Fashionable men about town could get a seat on the side of the stage for two shillings 24 pence. Spectators liked to drink wine or ale and snack on a variety of foods as they watched the plays—modern-day excavations at the playhouses have turned up bottles, spoons, oyster shells, and the remnants of many fruits and nuts.
While most women's roles were played by boys or young men in the all-male casts, comic female parts such as Juliet's Nurse might be reserved for a popular adult comic actor, or clown.
In addition to their dramatic talents, actors in Shakespeare's time had to fence onstage with great skill, sing songs or play instruments included in the plays, and perform the vigorously athletic dances of their day. Actors usually did not aim for historically accurate costumes, although an occasional toga may have appeared for a Roman play.
Instead, they typically wore gorgeous modern dress, especially for the leading parts. Costumes, a major investment for an acting company, provided the essential "spectacle" of the plays and were often second-hand clothes once owned and worn by real-life nobles. The bare stages of Shakespeare's day had little or no scenery except for objects required by the plot, like a throne, a grave, or a bed. Exits and entrances were in plain view of the audience, but they included some vertical options: actors could descend from the "heavens" above the stage or enter and exit from the "hell" below through a trapdoor.
Characters described as talking from "above" might appear in galleries midway between the stage and the heavens. Related podcast: Designing Shakespeare: Changes in costumes, scenery, and other staging choices. In , the English playhouses and theaters were closed down and often dismantled for building materials as the English Civil War began.
With the restoration of the English monarchy in , theater returned—as did Shakespeare's plays, now with both male and female performers. The first recorded performance of an actress occurred in December , although we're not sure of her name; she appeared as Desdemona in Othello.
In the centuries that followed, Shakespeare's plays have been performed in England, North America, and around the world, in productions that mirror the state of theater in each place and time: from lavish scenes, to surrealism, to stark bare stages. They have been used as a medium for political commentary, and have been incorporated into theatrical traditions like Japanese Kabuki theater.
Beginning in the late s, Shakespeare's plays inspired the creation of a wealth of replica Elizabethan theaters, more or less faithful to what was known of the theatrical past. Dozens of open-air Shakespeare festivals have also grown up across the United States and other countries. Shakespeare's works have also been frequently interpreted on film. Brooklyn's Vitagraph Company, for one, produced several silent, one-reel movies of the plays starting in Seats are arranged in galleries all around the wide, open stage, so spectators and performers can see each other at all times.
The Globe Theatre is a space where the audience has always been a vital component of the performance. The Globe Theatre officially opened in , although workshops and performances had taken place on the stage since We also tour around the world! We programme a range of Renaissance playwrights, as well as new writing, music concerts, film screenings, family events, educational workshops, community projects, guided tours and more.
After being closed for the majority of due to the Coronavirus outbreak, the Globe Theatre reopened in for tours and performances. Built from oak beams , lime-plaster walls and a water-reed thatched roof.
We had to fight for special permission to have our thatched roof, as there has been a law against thatched buildings in London since the Great Fire of ! We think that the first Shakespeare play to be performed at the original Globe was Julius Caesar , in We think that the first play Shakespeare wrote for the original Globe was Julius Caesar in spring The entire theatre burnt down within two hours, according to eyewitness reports miraculously, no one was killed.
The Outside of the Globe The exterior appearance of the Globe can only be pieced together from sketches of the theatre found in sweeping Elizabethan city scenes, and the interior appearance from the drawing of the Swan Theatre. From these images we can describe the Globe as a hexagonal structure with an inner court about 55 feet across.
It was three-stories high and had no roof. The open courtyard and three semicircular galleries could together hold more than 1, people. The Globe Stage The stage had two primary parts: 1 The outer stage, which was a rectangular platform projecting into the courtyard, from the back wall. Above it was a thatched roof and hangings but no front or side curtains.
This stage was used by actors who were in a scene but not directly involved in the immediate action of the play, and it was also used when a scene took place in an inner room.
Underneath the floors of the outer and inner stages was a large cellar called "hell", allowing for the dramatic appearance of ghosts. This cellar was probably as big as the two stages combined above it, and it was accessed by two or more trap-doors on the outer stage and one trap door nicknamed "the grave trap" on the inner stage.
Actors in "hell" would be encompassed by darkness, with the only light coming from tiny holes in the floor or from the tiring-house stairway at the very back of the cellar.
The Tiring-House Rising from behind the stages was the tiring-house, the three story section of the playhouse that contained the dressing rooms, the prop room, the musician's gallery, and connecting passageways.
The tiring-house was enclosed in curtains at all times so the less dramatic elements of play production would be hidden from the audience.
Two doors on either side of the tiring-house allowed the actors entrance onto the stage. Sometimes an actor would come through the "middle door", which really referred to the main floor curtains of the tiring-house that led directly onto center stage.
The three levels of the tiring-house were each very different. The first level was, essentially, the inner stage when one was needed. Many times Shakespeare's plays call for a scene within a scene, such as Miranda and Ferdinand playing chess as a backdrop to the main scene in The Tempest V,i ; or a scene in which a character or item needs to be dramatically revealed, as we find in The Merchant of Venice II,vii , when Portia asks Nerissa to "draw aside the curtains" to show the caskets; or a scene that should take place in a small, confining space, such as the Capulet's Tomb in Romeo and Juliet V,iii.
For scenes such as these, the actors would have pulled back the curtains on the outer stage to expose the tiring-house as the inner stage. Moreover, the plays often call for one character eavesdropping from behind a curtain or door. The tiring-house was used in this case as well, because at its very rear, even further back than the inner stage floor, was an tiny room hidden by a set of drapes. These floor length drapes or dyed cloth hangings were suspended from the ceiling, concealing the actor.
The drapes of the first floor tiring-house would have hidden Falstaff in 1 Henry IV II,vi , when the Sheriff comes to the door of the tavern, and would have cloaked Polonius right before he is killed by Hamlet, in Act III, scene iv, just to name two situations.
The second level of the tiring-house contained a central balcony stage in the middle, undoubtedly used multiple times in the production of Romeo and Juliet , II,ii -- the most famous balcony scene in the canon ; a small window-stage on each side of the balcony, directly above the side doors on the first floor, used when up to four characters had to be seen from a window; and a curtained inner room behind the balcony stage, that served the same purpose as the inner room on the first floor of the tiring-house.
The third level consisted of a central music gallery and two large lofts on either side of it, used as storage and dressing rooms. In rare instances the orchestra was seen by the audience, when select members would come down to the main stage to accompany a dancer or a chorus, but in most cases the musicians played in the third-floor curtained gallery, hidden from site.
The lofts holding the props and instruments were always closed off from the public. In the Elizabethan theatre extraordinary amounts of money were spent on costumes and the Globe's storage area would have been overflowing with beautiful clothing, not unlike the kind listed in Henslowe's Diary, as he took inventory at the Rose.
Unfortunately, the arcane spelling is difficult to read, but it is nonetheless interesting to peruse a portion of the list: Item, j orenge taney satten dublet, layd thycke with gowld lace. Item, j blew tafetie sewt.
Item, j payr of carnatyon satten Venesyons, layd with gold lace. Item, j longe-shanckes sewte. Item, ij Orlates sewtes, hates and gorgettes, and vij anteckes hedes. Item, vj grene cottes for Roben Hoode, and iiij knaves sewtes. Item, ij black saye gownes, and ij cotton gownes, and j rede saye gowne.
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