Category: Plays/Films/Dramas
The magnificent dramas of Shakespeare that assumed flesh and motion upon the Globe stage in its golden decade shared the boards with hack plays, near cousins to the present-day soap operas and grade-B westerns. It is easy to forget that the company which produced _Hamlet_ also...
The magnificent dramas of Shakespeare that assumed flesh and motion upon the Globe stage in its golden decade shared the boards with hack plays, near cousins to the present-day...
2. Part II, from its revival on December 19, 1594. Typical of theElizabethan theater would be the performance of Part II of a play the day after Part I. We should have been particularly fortunate in seeing the _Tamberlaines_, for these perfor...
3. Chapter TwoShakespeare’s plays of the Globe years are the highest forms of drama to result from a century of evolution. The long-fought battle between popular and private taste was to go o...
4. Act III, scene i, when Malvolio courts Olivia. The full merging of5. scene i, and in Act III, scene iii, and partly integrated with themain action in Act III, scene iv. In the fourth act the development of the two main threads remains suspended, Viola disappearing from the stage to enable the Sebastian element...
6. Scene vi (nearly the middle of the play, since there are fourteenscenes in all) dramatizes the first blending of the two actions. Immediately after his marriage, Vallenger falls in love with Florence and suborns the doctor to poison Sentloe a...
7. scene vii we have a typical “digression,” a comic courting sceneof two servants. The theme, however, is faithfulness. Douse, the maid, asks whether Frog, after their marriage, “will ... not prove unkind?” Frog, in comic doggerel, vows, among...
8. Chapter ThreeTwo boards and a passion! Perhaps these words sum up all that was essential to the Shakespearean theater. Heightening of passion coincided with the “climax,” and as for the Eliz...
9. vi. In the first of these scenes Ross and an old man comment onthe unnatural state of the world, then Macduff brings them news of Duncan’s burial and Macbeth’s election to the throne. In the second scene, Lennox and a gentleman comment upon...
10. scene ii maintain these associations. Scene iii occurs at theGarter. It is possible to confine all in-goings and out-goings to one door (entry _C_). But with scene iv all previous associations are shattered. The place is Dr. Caius’ house....
11. Scene v commences with the direction, already referred to, “Enter amaide with a child in her armes, the mother by her a sleepe.” The Husband rushes in and endeavors to snatch the babe from the maid’s arms. When she resists, he assaults her.
12. Chapter FourSince 1939 the debate over the style of acting in the Elizabethan theater has been argued on the grounds defined by Alfred Harbage. One of two styles could have existed, he wrot...
13. Chapter FiveStaging, like acting, is an art of illusion, but its illusion, unlike that of acting, deals not with being but with time and space. In the manipulation of time, it has long been...
14. scene i, a stage direction after the sixth line of the soliloquyspecifies that Alexander “commeth upon the Stage out of his study” (Sig. G1^r). In _Cromwell_ one soliloquy is six lines long (Sig. B1^v) and the other is ten lines long (Sig. E...
15. Chapter SixThe conclusions which I have drawn in this essay apply only to production at the Globe playhouse from 1599 to 1609. From them it is clear that the staging of the plays was influ...
16. i. Comparison of Plays Known Only Through Henslowe with Plays1 19 5 2 15 5 3 8 1 4 7 4 5 4 0 6 3 2 7 7 4 8 5 4 9 4 3 10 6 2 11 6 4 12 8 7 13 3 2 14 4 3 15 2 2 16 2 2 17 2 1 21 1 1 22 2 2 25 2 2 29 1 0 32 1 1 36 1 0
17. iii. Summary of Court Performances, 1590-1642The total number of plays presented at Court is calculated from the lists appearing in E. K. Chambers, _The Elizabethan Stage_ and Mary Steele, _Plays and Masques at Court_. The...
18. ii. Properties Required in the Globe PlaysTables Othello I, iii probably discovered Pericles II, iii no indication Antony and Cleopatra II, vii brought on Antony and Cleopatra I, ii brought on Timon I, ii brought on Tim...
19. i. Disguise_King Lear_ Kent I, iv, 1-4 II, ii, 1-180 I, iv, 1 f. _King Lear_ Edgar (Poor Tom) II, iii, 10 II, iii, 9-20 II, iii, 14-20 II, iii, 9(?) III, iv, 66 III, iv _King Lear_ Edgar (...
20. iii. The Use of the Above: Two Special InstancesThe stage direction “Pindarus above” together with the stage direction, “Enter Pindarus,” makes it almost certain that the above and not a platform was used. None of the scaffol...
21. CHAPTER ONE. THE REPERTORY[1] The material for the succeeding pages comes from an analysis of Philip Henslowe’s _Diary_, ed. W. W. Greg (London, 1904-1908), the dates being based on Greg’s correction of...
22. CHAPTER TWO. THE DRAMATURGY[1] The recognition of this deficiency forced Thomas W. Baldwin to develop his theory of Shakespeare’s five-act structure in reference to the Renaissance critics of France, Ital...
23. CHAPTER THREE. THE STAGE[6] _Twelfth Night_, II, ii; _Measure for Measure_, V, i; _Lear_, II, i; II, ii; III, i; _Othello_, V, ii; _Antony and Cleopatra_, II, vi; III, ii; _Troilus and Cressida_, IV, i...
24. Volume III (1954), p. xxvi.[52] Charles M. Clode, _The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors_ (London, 1888), II, p. 267. For Harper, see II, p. 267; For the Merchant Tailors Company, I, p. 187.
25. CHAPTER FOUR. THE ACTING[1] Alfred Harbage, “Elizabethan Acting,” _P.M.L.A._, LIV (1939), 687. Although Professor Harbage modified his views later (“B. L. Joseph, _Elizabethan Acting_,” _S.Q._, II (195...
26. CHAPTER FIVE. THE STAGING[3] The determination upon the figure of more than five characters composing a group scene is not arbitrary. Five actors can function on such a stage as the Globe without encoun...