Early Modern Literature – Drama & Theatre

Question 1

The Playing Companies - Importance of Patronage for the theatre

Answer 1

• secured the actors’ legal status
• social esteem of the company

Question 2

Elizabethan acting companies

Answer 2

• usually consisting of 14-16 men
• all the roles played by men
• plays were sold to the companies which then hold the play rights → not much money made out of writing plays → Shakespeare made his money of being a shareholder of its company and theatre
• huge repertoire

Question 3

Public Theatres

Answer 3

• e.g. The Theatre → first
  permanent theatre; The Globe
• Inn-yard theatres
• stage was surrounded by the
  audience
• Plays performed during the
  afternoon

Question 4

Private Theatres

Answer 4

• Blackfriars
• Indoor theatre, forms of illusion, scenary
• Prices were higher (starting
  with half a shilling)
• Other forms of plays possible:
  masques

Question 5

The Stage

Answer 5

• not relying on theatrical illusions, no stage props, scenery made through dialogue, audience
  has to use their imagination
• balcony → balcony scenes, orchestra
• roof → heavens → symbolical roof, referring to Christian heaven
• trapdoor in the middle of the stage → underworld

Question 6

The “University Wits”

Answer 6

• Christopher Marlowe, John Lyly, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas
  Nashe, Thomas Kyd
• Playwrights educated at the universities of Cambridge and Oxford who wrote for the
  Elizabethan popular stage
• merged the traditional popular forms with traditional classical forms → merged popular with
  humanist education

Question 7

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Answer 7

-playwright, actor, shareholder of his company

• 42 plays (including
  collaborations)
• The sonnets
• Venus and Adonis
• The Rape of Lucrece

Question 8

Shakespeare: Comedy: Twelfth Night

Answer 8

• last of the so-called happy comedies
• on the verge of being a problem play → dark themes even though it’s a comedy

Main Themes:
* Confusion of identities
* Epiphany → manifestation and revelation of God in human form
* Deception and self-deception
* elements of tragedy

Question 9

Tragedy: King Lear

Answer 9

• concerned with transition and an ensuing crisis → transition can
  take many forms → political & social background → Early Modern period, still a transition from an old political system to a new one; from an old religion to a new one; from feudal
  system to new pragmatical order
• once the catastrophe has occurred → completely disillusioned world → entire play can be seen as an expression of the fear and anxiety characterising this period / from the
  Elizabethan reign to a new reign