Download The Globe Theatre and Theatre Practice

Visser ’t Hooft Lyceum Leiden
English Department
The Globe Theatre and Theatre Practice in Shakespeare’s Time
Drama in Europe had its origins in the performances which were staged inside churches to illustrate Bible
stories for the common people who were unable to access either the liturgy itself or the stories contained
in the Testaments because they were in Latin. The performances themselves grew so popular that the
Pope became concerned that the Church was attracting the wrong people – the godless un believers who
were coming to church purely for the entertainment. The plays were moved outside the church, firstly
into the churchyard and then ultimately into the streets of the villages and towns themselves. The plays
were performed on the backs of waggons and in inns and taverns, the actors often “touring” around the
neighbourhood giving performances as they went. One of the most popular formats for the performance
was in a coaching-inn. These inns followed a pretty similar design with a central open courtyard open to
the sky. Tables would be brought out into the courtyard to serve as a stage and the audience would watch
either from the ground, standing around the stage, or from the long balconies which ran along the sides
of the bedrooms on the upper storey. The plays had a reputation even in these public places of attracting
the rougher element of the population – gamblers, cut-purses and prostitutes – who would come along to
try their luck with the rest of the audience.
London, being by far the largest city in Europe, had a population which could support the establishment
of permanent theatres. These were built in such a way as to reproduce the kind of performance-space
typical in an inn – an oval or circular building with a central space, open to the sky which contained the
square stage. The audience either stood around the stage (the groundlings) or the sat in tiered seats
under the thatched roof or the viewing balconies.
The modern-day reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre on London’s South Bank.
Shakespeare was a playwright, actor and shareholder in a company called the Lord Chamberlain His Men
(The Lord Chamberlain’s Men) which built a theatre, known as The Theatre on land leased from Giles
Allen. Allen did not approve of theatre productions and so when the 21-year lease was due to expire in
1597, he proposed increasing the lease price of the land to a level the company could not afford. He also
hoped to take The Theatre apart and sell the building materials. Another member of the company,
Burbage, found a clause in the lease which allowed them to dismantle The Theatre building. The Acting
Troupe noisily dismantled it themselves and transported the materials over the River Thames to
Southwark on the south bank, outside the City limits. Allen was furious but there was nothing he could
do. Using the same materials, but redesigning the building based on lessons they had learned from the
“mistakes” with the original building, Peter Smith and his workers built the Globe Theatre between 1597
and 1598. It was a magnificent amphitheatre, the best that London had ever seen. It could hold several
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Robert Laytham
Visser ’t Hooft Lyceum Leiden
English Department
thousand people. The Globe Theatre was not just famous as a playhouse – it was also reputed to be a
brothel and a gambling house.
Plays were big business and a lot of money could be made. There was a constant demand for new
material and rivalry between the different theatre companies was enormous. As soon as new play was
written, it had to be performed immediately.
A visit to the Globe Theatre would have been an exciting event. The grounds surrounding the theatre
would have been bustling with people. There would have been stalls selling merchandise and
refreshments, creating a market-day atmosphere. The Globe was particularly attractive to young people
and there were complaints that apprentices were missing work in order to go to watch the plays.
Towering above the theatre was a flagpole. A flag was a kind of Elizabethan advertising. A colour code for
the flags told people what kind of play was going to be performed – a black flag meant a tragedy, a white
flag meant a comedy, a red/purple flag meant a history play. To announce the arrival of the new Globe
Theatre, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men flew a flag featuring the figure of Hercules carrying a globe upon his
shoulders. Above the main entrance was a crest with Hercules carrying the globe on his shoulders and the
motto “Totus mundus agit historionem” (the whole world is a playhouse).The first performance at the
Globe was Julius Caesar and a trumpet was sounded to tell people to take their places for the show.
The new theatre allowed stage productions to be very exciting. It used incredible props such as working
canons, smoke effects, fireworks and there was rigging above to allow “flying” scenes. Later on, this
rigging allowed a “god” to appear above the stage to rescue people in difficult circumstances, particularly
in stories of Roman or Greek mythology. This rescuing god was cued in the script as “deus ex machina” (a
god comes out of the machine) and the phrase deus ex machina is still used to describe a hopeless
situation which is rescued in an improbably way. In the stage floor itself were trapdoors allowing actors to
appear and disappear suddenly. Above the stage was a balcony for musicians to accompany the plays. It is
no surprise that the plays were incredibly popular – the sight of flying actors must have amazed the
largely uneducated audiences.
The Globe Theatre audiences never had time to get bored. In just two weeks, the theatre could present
eleven performances of ten different plays. The actors generally only got their lines as the play was in
progress. Which parts the actors were to play might only be announced on the day of the performance
and often the actors didn’t even get their own lines. They did something called “cue acting” which meant
that there was a person behind the stage who whispered the lines to the actor just before they were
supposed to say them. This technique led on to another rapid technique called “cue scripting”, where
each actor was given only their own lines. The complete play did not appear even to the actors
themselves until the performance began and the different sets of lines were put together on stage. Both
these techniques allowed for no rehearsals but it did mean that actors did not have to learn their lines off
by heart, which also meant that they could change from one play to another without any problem.
Theatres were often associated with prostitution and drunken behaviour. For this reason, women were
not allowed to perform and so all female characters had to be portrayed by men (for older women) and
young boys (for young women). This is what the audience expected and so they did not think it was
strange or peculiar for males to be dressed as females. The plays had to be performed in natural daylight
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Robert Laytham
Visser ’t Hooft Lyceum Leiden
English Department
which is why there was no roof over the theatre, only over the seating used by richer patrons. The
performances were nearly always in the early afternoon when the sun was high in the sky. As there was
no electric lighting, no make-up was needed, although boys playing female parts would wear the sort of
make-up normally associated with a woman in real life. The stage would be almost completely
surrounded by the audience and so no scenery was used and very few properties – a chair, a table, a cup.
The audience was expected to use its imagination, and the words the actors spoke would tell the
audience where they were supposed to “be”. Similarly, no effort was made to be authentic with
costumes. In Julius Caesar, the actors would not be dressed as Romans, just as soldiers. Female characters
who were supposed to be rich, wore a rich costume, poor characters wore poor people’s clothes.
The audience could be rich and poor. The poor people paid one penny to stand around the stage. These
were called the “groundlings” and they were very close to the actors. Sometimes the groundlings got so
involved with the action of the play that they would climb on stage and join in the fights. Richer people
would pay more and sit in the galleries under the roof. Noble people could watch from a chair on the side
of the stage itself. Men AND women went to watch the plays but rich women would often disguise
themselves with masks to protect their identity. The groundlings put their penny in a box as they went in.
Richer people had to put another penny in a box held by a man standing on the first set of stairs to the
gallery. Even richer people would put a third penny in another box held by a man on the second set of
stairs. Once the performance started, these boxes were taken backstage. These boxes were the origin of
the name “box office” for the place where tickets to shows are sold even today.
Even though the acting profession was not well regarded, the plays attracted vast audiences but this
often helped the spread of deadly diseases. In 1593, 1603 and 1608, all theatres including the Globe were
closed due to the Black Death (bubonic plague) and all the actors were temporarily out of work.
The Actors
Women were forbidden to speak upon the stage which meant that female characters had to be played by
males – pre-pubescent boys for the young women and men for the older female characters, the actors
speaking in a falsetto voice. The audience was expected to suspend its “disbelief” that the character was
female but being played by a male. It was just what everyone was used to. On occasion, however, the
actors would play upon the reality of acting “in travesti” (cross-dressing) to make comedy which the
audience would have loved. Even tragedies would have had elements of farce in them.
Male actors playing the female characters.
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Robert Laytham
Visser ’t Hooft Lyceum Leiden
English Department
The actors would just wear their normal, everyday clothes for the male parts, but female characters were
played by actors wearing clothes that had been donated by wealth patrons and friends of the group. If
the actor was playing a “common” woman, the skin would be left natural. If the character was a high-born
woman, then the actor would wear white-lead face make-up, kohl eye-makeup, rouge to redden the
cheeks and something to colour the lips, just as was normal for women of this status.
Characterisation
One of the most incredible things about a play or work of fiction is the author’s ability to make the
audience react to the characters they create as if they were real people. In a good play or novel, after just
a scene or a chapter, or sometimes even after only a few lines, the characters can make us laugh or cry,
get angry or offended. In order to achieve this incredibly difficult task, the author must use extremely
precise and convincing language. The author must create characters which are just as complex as people
in real life and there are various devices (techniques) that a writer can use to create the powerful illusion
of reality:
physical description – telling us what the character looks like
dialogue – what the character says
physical actions what the character does, particularly in relation to what he or she says or thinks
thoughts or mental actions the character’s inner life, what the character thinks
the narrator’s judgement – what the narrator tells us about the character
the author’s judgement – what the author thinks about the character, which is sometimes difficult to
determine until late in the story
In a novel, physical descriptions, dialogue, inner thoughts etc are easily established through the author’s
text. In a play, however, the audience cannot know what the character is thinking. To get round this,
Shakespeare often uses a technique where the character talks to the audience about what is going on in
his head, but any other characters on the stage do not “hear” this information. It is as if the audience is
inside the character’s head, and the other characters on the stage remain outside, just as in real life. This
technique is called soliloquy. It does not mean that the character is giving away secrets or talking to
himself. Shakespeare uses soliloquy to allow the audience to understand the character’s motives, desires,
disappointments and future intentions. It is important to remember that during a soliloquy, the
character’s words are for the audience’s information and are not a dialogue with the other characters on
stage nor an “internal dialogue”. For Shakespeare, the soliloquy is a technique he uses frequently to give
substance to his characters. The audience can begin to form judgements about them, based on their
actions as seen on stage, their inter-actions with other characters, including conversations between the
characters AND the information gained about the characters from the soliloquy. It is a very important
technique.
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Robert Laytham