When was elizabethan theatre

The History of the Elizabethan Theatre - London's authorities ban plays in the City of London The major outbreak of the Bubonic Plague and the rowdy crowds attracted by the theaters were causing real problems in the City of London. Many Londoners were strict Protestants - Puritans in fact, who abhorred the theatres and many of the people they attracted. Objections to the theaters escalated from the Church and the City of London Officials.

Respectable London citizens added even more objections about the rise in crime and the bawdy nature of some of the plays, fighting, drinking not to mention the risk of so many people and the spread of the Bubonic Plague. Finally, in London's authorities were unwilling to ignore the growing complaints any longer and the public presentation of plays and all theaters within the City limits of London were banned. William Shakespeare is a co-owner of the Globe and a prolific writer of plays.

The Globe Theater is a huge success. Winter performances are staged in indoor theaters called Playhouses. In the Bubonic Plague The Black Death again ravages London killing 33, people and all theatres are closed until the deadly outbreak subsides. It was started by the firing of a cannon during one of the plays. In the Globe Theatre was rebuilt on original foundations but this time the roof was tiled, not thatched. The Puritans demolish the Globe Theatre in In even stricter rules are passed by the Puritans restricting the staging of plays and in the Puritans order that all playhouses and theatres are to be pulled down, all players to be seized and whipped, and anyone caught attending a play to be fined five shillings.

The Elizabethan theater is halted until when Oliver Cromwell dies and the power of the Puritans starts to decline. He was lauded for his roles in the tragedies. The only thing that stopped the plays was the plague, and the theatres were dark from June, to April, Elizabethan theatre itself was notoriously raucous. People, most of whom stood throughout the play, talked back to the actors as if they were real people. It is true that adolescent boy actors played female roles, and the performances were held in the afternoon because there was no artificial light.

There was also no scenery to speak of, and the costumes let the audience know the social status of the characters. Because sumptuary laws restricted what a person could wear according to their class, actors were licensed to wear clothing above their station. More and more theatres grew up around London and eventually attracted Shakespeare, who wrote some of the greatest plays in world literature.

His plays continue to cast a shadow over all other plays of the era and quite possibly all other plays that came after his. But Shakespeare was not the first great playwright of the Elizabethan age. That would be Christopher Marlowe. Many scholars believe that Marlowe might have rivalled Shakespeare had he not been murdered when he was 29 years old in a fight over a tavern bill in He was the first to change the conventions of the early Elizabethan plays with his tales of overreachers like the title character of Tamburlaine the Great, Dr.

Faustus and Barabas in The Jew of Malta , men whose will to power provided the engines for the plays. Marlowe used blank, or unrhymed verse in a new, dynamic way that changed the very psychology of dramaturgy. In the meantime, Peele and Lyly were writing light comedies and fantasies such as Endymion. These plays were performed at court, which were not only patrons but protected the companies from the wrath of the Puritans, who found theatre sinful.

The Puritan reaction against the stage was such that the players had to set up theatres outside the London city limits on the south side of the Thames, but attending plays remained popular among non-Puritans.

It was established in and was actually a new iteration of The Theatre, which Richard Burbage and his brother Cuthbert had moved and reassembled. The Globe was rebuilt in and remained standing until when it was demolished to make room for housing.

The conquest failed through a combination of hubris, bad weather, English ingenuity and some help from the Dutch. He responded to the patriotic mood of the country with his History plays.

Besides these plays, of course, were his magnificent comedies and tragedies. Ben Jonson was a friend of Shakespeare and considered his chief rival after the death of Marlowe. As the popularity of plays grew during the Elizabethan era restrictions on actors and the content of plays were tightened.

In fact, in those times everyone needed some status in law, such as a freeman belonging to a Livery Company, an employee of a freeman or government official, or a retainer of a noble.

Anyone who was not was considered as a vagabond, rogue or beggar and liable to be rounded up and thrown in gaol. Companies of actors and playwrights therefore sought the protection of powerful patrons. They distracted young men from their apprenticeships and, as plays were mostly watched on Sundays, it was also felt they were keeping people away from their attendance at church. The Merchant Taylors, who had been performing plays in their hall, ceased to do so in The following year the City authorities introduced a system of control and censorship and any inn holding performances was required to hold a licence and donate certain sums of money to hospitals within the City.

Each play was obliged to be first performed before the mayor and aldermen prior to its public performance to ensure it contained nothing that was lewd, seditious or likely to cause a riot. By the end of the century playhouses were banned completely within the City. One such area was the land of the former priory of Holywell at Shoreditch, a hamlet of humble cottages in the latter 16 th century. It was of timber-framed construction on a masonry plinth. Designed in a circular or octagonal fashion inspired by the inns in which plays were being performed, it established the shape of playhouses for the following 50 years or more.

The Theatre probably held between six to eight hundred people in the audience, with many standing in the open central pit around which were more expensive banked seating areas. Burbage also had an interest in another London theatre, based in the former refectory of the Blackfriars monastery and leased out for use by child actors. Burbage staged performances of plays by Christopher Marlowe amongst others. William Shakespeare joined the resident troupe in the s and later became a part-owner of the company.

The success of the Theatre prompted Henry Lanman to build the Curtain playhouse nearby in Curtain Close just a few months later in , which continued until It was most likely of similar design but little record of it remains. In Burbage and Lanman made an agreement to co-operate and pool profits. Between medieval times and the 18th century Bankside at Southwark, on the far side of London Bridge, was beyond the jurisdiction of the City authorities.

It was a place associated with popular and illicit pleasures such as inns, brothels, bear-baiting and cock pits, much of which developed from the late 16th century. Borough High Street was lined with taverns and Southwark was an ideal place to build theatres outside of the interference of the City. The Rose, built by Philip Henslowe and in operation from until , was the first playhouse to be built at Bankside, its octagonal shape inspired by the Theatre.

The Swan was described by Johannes de Witt, a Dutch visitor to London, as being built of flint stones supported by wooden pillars and seating 3, people. James Burbage died in February and was buried at St.