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Elizabethan Playhouses: A Crash Course & A Short Story

Explore the fascinating history of Elizabethan playhouses and how they have captured my interest. From the design of the playhouses to the fire hazards they posed, discover the mysteries of these iconic structures. Delve into the physical reconstruction and its impact on our understanding of the plays. A captivating journey into the world of Elizabethan theatre awaits!

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Elizabethan Playhouses: A Crash Course & A Short Story

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  1. What you need to know about Elizabethan playhouses and how I got interested in them A CRASH COURSE & A SHORT STORY

  2. A short history of the playhouses • The first one, The Theatre, opened in 1576. • It was adapted from an animal-baiting arena, or its design was based on such arenas. • They found some of its foundations (or a drain?) last week.

  3. The design of the playhouses • They were usually large multi-sided polygonal structures (Shakespeare’s ‘wooden O’), with three levels of galleries around a central courtyard. • The stage was not in the middle of the yard, because human beings are smarter than animals and want to be able to orient their performance rather than performing through 360 degrees. • So it was a ‘thrust’ stage, with most of the audience out front and to the sides.

  4. A recycled playhouse • In 1598 Shakespeare’s company had a dispute with their landlord at The Theatre. • Between Christmas and New Year, when the landlord couldn’t get an injunction to stop them, they snuck in and dismantled the timber structure. • They transported it across the Thames on barges, and rebuilt it as the first Globe.

  5. Playhouses are fire-traps • This first Globe, the playhouse for which Shakespeare wrote most of his plays, burnt down during a performance in 1613. • Cotton wadding from a sound effects cannon ignited the thatched roof. • The second Globe was built immediately on the same site, probably on the same foundations. • It had a tiled roof…

  6. The evidence • We don’t have good evidence of what the playhouses were like inside. • but there are numerous representations of their outsides. • One of the most famous is Wenzel Hollar’s 1630s sketch of the second Globe.

  7. One of Hollar’s sketches from the tower of Southwark Cathedral The second Globe

  8. London’s Globe reconstruction • The third Globe is substantially based on this sketch of the second Globe. • But it is attempting to reconstruct the first Globe (frankly, that’s a bit of a worry!). • Many scholars feel it is too big, due to misreadings of some of the evidence.

  9. Why physical reconstruction? …[Apart from Desdemonaland for the tourists.] • To enable theatre historians to do ‘bodily re-tracing’. • To get a better sense of how the plays would have worked in performance. • To enrich our interpretation of the texts.

  10. In tandem with textual reconstruction • For me, play-texts are literate artifacts embedded in oral and physical production processes — processes of which the texts are often the only remnant. • I assume their playwrights were inscribing those processes in their texts… • …so they are ‘marked’ by those processes. • They are my main means of reconstructing performance. An example: Richard III.

  11. Richard III, 1.1: jagged lines Glou. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this son of York; And all the clouds that loured upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. ( ( ( ( ( ( Glou. Now is the winter of our discontent • Made glorious summer by this son of York; • And all the clouds that loured upon our house • In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( ( (

  12. If my assumptions are valid, • It means the texts can be analysed for evidence of performance conditions. • It means the playwright is re-positioned as practical professional rather than literary author. • It means that if the text is (also) literature, it is literature in which the meanings are being made spatially as well as verbally: an example from Romeo and Juliet.

  13. Juliet’s bed and tomb Juliet. O sweet my mother, cast me not away! Delay this marriage for a month, a week, Or if you do not, make the bridal bed In that dim monument where Tybalt lies. (3.5.198-201) Juliet. How if, when I am laid into the tomb, I wake before the time that Romeo Cometo redeem me? There’s afearful point! (4.3.30-32) Romeo. Ah, dear Juliet, Why art thou yet so fair? Shall I believe That unsubstantial Death is amorous, And that the lean abhorred monster keeps Thee here in dark to be his paramour? (5.3.101-5)

  14. If text analysis can help us under-stand the performance spaces… • …then the performance spaces can help us understand the texts. • So the more we know about the performance spaces the better: • what shape was the stage? • how many entrance-points did it have? • how did it relate to the auditorium? • what other features did it have?

  15. That’s the crash course. Now the short story of how I got into this. • In the 1980s, an accidental discovery… • In 1995 at the third Globe… • An obsession with Hollar’s sketch… • The Helsinki incident, 2006…

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