Assignment Nov
Mohammed115
04Unit4ElizabethanTheatre.docxUNIT 4
Elizabethan theatre:
· William Shakespeare
· Christopher Marlowe
· Ben Jonson
· Jacobean Revenge Plays.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE AS A PLAYWRIGHT
The theatrical career
Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare's work in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. After 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London. After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new King James I, and changed its name to the King's Men.
In 1599, a partnership of members of the company built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they named the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre.
Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions, beginning in 1594, and by 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright.
Actor and Playwright
By 1592, there is evidence Shakespeare earned a living as an actor and a playwright in London and possibly had several plays produced.
The September 20, 1592 edition of the Stationers' Register (a guild publication) includes an article by London playwright Robert Greene that takes a few jabs at Shakespeare. Scholars differ on the interpretation of this criticism, but most agree that it was Greene's way of saying Shakespeare was reaching above his rank, trying to match better known and educated playwrights like Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe or Greene himself.
By 1597, Shakespeare had already written and published 15 of his 37 plays.
It was a four-day ride by horse from Stratford to London, so it's believed that Shakespeare spent most of his time in the city writing and acting and came home once a year during the 40-day Lenten period, when the theaters were closed.
Globe Theater
By 1599, Shakespeare and his business partners built their own theater on the south bank of the Thames River, which they called the Globe Theater.
In 1605, Shakespeare purchased leases of real estate near Stratford for 440 pounds, which doubled in value and earned him 60 pounds a year. This made him an entrepreneur as well as an artist, and scholars believe these investments gave him the time to write his plays uninterrupted.
Shakespeare’s Writing Style
Shakespeare's early plays were written in the conventional style of the day, with elaborate metaphors and rhetorical phrases that didn't always align naturally with the story's plot or characters. However, Shakespeare was very innovative, adapting the traditional style to his own purposes and creating a freer flow of words.
William Shakespeare's Plays
While it’s difficult to determine the exact chronology of Shakespeare’s plays, over the course of two decades, from about 1590 to 1613, he wrote a total of 37 plays revolving around several main themes: histories, tragedies, comedies and tragicomedies.
Early Works: Histories and Comedies
With the exception of the tragic love story Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's first plays were mostly histories. Henry VI (Parts I, II and III), Richard II and Henry V dramatize the destructive results of weak or corrupt rulers and have been interpreted by drama historians as Shakespeare's way of justifying the origins of the Tudor Dynasty.
Julius Caesar portrays upheaval in Roman politics that may have resonated with viewers at a time when England’s aging monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, had no legitimate heir, thus creating the potential for future power struggles.
Shakespeare also wrote several comedies during his early period: the whimsical A Midsummer Night's Dream, the romantic Merchant of Venice, the wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing and the charming As You Like It and Twelfth Night.
Works after 1600: Tragedies and Tragicomedies
It was in Shakespeare's later period, after 1600, that he wrote the tragedies Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth . In these, Shakespeare's characters present vivid impressions of human temperament that are timeless and universal.
Possibly the best known of these plays is Hamlet, which explores betrayal, retribution, incest and moral failure. These moral failures often drive the twists and turns of Shakespeare's plots, destroying the hero and those he loves.
In Shakespeare's final period, he wrote several tragicomedies. Though graver in tone than the comedies, they are not the dark tragedies of King Lear or Macbeth because they end with reconciliation and forgiveness.
When Did Shakespeare Die?
Tradition holds that Shakespeare died on his 52nd birthday, April 23, 1616, but some scholars believe this is a myth.
Did Shakespeare Write His Own Plays?
About 150 years after his death, questions arose about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Skeptics questioned how anyone of such modest education could write with the intellectual perceptiveness and poetic power that is displayed in Shakespeare's works. Over the centuries, several groups have emerged that question the authorship of Shakespeare's plays.
However, the vast majority of Shakespearean scholars contend that Shakespeare wrote all his own plays. They point out that other playwrights of the time also had sketchy histories and came from modest backgrounds.
Literary Legacy
What seems to be true is that Shakespeare was a respected man of the dramatic arts who wrote plays and acted in some in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. But his reputation as a dramatic genius wasn't recognized until the 19th century.
Beginning with the Romantic period of the early 1800s and continuing through the Victorian period, acclaim and reverence for Shakespeare and his work reached its height. In the 20th century, new movements in scholarship and performance have rediscovered and adopted his works.
Today, his plays are highly popular and constantly studied and reinterpreted in performances with diverse cultural and political contexts. The genius of Shakespeare's characters and plots are that they present real human beings in a wide range of emotions and conflicts that transcend their origins in Elizabethan England.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE AS A PLAYWRIGHT
Who was Christopher Marlowe?
Christopher Marlowe was a poet and playwright at the forefront of the 16th-century dramatic renaissance. While Christopher Marlowe's literary career lasted less than six years, and his life only 29 years, his achievements, most notably the play The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus, ensured his lasting legacy. Christopher Marlowe was an Elizabethan poet and Shakespeare’s most important predecessor in English drama. He is noted especially for his establishment of dramatic blank verse. He is second only to Shakespeare himself in the realm of Elizabethan tragic drama.
Early Writing Career
After 1587, Marlowe was in London, writing for the theater and probably also engaging himself occasionally in government service. Marlowe's second play was the two-part Tamburlaine the Great. This was Marlowe's first play to be performed on the regular stage in London and is among the first English plays in blank verse. It is considered the beginning of the mature phase of the Elizabethan theater and was the last of Marlowe's plays to be published before his untimely death. According to the Marlowe Society's chronology, the order of the publication of his plays was: The Jew of Malta , Doctor Faustus , Edward the Second and The Massacre at Paris , with Doctor Faustus being performed first (1604) and The Jew of Malta last (1633).
Last Years And Literary Career.
After 1587 Marlowe was in London, writing for the theatres. Marlowe won a dangerous reputation for “atheism,” but this could, in Elizabeth I’s time, indicate merely unorthodox religious opinions.
In a playwriting career that spanned little more than six years, Marlowe’s achievements were diverse and splendid. Almost certainly during his later Cambridge years, Marlowe had translated Ovid’s Amores (The Loves) and the first book of Lucan’s Pharsalia from the Latin. About this time he also wrote the play Dido, Queen of Carthage (published in 1594 as the joint work of Marlowe and Thomas Nashe). With the production of Tamburlaine he received recognition and acclaim, and playwriting became his major concern in the few years that lay ahead. Both parts of Tamburlaine were published anonymously in 1590, and the publisher omitted certain passages that he found incongruous with the play’s serious concern with history; even so, the extant Tamburlaine text can be regarded as substantially Marlowe’s. No other of his plays or poems or translations was published during his life. His unfinished but splendid poem Hero and Leander —which is almost certainly the finest nondramatic Elizabethan poem apart from those produced by Edmund Spenser—appeared in 1598.
BEN JONSON AS A PLAYWRIGHT
WHO IS BEN JONSON?
Ben Jonson was an English Stuart dramatist, lyric poet, and literary critic. He is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I. Among his major plays are the comedies Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1605), Epicoene ; or, The Silent Woman (1609), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fair (1614).
Jonson’s career in the theatre
Jonson started out in the theatre as an actor, but quickly moved into writing plays. His earliest surviving play, The Case is Altered , was performed in 1597, and his first smash hit, the sophisticated city comedy Every Man in his Humour , in 1598. Jonson produced the comedies for which he is now most famous in nine intensive years: Volpone (1606), The Alchemist (1610) and Bartholomew Fair (1614).
The coronation of James I in 1603 marked the beginning of Jonson’s long literary relationship with the Stuarts. Over the next four decades, often in collaboration with the theatre designer Inigo Jones, he wrote many entertainments for the royal family.
By the summer of 1597, Jonson had a fixed engagement in the Lord Admiral's acting company , then performing under Philip Henslowe's management at The Rose theater.
By this time, Jonson had begun to write original plays for the Lord Admiral's Men; and in 1598, he was mentioned by Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia as one of "the best for tragedy." None of his early tragedies survive, however. An undated comedy, The Case is Altered , may be his earliest surviving play.
In 1597, he was imprisoned for his collaboration with Thomas Nashe in writing the play Isle of Dogs . Copies of the play were destroyed, so the exact nature of the offense is unknown. However there is evidence that he satirized Henry Brooke, eleventh Baron Cobham, a wealthy and fickle patron. It was the first of several run-ins with the authorities.
In 1598, Jonson produced his first great success, Every Man in his Humour , capitalizing on the vogue for humor plays that had been begun by George Chapman with An Humorous Day's Mirth. William Shakespeare was in the first cast. This play was followed the next year by Every Man Out of His Humour , a pedantic attempt to imitate Aristophanes.
Following the success of Every Man in His Humour , the same theatrical company acted Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humour (1599), which was even more ambitious. It was the longest play ever written for the Elizabethan public theatre, and it strove to provide an equivalent of the Greek comedy of Aristophanes; “induction,” or “prelude,” and regular between-act comment explicated the author’s views on what the drama should be.
He made a mark second only to Shakespeare’s in the public theatre. His comedies Volpone; or, the Foxe (1606) and The Alchemist (1610) were among the most popular and esteemed plays of the time. Each exhibited man’s folly in the pursuit of gold. Set respectively in Italy and London, they demonstrate Jonson’s enthusiasm both for the typical Renaissance setting and for his own town on Europe’s fringe. Both plays are eloquent and compact, sharp-tongued and controlled. The comedies Epicoene (1609) and Bartholomew Fair (1614) were also successful.
Jacobean Revenge Plays
What is a Jacobean Play?
Jacobean drama is named after Jacobus, which is the Latin translation of James. The term is used to collectively refer to all the works of theatre created during this period. During the reign of King James I, the theatre and literature were flourishing because of the works of the popular dramatists. The plays had different genres to them like- comedy, tragedy, history, romance and so on. However, the most popular genres during the Jacobean period were tragedy, comedy and tragicomedy.
Who were the most prominent Jacobean playwrights?
The playwrights who composed plays for the stage during the era of King James I were collectively known as Jacobean dramatists. Apart from William Shakespeare, some of the greatest Jacobean dramatists of this period are – Ben Jonson, Thomas Middleton, Webster, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher who collaborated in writing.
What is a Jacobean revenge tragedy?
Jacobean tragedy or tragedy of blood or Revenge tragedy is a drama in which the dominant motive is revenge for a real or imagined injury. It was a favourite form of English tragedy in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras and found its highest expression in William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
What were the famous Jacobean tragedy plays?
Jacobean Tragedy were plays which had a dark mood to the drama. Tragedy plays actually developed during the reign of King James I. Revenge Tragedy was popular during those times. Finest examples of revenge tragedy were ‘The Spanish Tragedy’ by Thomas Kyd and ‘Hamlet’ by William Shakespeare. Other famous revenge tragedies included plays like ‘The White Devil’ , ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore’ and ‘ The Challenging’.
Jacobean tragedies were spectacular and sensational in nature. They featured sexual decadence and violence in Jacobean tragedies which were devices to attract the audience to the theatre. However, some playwrights had a great impact in the world of theatre despite great difficulties. In the Jacobean era Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet were some of the best plays written by Shakespeare.
What is the theme of Jacobean tragedies?
In general, Jacobean tragedies were about a great man having to face downfall because of a central flaw and his fate. Most of the plays had a similar theme.
What are the Characteristics of Jacobean theatres or A Jacobean era playhouse?
These playhouses and the plays performed by Shakespeare’s company, which was known as the King’s Men, were responsible for the new surge of enthusiasm for theatres among the people of England. The plays had elaborate music and powerful dialogues.
Most popular of Shakespeare’s Jacobean Plays were Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear etc., which were successful tragedies. The Tempest which was one of the later plays of Shakespeare was a comedy.
What are the Characteristics of a Jacobean Drama?
Jacobean dramas were usually tragedies but often contained a layer of humour. The plays were sensual and had double-meaning speeches. There were multiple murder scenes with violence being openly displayed.
The Jacobean era was not famous for its comedies and the plays lacked integrity in plot and content. They were more like farces and contained corrupt characters.
During the Jacobean era plays were usually performed outdoors, in the courtyards. It was the era when the first large and popular forum of plays was established. The two large playhouses – The Rose and The Globe were made during the Jacobean period.
