THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

The performance of Gospel stories within the church may be the beginning of the theatre in England. As people grew more interested in the plays, the performance was shifted to the churchyard, the stages pitched on the green, some open space in the neighbourhood of towns and the innyards in particular. Thus, at the commencement of the Elizabethan reign, the public had opportunities of witnessing plays performed on the stage erected in the open air or in some innyard.
In the year 1576, three theatres were set up in London. They were ‘The Blackfriars’, ‘The Theatre’ and ‘The Curtain’. The last two were the only London playhouses when Shakespeare reached the metropolis. Eight more were constructed in succession. The most famous of the early theatres were, ‘The Rose’, ‘The Globe’ and ‘The Wooden O’. Shakespeare’s masterpieces were first performed in his ‘Wooden O’. By the end of the Elizabethan reign, eleven theatres were in existence. These were in the immediate outskirts of London. For, the civic authorities didn’t permit them within the city. Shakespeare was closely connected with ‘The Globe’ and ‘The Blackfriars’.
The Elizabethan playhouses were small, round or hexagonal and were mainly of wood. Sometimes they were octagonal instead of being rectangular. The greater part of the interior of the theatres was open to the weather, only the stage and portion of the galleries being covered. The stage was entirely different from the stages of modern theatres. It consisted of a platform which projected right into the area of the house. Around it, there were tiers of galleries, upper and lower, like the ‘circles’ in the theatres of today. The yard was occupied by the lower classes who had to stand during the whole performance and were known as ‘the groundlings of the pit’. The noblemen took their seats either in the boxes or on each side of the stage or in the galleries.
The players had the spectators on three sides of them. They had more living contact with the public than is possible in the modern theatres. The performance of a tragedy was signalized by draping the stage with black and for a comedy blue hangings were substituted. A flag was unfurled on the roof of the theatre when a performance was about to be given. A flourish of trumpets was another important signal at the commencement of a play. When the trumpets had sounded a third time, a figure clothed in a long black robe came forward and recited the prologue. The play then began. The actors acted their roles in masks and wigs. The female characters were rendered by boys or smooth-faced young men.
There was no movable scenery in the theatres. A curtain, technically known as ‘traverse’ divided the stage into two parts – the inner and the outer stages. The simple properties were set out upon the inner stage. When the curtain was drawn aside, the inner and the outer stages became one stage and the properties on the inner stage gave the setting to the whole. A bough of tree was brought on to represent a forest; a card board imitation of a rock served for a mountainous place or for the beach of a seashore. Wooden imitations of horses and towers were also introduced to represent a change of scene. But the most common way of indicating a change of scene was by hanging out a board indicating in large letters the name of the place of action. When the curtain shut off, the inner stage, the outer stage, bare and unpropertied became a stage in itself. For out-of-door activities, outer stage was used.
An important part of the structure was what was known as the balcony. This was behind the inner stage as an elevation. From this elevation, those actors supposed to speak from upper windows, towers, mountain sides or any elevated place, spoke to the ones down below.
Performance generally began about three in the afternoon and lasted some two hours. There is every reason to believe that the art of acting was brought to a high pitch of perfection. But the Elizabethan audience had no experience of elaborate realism on the stage. They were asked to eke out the imperfections of the stage with their thoughts.
******