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Chapter 11
Theatre’s Revival in Europe
Theatre in the Renaissance
The Commedia dell’arte
Period of the Renaissance (ca 1350-1650)
 Martin Luther (1483-1546) and the Protestant
Revolution
 Commedia dell’arte
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A people’s theatre popular from 1550-1750
Actors and actresses who traveled and performance
impromptu farces
Emphasis on comic routines (i.e. slapstick) and
romantic intrigue between young lovers and their
parents and betweens masters and their servants
Theatre in the Renaissance
Aristotle Returns
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The Poetics is “rediscovered” by European
scholars and artists
 Aristotelian Scholasticism
 Humanism and the liberal arts
 The three unities of time, place, and
action
 Declamatory acting style
 Beginnings of opera
Theatre in the Renaissance
The Italian Perspective
Perspective drawing to
perspective scenery
 Converging lines
 The vanishing point
 Three dimensional
scenery on flats
 Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377-1446)
 First theatre
architect; credited
with inventing
perspective
painting
 Stage techniques
 Raked stage –
upstage and
downstage
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Theatre in the Renaissance
Spanish Drama
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Golden Ages of Spanish Drama
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Lope de Vega (1562-1635)
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The most prolific and idealist playwright
The Sheep Well – most popular play
Calderon (1600-1681)
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Wrote “cloak and sword” plays
His plays use symbolism and depth to explore the human
condition
Life is a Dream – his most well known play
Elizabethan Theatre
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Elizabeth I reigned from 1558 – 1603
Puritans
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Wanted to purify the church by abstaining form amusements
and sensual pleasures
Permanent Theatre buildings
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Indoor
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Catered to the wealthy
Outdoor
Permitted all members of society to attend
 The Theatre (1576) was the name of the first such theatre built
since the time of the Romans by James Burbage
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Environment for the theatre
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Bear baiting, prostitution, and gambling
Elizabethan Theatre
The Globe
Performances began at
2:00 pm
 Flags were used to
advertise the plays
 Box office
 Groundlings and gallery
patrons
 Verbal scene painting
 Costumes and props
 Special effects
 Music and dance
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Elizabethan Theatre
Actors
Masterless rogues and vagabonds
 A company of 8-15 players
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 Shareholders
 Employed
for a single production
 Boy apprentices
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Patronage of the nobility
 Lord
Chamberlain’s Men
 The King’s Men
Elizabethan Theatre
Williams Shakespeare (1564-1616)
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Born and died in Stratford
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Started as an actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men
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Wrote 37-38 plays and poetry
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Combined popular appeal with poetic sensibilities that
were profound and poignant in their beauty
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Knew the dramaturgical tradition but did not hesitate to
break the rules

Coined over 1,600 words and phrases in the English
language
Elizabethan Theatre
Shakespeare's Contemporaries
Thomas Kyd (1558-1594)
 The Spanish Tragedy (1589)
 Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
 Challenged the status quo with his plays
 The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1589) was one of
his most well known plays
 Murdered under a suspicious cloud when he was only 29
years old
 Ben Jonson (1573-1637)
 Lead a checkered life as a young actor and playwright
 Rose to become England’s first poet laureate
 Wrote many well known plays and masques
 Upon Shakespeare’s death, he worked conscientiously to
advocate for the publication of his plays
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Elizabethan Theatre
Masques and Antimasques
Masques – elaborate court entertainments
that emphasized poetry, spectacle, music
and masks
 Inigo Jones (1573-1652)
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 Most
influential set designer in the English
theatre
The Masque of Blackness (1605)
 The Players Scourge (1632)
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The antimasque tradition
Restoration Drama
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Restoration
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The Puritan Civil War of 1643
Restoration of Charles II in 1660
Comedy of Manners
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William Congreve (1670-1729)
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The Way of the World (1700)
Women as performers and playwrights
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Alphra Behn (1640-1689)
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The Rover, or the Banished Cavalier (1677 and 1681)
French Neoclassic Theatre
The Three Unities (time, place, and action)
 Academie Francaise
 Tragedy
 Jean Racine (1639-1699)
 Phaedra (1677)
 Comedy
 Molière (1622-1673)
 Tartuffe (1664) and The Imaginary
Invalid (1673)
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Theatre in the Age of Reason
Ideas and Beginnings
Age of Enlightenment (ca 1650-1800)
 Emphasis on man’s ability to reason
 Great Minds of the Enlightenment
 Francis Bacon (1561-1626) - considered the father of
the Enlightenment
 Galileo (1565-1642) - advocated for a heliocentric
view of the world
 Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
 Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
 John Locke (1632-1704)
 Founding Fathers of the United States
 Thomas Jefferson
 Ben Franklin
 Thomas Paine
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Theatre in the Age of Enlightenment
Revolutionary Theatre
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Domestic tragedies
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George Lillo (1693-1739)
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Voltaire (1694-1778)
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Mahomet (1742)
Gotthold Lessing (1729-1781)
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The London Merchant (1731)
Nathan the Wise (1779)
Sentimental comedies
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Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816)
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The Critic (1779)
Pierre Beaumarchais (1732-1799)
The Marriage of Figaro (1786)
 The Barber of Seville (1816)
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Romanticism and the Birth of
Melodrama
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Romanticism
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
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Edmond Rostand (1868-1918)
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Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)
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Confessions
Faust (1808 and 1832)
Melodrama
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Combines melody and drama
Formulaic plots with easily defined characters
Poetic justice