Christopher Marlowe is the first great playwright in English. His
most significant play is Doctor Faustus, which is almost an
allegory of the humanist revolution. Faustus’s pact with the devil, to whom he
promises his soul in return for unlimited
power and knowledge, can be seen
as a metaphor both for the humanist idea of man breaking free of God’s control,
and for England’s break with the Roman
Catholic Church. The play ends with
Faustus’s penitence, but its
revolutionary theme is of man independently choosing his own fate.
Shakespeare’s
literary achievement is
unprecedented and probably has never
been equalled in its originality and range of
concerns. Ben Jonson famously
said that Shakespeare’s art “was not of
an age, but for all time”.
It is difficult to say exactly what separates Shakespeare from all other writers. His works communicate a profound knowledge of the wellsprings of human
behaviour, revealed through portrayals of a
wide variety of characters. His use of poetic and dramatic means to create a
unified aesthetic effect out of a multiplicity of vocal expressions and actions
is recognised as a singular achievement, and his use of poetry within his plays
to express the deepest levels of human motivation in individual, social and
universal situations is considered one of the greatest accomplishments in
literary history.
Shakespeare formulates the unanswerable
questions which continue to plague philosophers and writers: What is the self? (Hamlet) What is love and what are its limits? (Romeo and Juliet, Othello) How should a head of state behave? (Henry V)
What is evil and how does it
appear in the world? (Richard III,
Macbeth) Where does the line between sanity and madness lie? (King Lear)
Before permanent theatres there were troupes of professional actors who toured around giving public performances. Their performances were staged on movable platforms, often in town squares on inn yards. This changed first of all with court interludes - plays which were usually performed for a small élite at court - and then with the establishment of proper theatres.
The first permanent theatre, called simply The Theatre, was erected
in 1576 by James Burbage in
Shoreditch, just outside
the city of London.
Built of wood, permanent theatres were
usually circular or polygonal. Around the theatre
walls there were three rows of
galleries. These seats were expensive
and richer people sat there. The lower classes or "groundlings" stood and paid a
lower price for admission - in fact, by paying one penny, they could stand in "the pit",
also called "the yard", just below the stage to watch the play.
Standing in the pit was uncomfortable, and people were usually packed in
tightly. They were known to misbehave and even throw food such as fruit
and nuts at characters they did not like. They would watch the plays from the
cramped pits with sometimes over 500 people standing there.
The
actors performed on a stage which
projected out into the audience, who
stood on the open floor of the theatre. The
stage itself was divided into three levels: a main stage area with doors at the
rear and a curtained area in the back for "discovery scenes"; an
upper, canopied area called "heaven" for balcony scenes; and an area
under the stage called "hell," accessed by a trap door in the stage.
There were dressing rooms located behind the stage, but no curtain in the front
of the stage, which meant that scenes had to flow into each other, and
"dead bodies" had to be
dragged off.
In 1599 the acting company
with which Shakespeare was involved, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, built a new
theatre, The Globe Theatre
with lumber from the demolished Theatre. Situated on the
south bank of the Thames, in the suburb of Southwark, it is the theatre most
closely associated with Shakespeare's plays, and he was one of the shareholders
in the enterprise. Two of his plays, Henry V and Julius
Caesar, were almost certainly written during
the year in which the Globe opened. In 1613, during a performance of Henry
VIII, a fire broke out and destroyed the
Globe, but it was rebuilt the following year.
The new Globe Theatre, 200 metres from its original
site and after almost 400 years, was officially inaugurated by the Queen on
Thursday 12 June 1997. Every summer it offers performances of plays by Shakespeare and his
contemporaries on the type of stage they were originally written for. The late Sam Wanamaker, an American actor,
was responsible for the Globe's modern reconstruction. When he visited London
in the late 1940s, he was disappointed to find nothing marking the site of the
original Globe Theatre. He came up with the
idea of reconstructing The Globe in its original location. Progress was slow
however. The Globe Playhouse Trust was founded in the 1970s, but the actual
construction of the new theatre did not begin until the 1980s. They used the
same techniques that were used in construction during the late 16th century. The design of the new Globe Theatre
is a 20-sided roofless theatre with a whitewashed, half-timbered thatched roof
crown.
The new Globe Theatre is the first thatched-roof building to be
built in London since the Great Fire in 1666.
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