critical analysis & appreciation of Elizabethan stage and audience

 

ELIZABETHAN STAGE AND AUDIENCE

 

A play without an audience and actors is inconceivable.  Therefore a dramatist has to adapt his plays to the conditions of the stage on which they have to be performed, to the actors who are to act them and to the audience who are to witness them.  Shakespeare dramas, accordingly, were greatly influenced by the conditions of the Elizabethan stage.  The Elizabethan audience had no experience of the elaborate construction and decorations of the modern stage.  Therefore, Shakespeare had to regulate his plays in accordance with the crude representation and limitations of the stage available in those primitive days.

   Prior to the Elizabethan age there was, really speaking, no fixed stage in the sense we understand the term today.  Although dramatic art had long established itself as an important profession in England, the stage was not yet fixed.  There were strolling theatrical companies which carried their simple and crude stage from place to place.  The stage was just a simple affair; a kind of open tent with two side-doors, one serving for ‘entrance’ and the other for ‘exit’ with a small door in between the two serving the purpose of ‘inner’ stage. When Shakespeare arrived in London about 1585, the Elizabethan stage was in the state of final evolution.

   There were three kinds of theatres in London when Shakespeare reached there:  (i) Public theatres, (ii) Private theatres, (iii) the Halls tof Royal palaces and the Inns of Court.  The Curtain, the Theatre and ahe Newington Butts were the three public theatres to which was odded the Rose two years later (1587).  They were either circular or octagonal in shape, with a raised dais I the centre.  They were open ver head and performances took place in broad daylight.  Shakespeare’s plays were performed in all these theatres.  Many of his plays were also performed in private theatres and at least a few in the Royal Palaces too. 

    It was in 1599 that the Globe Theatre in which Shakespeare himself had a share, was constructed.  It became the permanent headquarters of the Shakespearean theatrical company.  It was the most typical play-house of the Elizabethan age.  An analysis of its structure can give us an idea of the common Elizabethan play-house.  It was circular in structure and the inside yard was open to the sky.  It was surrounded by three tiers of galleries overlooking the main stage in the centre.  There was a circular area known as the ‘pit’ around the stage.  There were no seats in the pit and therefore, poor spectators, called the ‘groundlings’ kept standing throughout the performance.  More fashionable and respectable spectators sat on seats arranged in the three galleries, one over the other.   The uppermost gallery was covered with a thatched roof.  The tickets varied from one penny n the ‘pit’ to 2s 6d in the highest gallery. 

    The stage proper was technically called the ‘apron stage’.  It comprised the following main parts:  First, there was an outstretched rectangular platform.  The ‘groundlings’ stood on three sides of it.  Above it were thatched roof and hangings but no side or front curtains.  In the floor was a hidden trap-door which was usually kept closed and through which occasionally ascended or descended ghosts and witches as in Macbeth.  Secondly, at the back of the stage on either side there were two doors by which the characters entered and disappeared.  Between the doors there used to be a small recess behind a thin curtain.  The recess formed a kind of inner stage to present certain scenes as ‘behind’.  It represented, for example, the bedchamber of Desdemona, the cell of Prospero, the cave of King Lear or the tomb of Juliet.  Thirdly, over the recess there was the upper stage or a balcony, technically called ‘the heavens’ which was used for ‘tiring-house’ or for representing upper scenes as the balcony of Juliet’s bed-chamber, a curtain being hung from the balcony to conceal or disclose the ‘recess’ below. 

     The stage usually lacked in scenic arrangements.  There was acute scarcity of scenery.  Bradbrook writes:  “The stage had properties but no scenery; the trees of the popular orchard or woodland set, whether real or not, must have provided rather thin illusion, and this was certainly the most elaborate scene of the early stage.  Spectacle replaced scenery”.   Among the properties of the stage a few typical things were a human head, a grave, a lion, an artificial moo, a bush or a flower plant which were so commonly required in Shakespeare’s plays.  The costumes of the actors were gaudy, rich and expensive.  But they were all Elizabethan costumes irrespective of the period and country where the action of the drama was supposed to take place.  Harrison says, “Shakespeare was no archaeologist ; as the medieval artists who gave us the wall-paintings and sculptures of our churches, represented Pilate’s Roman soldiers in plate armour:  so his romans in Coriolamus, for example, carry pistols, are put in the stocks, say grace before meat and generally behave and look like the Elizabethans who watched them performed.  Costume was a means of indicating rank and office more than tie and place:  it was meant to reveal the characters than the setting of the story.”

     Female actresses had not yet appeared on the stage.  The parts of female characters were, therefore, played by young boys who appeared on the stage in foppish and gaudy female costumes.  Considering the large number of female characters in Shakespeare’s plays, it may be safely inferred that young  men must have played the female roles perfectly in the Elizabethan age.  Yet in or er to compensate for the absence of actresses, Shakespeare often contrived to represent his heroines in comedies disgussed as men.  Instance may be cited from his comedies-Portia playing the part of the judge, Rosalind visiting her lover as a young shepherd, and Viola serving as the boy-messenger of Duke Orsino.   In addition to this, Shakespeare also avoided very intimate or passionate scenes of love lest they should arouse ridicule.  Granvile Baker observes:  “There is, when one comes to examine the point, quite extraordinarily little intimate love-making in Shakespeare.  How often, that is how seldom, do we want to insert the stage direction ‘the kiss?’ It will be found, I think that Shakespeare almost always interposes some sort of barrier as the balcony in Romeo and Juliet or an intellectual barrier, as with Beatrice and Benedick, who are always at wit’s rapier’s distance and so on.  Also, as a minor point, Shakespeare uses circumstances for occasional effect as when ‘Cleopatra thinks of a squeaking Cleopatra buoying her greatness or Rosalind delivers an epilogue much of which is pointless on the modern stage.’

     Flexibility was a chief characteristic of the Elizabethan stage.  This flexibility was at once an invitation to licence.  Time and place could be neglected or telescoped to serve a dramatic purpose.  The Elizabethan stage was free from any suggestions of particular locality or time.  Bradbrook writes, “The unlocalized dreams allowed Shakespeare to indulge in loose flowing construction, episodic plots, and complex action.  It is responsible for most of those features of his plays which appeared to be faults to the eighteenth century, and for the fact that he was largely unplayable in the nineteenth century.  This vagueness of place may has been encouraged by the frequency with which allegorical figures were allowed to move on the same plane as a human being in the plays, which confused the sense of time and  plays.”  “To the audience, the stage was stage-it represented nowhere and, therefore, everywhere.

      The absence of scenery had far-reaching effects on the construction and style of Shakespeare’s plays.  The absence of scenery  led Shakespeare to have comparatively short scenes which could be quickly changed.  It put a great limitation upon the ways in which a Shakespearean scene or act could terminate.  The drop-curtains were unknown in the Elizabethan age.  Therefore at the end of each scene, the actors had either to walk away or were carried off the stage leaving it empty.  For this reason an Elizabethan scene or Act could not end on a climax.  Even the most overwhelming scene of Shakespeare closes relatively quietly and the stage is usually cleared at the close of each scene.  Another method of indicating the close of a Shakespearean scene was the use of a rhyming couplet at the end.  The rhymed couplet was believed to ring the death-knell of the scene or the act. 

    The lack of scenic effect was made good by the poet by gorgeous descriptions and graphic effects of poetry.  Had there been elaborate scenery on the Elizabethan stage, we would have missed much of the rich descriptive poetry of Shakespeare.  The actors had to use highly emotional and exalted poetry in order to arouse the emotions of the spectators.  With a view that this kind of poetic style may not look incongruous in the day-to-day world, Shakespeare has taken care to [lace his scenes in far-off lands like Venice or Sicily or in the land of his own imagination haunted by angels and fairies as in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  The wonderful poetry of Shakespeare “caused him to make up for the deficiency of the scenery by his wonderful descriptions of landscapes castles and wild moors.  All that poetry would have been lost had the painted scenery at his disposal.”

     All these peculiarities of the stage and its limitations had marked influences on the structure, action and even style of Shakespeare’s drama.  Shakespeare wrote his plays primarily for the stage.  Ben Jonson rightly hailed him as “the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage”.  Thomas Carlyle regretted that Shakespeare’s dramatic skill had to be curbed down to the limitations of the Globe Theatre:  “his great soul had to crush itself, as it could, into that and no other mould”.

       St. John Ervine describes Elizabethan stage thus:  “When Shakespeare went to London, it was a circular wooden booth, in many cases open to the sky, except over the stage or the gallery, where it was roofed in from the weather.  Some lanterns shed a dim light through the body of the house, and a few branches with endless stuck into them, hung over the stage.  The orchestra, if so it might be called, was comprised of several trumpets, coronets and nautboys (wooden flutes).  The stage itself was generally strewn with rushes, except on extraordinary occasions, when it was matted.  It had a fixed roof to represent the sky, and when tragedies were performed it was generally hung with black.  There was little or no movable, painted scenery.  A board was hung up, containing the name of the place where the action was supposed to take [lace.  The stage properties or furniture were of the humblest description.  The exhibition of a bedstead indicated a bed-chamber; a table with pen and ink, a sitting room. A few rude models of trees, walls, flowers, tombs, were sometimes introduced.  No such things as a female actress existed or would have been tolerated.  All female parts were played by boys, who frequently wore masks.  At the conclusion of each performance, the actor knelt on the stage, and offered a prayer for the Queen.”

 

  ELIZABETHAN AUDIENCE

“The drama’s rules the drama’s patrons give.”   In other words, the audience, which is the real ‘patron’ of the drama, goes a long way in determining the form and spirit of drama.  In order to enter into the spirit of Shakespeare’s dramatic art, it is essential, therefore, to understand the nature and characteristics of the audience for which Shakespeare wrote his dramas.

     The Elizabethan audience for which Shakespeare wrote his plays was of a most heterogeneous kind.   It comprised two distinct classes of people whom we may conveniently characterize as the ‘vulgar’ and the ‘refined’. To the former class belonged all sorts of vulgar and uncultured people like sailors, soldiers, thieves, pickpockets, cheats and immoral men and women.  The other part of the audiences comprised educated men and women, respectable businessmen and public officers, critics and scholars, and at times, members of royal families.  Shakespeare and all other contemporary playwrights had to cater to the tastes of both the classes.

    It was the class of ‘the vulgar’ which formed the bulk of the audience in public theatres.  They generally stood in the pit round the stage or sat in the gallery above.  They were the most noisy persons of whom even the actors were afraid.  Brands gives a very lively description of this class of audience in the following words “The frequenters of the pit with their coarse boisterousness, were the terror of the actors.  They all had to stand, coal-heavers and bricklayers, dock-labourers, serving men and idlers.  Refreshment-sellers moved about among them, supplying them with sausages and with apples and nuts.  They ate and drank, drew corks, smoked tobacco, fought with each other, and often when they were out of humour threw fragments of food and even stones at the actors.  Now and then they would come to loggerheads with fine gentlemen on the stage, so that the performance had to be interrupted and the theatre closed.  The sanitary arrangements were of the most primitive description, and the groundings resisted all attempts at reformation the part of the management.  When the evil smells became intolerable, juniper berries were burnt by way of refreshing the atmosphere.”

     The refined gentry usually sat on chairs close to the stage and sometimes upon the stage itself.  There were special boxes for very high officials and public men.  Ladies usually came with silken masks drawn over their faces.  Foppish and very fashionable ladies generally occupied the first row.  But the Elizabethan theatre was usually a scene of most boisterous actions and obscene remarks; and therefore, highly respectable ladies did not usually visit ‘public’ theatres.  There were ‘private’ theatres to cater to the demand of this class of the Elizabethan audience.

      The Elizabethan audience, in general, revelled in boisterous scenes of murders, bloodshed, vengeance, oppressions, and atrocities.  They patronized what we call melodramatic plays.  This explains the recurrence of too many melodramatic scenes in Shakespeare’s tragedies. The ingratitude of Macbeth, the frailty of Hamlet’s mother, the suspicious nature of Othello, the inhumanity of Regan and Goneril and so many other scenes of murder, bloodshed and battles, were not repulsive to most of the Elizabethan audience.  The Elizabethans rather delighted in them.  They highly appreciated Marlowe’s Tamberlaine which is nothing but a long succession of inhuman murders and battles. 

      Thus theatres were very much in vogue in the Elizabethan England.  For the spectators, in general, theatres were not merely places of amusement and entertainment but also of social gathering and instruction.  The theatres served the purpose of newspapers, magazines and journals.  The Elizabethan dramas, being the mirror of the age, exhibited to the public what was going on in England and abroad.  What Francis Bacon said of ‘Studies’ he might well have said of the dramas of his age, as serving “for delight, for ornament and for ability.”