Theatre History - Shakespeare

William Shakespeare is one of the best-known playwrights of his time, but I think that we should take more interest in other playwrights instead of focusing on Shakespeare. He is absolutely brilliant and he should be commended for blessing the classrooms of English Literature with his Iambic Pentameter, but I do think that others should be celebrated too. He wrote 37 plays between 1590 and 1613, but who else was there? Writers and playwrights working in the same era as Shakespeare include Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker. (All of which are said in the song Welcome to the Renaissance from the musical Something Rotten which is a musical where characters are attempting to compete with a very flamboyant, very rock star type of Shakespeare played initially by Christian Borle.)

Staging

The stage that Shakespeare is most associated with using is The Globe Theatre in London which still has performances of Shakespeare plays to this day. A production of Julius Caesar, performed on 21 September 1599 may have been the first production shown at the Globe (which had been constructed earlier that year). Constructed out of timber from their previous playhouse 'The Theatre', it could house up to 3,000 spectators and was the most magnificent venue London had ever seen.

The stage was covered in straw and measured approximately 43ft in width by 27ft in depth, with the audience standing on all three sides. The wall at the back of the stage had a door on both sides for entrances and exits, and a central opening that was normally covered with hangings. Above the stage there was a trapdoor and a windlass for lowering performers down to the stage and, on the stage itself, there was a trapdoor for surprise appearances! 

Source: https://www.rsc.org.uk/shakespeares-life-and-times/performing-shakespeare-in-the-17th-century

Acting Style 

It is debated whether Shakespeare's plays were acted naturally or formally and has been argued that there was a mixture of the two.

"Natural acting strives to create an illusion of reality by consistency on the part of the actor who remains in character and tends to imitate the behaviour of an actual human being placed in his imagined circumstances. He portrays where the formal actor symbolizes. He impersonates where the formal actor represents. He engages in real conversation where the formal actor recites. His acting is subjective and "imaginative" where that of the formal actor is objective and traditional. Whether he sinks his personality in his part or shapes the part to his personality, in either case, he remains the natural actor."

Source: http://www5.csudh.edu/bdeluca/Playwrights/shakespeare/acting%20shakespeare.htm

Popular Plays

A complete list of Shakespeare's plays can be found here.


I think Shakespeare has been pretty well documented and is known to everyone either through education or by going to see a piece of Shakespeare hence why this blog is so short.