ELIZABETHAN THEATER

ELIZABETHAN THEATER

                                    The Elizabethan era was a period during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558-1603. England thrived under Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and the robust cities flurried with activity. There were great developments in art at the time and it was later considered the height of English renaissance. Life was full of work but there was leisure time as well. Entertainment was plentiful such as feasts and festivals, fairs, dance, music, art, sports, and hunting. Elizabethan theater was the most significant form of entertainment during the 16th and 17th century, it was a time that produced history and culture so rich that it is still remembered and relevant today. Elizabethan theater was a truly entertaining period that impacted all of society bringing out the good and bad of people and setting the stage for future theater.

    Before formal theaters, there were groups of wandering minstrels that would perform music and skip around the country. These groups, called troupes, traveled from city to city performing in places such as town squares, inn-yards, halls, and any place big enough to accommodate a large crowd. Generally, these wanderers were regarded as vagabonds or thieves and they were more of an irritant than entertainment. After Queen Elizabeth I took the throne she solved this problem with a law that acting troupes had to have a license and they needed to be working under a person that has high nobility. With this law in place actors couldn’t travel because they needed to be working under a person of high nobility in one area, and many actors stopped acting. In response to this problem, permanent stages popped up around England to accommodate these grounded actors.

                                        Three types of theaters were prevalent during this time, inn-yards, amphitheaters, and playhouses. Inn-yards, the earliest sort of theaters, could hold about 500 people. An Inn-yard theatre, or sometimes called an Inn-theatre, was an inn, that often-sold food and alcohol, and had an inner courtyard with balconies that provided a site for the presentation of plays on a stage.

                   The plays attracted more customers to the inn, so everyone shared in the profit.  “The globe” were open air venues like the roman coliseum. This type of arena could hold around one to three thousand audience members but were only usable in the summer months. Amphitheaters were all about making a profit, built cheap to seat as many people as possible. Playhouses were small, private halls that could hold up to 500 people. These venues were open to anyone who could pay, but it was more costly therefore drawing a more refined audience                                          

                Going to the theater was not considered to be a fancy affair. Plays were often crude and were seen at two o’clock in the afternoon. The poor people that attended were called groundlings and would pay one penny to stand in front of the stage. This group was known for being rowdy and would frequently yell, talk, and throw rotten produce at the actors if they were displeased. Rich people would even sit on the stage and make comments to the audience during the play. The most expensive seats in the theater were the top row in the back.

         During this time period acting was thought to be tawdry for women so only men could act. Generally, the female characters were performed by young boys with high voices. White make-up used by young male Elizabethan actors was lead based and highly poisonous.  There were two main acting groups; acting companies and boy’s choirs. All the actors needed to do more than just acting. Singing, fencing, dancing, clowning, and performing acrobatics are all things they needed to know how to do. Boys were usually put through education for acting, singing, grammar, and rhetoric. Men were paid more shillings per week than the boys.

             Actors had to work around difficult laws as well, the Sumptuary Laws stated that Elizabethans were prohibited to wear any clothing that was above their social standing, extremely restricting their performances of any play about kings, queens and nobility. Queen Elizabeth I so enjoyed this type of entertainment that a ‘Get out Clause’ was written into the Sumptuary Laws. The English Sumptuary Law of 1574 stated the following: “Note also that the meaning of this order is not to prohibit a servant from wearing any cognizance of his master, or henchmen, heralds, pursuivants at arms; runners at jousts, tourneys, or such martial feats, and such as wear apparel given them by the Queen, and such as shall have license from the Queen for the same.”

          There were many controversies associated with Elizabethan theatre and the acting world during the Elizabethan Era. In general, acting and theatre was looked upon with reservations by the public as the acting world had acquired a mixed reputation of being fun but not very respectable. Mainly, however, were the Puritans and Church of England who thought of acting to be incredibly indecent and, in certain aspects, unsafe. The Church of England and the Puritans thought acting was indecent mainly because the plays themselves had questionable content.Actors were so questionable that they would often be asked for their credentials, and always treated with suspicion.

                Theaters also attracted opportunistic rabble such as pickpockets, thieves, brawlers, drunks, and harlots. Additionally, theaters attracted workers and kept them from doing their jobs. A distinct problem for the Puritans was, “Boys in the acting companies acted out female roles and wore makeup and women’s clothing which was considered sacrilegious by some people” (Bellinger). Even though theater was loved by many there were some legitimate reasons that it was unfavorable.

        Because of all these controversies the Parliament wanted to shut down the theater. This was a problem for Queen Elizabeth I considering that she had a great love for the theater. To placate parliament, she established rules and regulations that theaters had to follow, however enforcement of these rules were lenient. After Elizabeth’s death, her law that all actors needed to be licensed under nobles slowly receded. Now under King James I, with a new ruler comes changes, this caused actors to think they could get away with bad behavior and it emboldened them.