Theatre History Final

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Dates of the Middle Ages: 500-1400 CE
When the Renaissance started: 1300-1400 CE
Reasons for the rise of the Renaissance: 1. Discovery of the ancient world

2. Rise of humanism

3. Invention of movable type

4. Exploration & merchant trade

5. Decline of church & feudalism
Discovery of the ancient world: - Rome & Greece

- Byzantium fell, libraries moved west
Rise of humanism: - Emphasis on study of mankind

- Concern for worth or value in this life
Protagorus said...: Man is the measure of all things.
Invention of movable type: - Already invented, Gutenburg just popularized it

- Quicker printing
Exploration & merchant trade: - Columbus

- Copernicus

- Galileo
Columbus: - 1492

- Didn't discover, just opened trade
Copernicus: - Earth revolves around sun

- Earth rotates once every 24 hours

- We are not the center of the universe
Galileo: Reasserted Copernicus' beliefs
Decline of the church & feudalism: - Rise in nationalism

- Martin Luther
Rise in nationalism: Formed city-states or pre-nations
Martin Luther: - Lutherans/Protestants

- Wrote about Catholic abuses (greed, indulgences to forgive sins)

- Three Grievances
Three Grievances: - The individual may know God through faith

- A direct relationship with God is the only source of grace

- Salvation is entirely in the hands of God, not the church
Italian Renaissance: 1300 CE
Why in Italy?: 1. Italy was the first center of cultural activity in Europe

2. City-states brought wealth to the region

3. Roman-Catholic church and its struggle for power helped the arts
Italy as a cultural center: Big families
- Sforza
- Medici
- Doge
- Esta

City-states all over the country
- Verona
- Venice
- Milan
City-states' wealth and its impact on arts: Art is a sign of the wealthy and of power
Italy's 3 Gifts to Theatre: 1. Italianate Scenery (technology)

2. Neo-classical Rules

3. Commedia Dell'arte
Geniuses who sparked the Renaissance: - Dante

- Giatto

- Petrarch

- Boccaccio
Dante: - Father of Renaissance

- "Divine Comedy" was 1st major literary work in the vernacular: accessible

- Still influenced by religion
Giatto: - Introduced perspective into art

- Drop point perspective

- Humanized iconic figures of the Catholic church
Petrarch: - Also considered the father of the Renaissance

- Collected & studied ancient manuscripts

- Championed human issues over theological ones

- Influenced by Seneca & urged scholars to study Greek culture
Boccaccio: - Humanist

- "On Famous Woman": 106 snippets about women

- Celebrates corporeal bodies, sex, lust for life

- "The Decameron" written in the vernacular
2 Noteworthy Plays of the Italian Renaissance: - Earliest in the vernacular and most popular

1. Mandragola (1518) by Machiavelli

2. Sofonisba by Trissinio
Machiavelli: - Author, statesman, philosopher

- Roots of commedia dell'arte

- "The Prince" about how to maintain power and destroy enemies
Sofonisba: - Tragedy, based on Seneca

- Highly popular
Neo-classical Rules: 1. Verisimilitude

2. Two forms of drama

3. Decorum

4. Function of drama

5. 3 Unities

6. 5-act Structure
Verisimilitude: - Having the appearance of truth

- Reality

- Morality

- Universality
Reality: - What could happen in real life

- Removal of soliloquy

- Elimination of chorus

- Fewer battles, violence, death & crowd scenes
Morality: - Must teach a moral lesson

- God's grand design revealed

- Wicked are punished, good are rewarded

- Melodrama (summer action movies)
Universality: - Truth is discovered through your senses

- Examination of the phenomenon on stage
Two Regular Forms of Drama: - Comedy

- Tragedy
Comedy: - Middle or Lower classes

- Domestic issues

- Everyday speech

- Happy ending

- Lesson learned at the end
Tragedy: - Nobility or ruling class

- History and sometimes mythology

- Lofty poetic rhetoric (highly stylized)

- Unhappy endings

- Lesson learned at the end
Decorum: - Appropriateness

- Strictly observed

- Know your place
Function of Drama: - Teach & please

- Comedy: looks at behavior to be avoided, nothing to excess

- Tragedy: horrifying consequences of mistakes or misdeeds
3 Unities: - Time

- Place

- Action
Unity of Time: Action of the play occurs in 12- to 24-hour period
Unity of Place: Action of the play occurs in one location (sometimes outside)
Unity of Action: Action of the play follows a single plotline
5-Act Structure: - Educated playwrights

- Got this from Horace
Commedia Dell'arte: - 1540 - 1775

- Comedy of Professional Players (to please and make money)

- origins unknown (may be Attelan farces, Plautus, Terence, Menander)

- 2 Characteristics:
-- Improvisation
-- Stock Characters
Commedia Improvisation: - actors worked from an outline and improvised, the actor worked his/her skill

- every actor plays same character

- made of lazzi: many stock comic bits (one is lazzo)
Commedia Stock Characters: Unmasked: Young lovers (innamorato/innamorata)

- stupid
- naive
- romantic
- handsome/beautiful
- well-educated
- need help
Commedia Stock Characters: Masked (Masters): - capitano: soldier, braggart, talks about sexual/military prowes but has none

- pantalone: middle-aged or elderly, merchant/lawyer/banker, fool, runs after young women

- dottore: friend of pantalone, learned, discredited
Commedia Stock Characters: Masked (Servants): Servants

- one smart & one dumb

- always drive the action

- help or hinder their masters

- fantesca: female servant, barmaid, sterotypical, falls in love with other servant, smart/witty, sharp tongue

- arlecchino: harlequin, patchy clothes that evolved into diamonds, juggler, acrobat, smart and dumb, carried a slapstick (loud slapping sound)

- brighella: like arlecchino, but very mean and cruel, sexual appetite, cunning, cynical

- pulcinello: Punch (& Judy), dressed up to look like arlecchino, constantly beating on everyone
English Renaissance: - 1485-1642

- Henry VIII to Puritans
Conditions that lead to the English Renaissance: 1. Queen Elizabeth

2. Isolated geographically

3. Nationalism & nation-building

4. Religious stability

5. Rise of economic power
Queen Elizabeth: - 1558-1603

- Long and stable rule

- Virgin Queen
Geographical isolation: - The reason it took so long to get over from Italy

- Stability due to geography

- Philip II sends Spanish Armada to destroy heretic Queen, limps back (3 times) in part due to the weather
Nationalism & nation-building: - Unified government & policy

- Rise of chronicle play (history plays) to record and revere the current times
Religious stability: - Rise of Protestantism

- Act of Supremacy: Elizabeth declares herself head of Church of England in her 2nd year of rule

- Act of Uniformity: sets the order of prayer and prayerbook

- Essentially freedom of religion as long as the affairs of state are not interfered with
Rise of economic power: - Sank the Spanish Armada 3 times

- Colonial powerhouse: go into the New World and bring back what you find

- Control over emerging markets (bankers, investors)

- Literature, the arts, architecture

- Merchant/middle class

- Establishing trade

- Press, coffeehouses, tobacco
Influences that led to the development of Elizabethan Theatre: 1. Inns of Court

2. Professional Theatre

3. Establishment of theatre buildings
Inns of Court: Grad School + Internship + Finishing School

- Gray's Inn

- Inner Temple Inn

- Lincoln's Inn

- Middle Temple Inn

- No women

- Rich, noble, aristocratic, educated

- Taught dance, poetry, oration/declamation, etiquette

- Theatre was a tool to demonstrate style and etiquette

- Latin, Greek, Italian, translations of Classics into English

- Next to brothels, links prostitution -> aristocracy -> theatre, theatre becomes political tug-of-war
People from the Inns of Court: - Christopher Marlowe

- Thomas Kyd

- Ben Jonson
Christopher Marlowe: - 1564-1593

- Three plays
-- Doctor Faustus
-- The Jew of Malta
-- Edward II

- Episodic structure

- Invented the chronicle play

- Blank verse: Marlowe's Mighty Line (unrhymed iambic pentameter)
Thomas Kyd: - 1558-1594

- The Spanish Tragedy
-- Most popular of his day
-- Revenge Tragedy
-- Violence
-- Scene within a scene
-- Ghost
Ben Jonson: - Circulated w/ aristocracy

- Stuck to Neo-classical Rules

- "Volpone" or "The Fox" / "Every Man in His Humour" / "Bartholomew Fair"

- Wrote court masques

- Collaborated with Inigo Jones

- Conscious artistry

- Introduced Italianate ideals to England

- Proscenium arch
Professional Theatre: - Strolling players

- Elizabeth outlawed cycle plays & political plays to bring stability (1559)

- Master of Revels: officer who ensures plays get OK from the crown

- 1572 theatre legalized as long as there was a patron

- Aristocracy came

- Lord Chamberlain's Men
Lord Chamberlain's Men: - After Elizabeth died, James (Jacobean) became patron of Lord Chamberlain's Men, they became The King's Men

- Shareholders kick in money

- Hired Men (other jobs, such as cleaning and copying sides)

- Apprentices (young boys assigned to master actors, played women)
Permanent theatre buildings: - People came to you

- Needed a large turnover

- Repertory in case the audience is against the new play

- Audience is always right
Public theatre buildings: - Exterior

- Larger

- Yard/Pit where the groundlings stood

- Gallery: lower - merchants, 2nd - students/aristocrats/literati, 3rd - upper nobility, politicians

- Playwrights had to appeal to all strata of society
Private theatre buildings: - Interior

- Smaller

- Upper class/nobility
Emblematic/Iconic theatre: - Demands that the audience listen and watch

- Emphasis on language

- Minor set (lantern = night, cloak = cold)

- Prompt imagination

- To an active listening audience (40 years later, set design shifts audience from listening to seeing)
Theatre = Evil: - "A Treatise on Dicing, Dancing, Plays & Interludes" by John Northbrook

- Stephen Gosson: "School of Abuse" - echoes Northbrook
Shakespeare: - 1564-1616

- Greatest Playwright Who Ever Lived

- Collaborated a lot

- 1623: Folio edited & published (36 plays)

- Lord Chamberlain's Men
Shakespeare's Plays: - Henry VI, pt. 1, 2, 3
- Henry V
- Richard III
- Twelfth Night
- Measure for Measure
- Loves Labor's Lost
- Taming of the Shrew
- Othello
- King Lear
- Hamlet*
- Macbeth*
- Romeo & Juliet
- The Tempest

* = greatest play ever written (? - debate)
Shakespeare's Characteristics: - Strong exposition/action starts immediately

- 2+ plots/same theme

- Action takes days, weeks, years

- Large & diverse cast

- 3D characters treated w/ sympathy

- Rich language (metaphor, mood, symbols, comedy)

- 1st existential playwright
Ben Jonson said in the Folio...: "He's not of a time, he's of the ages."
Blackfriar's: - Boys' acting company, famous during James I (Jacobean), until offend him and get shut down
Richard Tarleton: Clown in Queen's Men
William Kempe: - Clown in Lord Chamberlain's Men

- Shakespeare was pissed at him frequently

- Famous for "dancing across Europe"

- Started theatre in Germany
Robert Arman: - Replaced Kempe
Edward Alleyn: - Tragic actor

- Marlowe's plays

- Originated Faustus
Richard Burbage: - Originated Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear

- In King's Men
Inconveniences of Theatre: 1. Corrupts youth

2. Vagrants (actors are horse thieves, masterless men)

3. Idleness

4. Breeding ground for plague (and STDs)
Theatres in London: - The Red Lion

- The Theatre

- The Globe (built in 1597, burnt in 1613): Henry VIII, cannon caught roof on fire, burned in an hour, rebuilt in 1614, stayed up for 30 years

- Swan Theatre: only interior sketch

- Rose Theatre
Johannes De Witt: - Drew interior of the Swan
William Prynne: - Wrote an attack on theatre and court masques

- called actresses "notorious whores"

- fined, expelled from legal profession, stripped of degrees, prison for life, part of his ears removed
Inigo Jones: - all about spectacle, special effects

- Italianate scenery

- Perspective scenery

- Proscenium arch

- Hid set behind curtain

- Groove and shutter
John Webb: - Inigo Jones' apprentice & son-in-law
William Davenant: - Wrote many of the last masques Inigo designed
Interregnum: 1642-1660

- Civil War

- Theatre outlawed

- 1649: Charles I beheaded

- 1660: Restoration
Spanish Golden Age: 1580-1680
Felix Lope de Vega Carpio: 1652-1635

- Greatest of all Spanish playwrights

- episodic, large cast, ignored Neo-classical rules

- Fuenta Ovejuna (The Sheep Well): most famous play
Calderon de la Barca: 1600-1681

- Life is a Dream: greatest play written in the Golden Age

- Wrote Commedias and autosacrementales (ecclesiastical)
Corral: - Theatre buildings

- Patio: area in front of stage

- Lunetas: crescent chair layout

- Cazuela - stew pot (all the ladies)

- Gradas - side balconies
French Neo-classicism: - influenced by Italy because Italian leaders move to France and hijack the culture

- Catherine de Medici (married Henry II, three sons: Francois II, Henry III, Henry IV) was her sons' regent and ran France

- Cardinal Richelieu (regent to Louis XIII)

- Cardinal Mazarin (regent to Louis XIV)

- 80 years uninterrupted Spanish influence
Peace of Nantes: Henry VI - no more religious fighting (Catholics & Protestants)
French Academy: - 40 geniuses of arts & letters

- Couldn't run counter to them or you couldn't be a courtier
Pierre Corneille: - 1st great playwright of French Renaissance

- "The Cid" (The Lord/Prince/Hero)

- doesn't follow Neo-classical rules
Jean Racine: - "Phaedra": best Neo-classical play ever written

- failure until Louis XIV became his patron

- Better it reflects Greek, better it makes society
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin: - changed name to Moliere to avoid shame

- Upholsterer (like father) or lawyer - ran away to create L'Illustre Theatre w/ wife Madelein Bejart & her brother and sister

- Louis XIV names them King's Men
Moliere's plays: - Tartuffe - greatest

- The School for Wives

- The Miser

- The Misanthrope

- Moderation in all things

- All in rhyming couplets
Moliere's characteristics: - Based on commedia

- Witty dialogue (maybe wittiest ever)

- Moderation in all things

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