17. Drama before Shakespeare Flashcards
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What can you say about university wits? What authors are a part of it? What did they do?
The participants are: Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe and others. The generation educated in Oxford and Cambridge who used their poetry to make theatre with classical models by bringing it from dead.
What can you say about earliest plays? Recall the dates. What was established? What are the sources?
The earliest plays (1550s and 1560s) established comedy and tragedy from Latin sources: comedy from Terence and Plautus, tragedies from Seneca.
What did theatres use for their performances?
Ballads, poetry, dance, music, allegory, symbolism.
What kind of dynamic did the theatre have from the perspective of development speed?
It experienced rapid changes. It has a rich history.
This is the (1)___ of English drama.
(1)golden age
What replaces the rhyming form of drama and which work contributed to that? When?
The blank verse replaces the rhyming form after “Gorboduc”. It becomes a standard form form during the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.
What is the background of all English literature? When?
Classical writers, from Latin and Greek. From Chaucer (14th c.) up to 20th c.
Whom is “The Spanish Tragedy” written by? Whom is it influenced by? What kind of ending does it have? How is that connected to other such works?
Written by Thomas Kyd. It’s influenced by Seneca. At the end, the character “bites out his tongue” of bloodshed which will be typical for the tragedy of revenge, which is also tracked in “Macbeth” by Shakespeare.
What important work has Tomas Kyd written?
“The Spanish Tragedy”
What’s the language for comedies?
It clearly has a lighter language than tragedy. It’s full of sexual play and even geography, as in “The Comedy of Errors” written in the 16th c. by Shakespeare.
Recall a comedy made by Shakespeare. When?
“The Comedy of Errors”, in the 16th cen.
“The Comedy of Errors” is the best (1)___ of (2)___.
(1)reworking
(2)Plautus
What about Shakespeare and the classical models?
He rapidly moves from it.
How did Christopher Marlowe achieve success?
By using classical background to create rich, heroic verses.
What kind of characters are of Marlowe?
Exaggerated in their qualities and faults.
Marlowe’s verses are rich in (1)___.
(1)metaphor
What are Marlowe’s important works? How do they stand out?
“Tamburlaine the Great” (character even tries to rewrite a map), “The Jew of Malta” (Barabas is presented with his greed), “Edward the Second” (the main topic is homosexual love which leads Edward to a downfall (Gaveston is the lover)).
What topics Marlowe talks about?
Risks that mankind is willing to take for power and knowledge, transience of human life (“Doctor Faustus”).
