Marlowe was murdered in a tavern brawl – got stabbed in the skull. William Shakespeare? Tax evasion. Hard men, with fists like matured hams.
Point is, theatres were lively places; going to the theater was a popular pastime and a social event. People from different social classes would gather, hobnob,and discuss the plays, making it a hotbed of cultural and political exchange. The actors at Elizabethan theaters often engaged with this rowdy audience, breaking the fourth wall, and addressing them directly. The actors prowled the entire stage and sometimes even the galleries, providing a 360-degree theatrical experience.
Hmm… I think that'll do for the nonce. I'm sure I've forgotten some crucially important bits, but if so I'll try to catch them in later episodes as they make themselves more evidently germane.
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Thanks for listening! Be careful out there!