Final Sem 1 Flashcards
Inns of Court
Dormitory of law students/university wits
-became one of the first theaters
Public/outdoor theaters
Forerunners wee inns or bearbating halls
- accommodates more people
- charges less
- built outside of city limits of London due to opposition of theaters based on moral grounds
- platform stage
Private/indoor Theater
Catholic monasteries taken over by government and turned into private theaters
- no proscenium arch
- high Windows
- vaulted ceilings
- more expensive
- no standing, benches on ground
- no heavens
3 private theaters
1) Blackfriars
2) Whitefriars
3) White Hall
White Hall built by Inigo Jones
3 eras of Renaissance English Theater
1) Elizabethan
2) Jacobian
3) Carolinian
Public Theater Names
North of City Boundaries: The Theatre The Curtain The Red Bull Fortune Boars Head Red Lion Phoenix/Cockpit
To the south: The Swan The Rose The Globe The Hope Southark
Greek New Comedy
Focus on lower class
Concerns are more local, regional, agricultural, small town politics, theft, greed
Domestic issues like “Who will marry my daughter?”
Love affairs and triangles
Influenced Plautus and Terence
Five Acts
Reduced chorus
Plautus
Roman version of 3 stooges
Used Greek New Comedy style
Very local
Stichomythia - one liners said in response between 2 characters like Abbott and Costello
Heavy use of slapstick
Horace
Dulce et decorumest - sweet and decorous/proper behavior
Tragedy and new comedy should never be mixed
5 acts in a play
Purpose of theater was to entertain, educate and turn a profit
Seneca
Violence and ugliness on stage
Sententiae - little moral one liners about the moral tradition/immorality of the people
Soliloquies - audience can hear characters thoughts as if they’re talking
Asides
Confidants
Supernatural
Obsession with passion
Roman theaters
Built out of stone, permanent
Scaena frons
Roman Amphitheater
Larger than stone theater
Circus Maximus held chariot races, circuses, farces, athletics demonstrations
Naumachina - reenacting navy battles by flooding theater
Medieval theater Middle Ages theater
Christianity killed theater
Hrosuitha of Gandersheim
First female playwright, a nun, read Roman plays, loves Terence, adapts his plays
3 types of Middle Ages plays
Morality - allegory, every character represents an idea or value
Mystery - sacred history, starts at creation all the way to future judgement days
Miracle - lives of the saints, hagiography, divine interventions in human affairs
Neutral Staging
Fixed staging in courtyard of church
Procession v Stationary
Procession - wagons moved around a stationary audience
Stationary - audience moves around a stationary wagon
Queen Elizabeth’s final lineage
To rid of church in theater
Old comedy
Upper society Doesn't follow tragic structure, episodes can be moved around, Parody, satire Simple episodic plot Happy idea Climax is when happy idea fails
Pro logos Parados Agon Episodos/stasimon Parabasis Revel
Costumes vibrant exaggerated grotesque exaggerated body rolls
Many locations long time span
Agon
Debate over happy idea
Parabasis
Chorus speaks directly to audience, makes fun of spectators and specific Audience members
Neoclassical comedy
Lower, middle class, shopkeep
Moral lessons
Verisimulitudeness
3 unities, TPA
No supernatural
Stories of domestic affairs/local politics
Modeled on new comedy
Less poetic language, more prose
Has to have happy contrived ending
Who in control of Greek theater
Archon, an appointed government city state official, chose the plays before the festival
Archon appointed a choregois, a producer, for each playwright, to raise money and pay for rehearsals costumes and musicians
Parts of public theater
tiring house, stage house
-first floor had “discovery space” and doors
Roof from tiring house called “heavens” or “shadows”
Yard is where groundlings stood
