128-447: Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt Midleton ) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson , was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jacobean period, and among the few to gain equal success in comedy and tragedy . He was also a prolific writer of masques and pageants . Middleton
256-554: A "silenced bricklayer". In 1603, Middleton married. In the same year an outbreak of the plague forced the London theatres to close, while James I came to the English throne. These events marked the beginning of Middleton's greatest period as a playwright. Having passed the time during the plague composing prose pamphlets (including a continuation of Thomas Nashe 's Pierce Penniless ), he returned to drama with great energy, producing almost
384-509: A Civil War, call for all possible Means to appease and avert the Wrath of God, appearing in these Judgements; among which, Fasting and Prayer, having been often tried to be very effectual, having been lately and are still enjoined; and whereas Public Sports do not well agree with Public Calamities, nor Public Stage-plays with the Seasons of Humiliation, this being an Exercise of sad and pious Solemnity, and
512-778: A better view of the stage or to be more separate from the crowd, they would pay more for their entrance. Due to inflation that occurred during this time period, admission increased in some theaters from a penny to a sixpence or even higher. Commercial theaters were largely located just outside the boundaries of the City of London , since City authorities tended to be wary of the adult playing companies, but plays were performed by touring companies all over England. English companies even toured and performed English plays abroad, especially in Germany and in Denmark . Upper class spectators would pay for seats in
640-507: A comic masterpiece: A Chaste Maid in Cheapside . He also became increasingly involved with civic pageants, and in 1620 became officially appointed as chronologist to the City of London , a post he held until his death in 1627, when it passed to Jonson. Such official duties did not interrupt Middleton's dramatic writing; the 1620s saw the production of his and Rowley's tragedy The Changeling , and of several tragicomedies. In 1624, he reached
768-664: A free agent, able to write for whichever company hired him. His early dramatic career was marked by controversy. His friendship with Thomas Dekker brought him into conflict with Ben Jonson and George Chapman in the War of the Theatres . The grudge against Jonson continued as late as 1626, when Jonson's play The Staple of News indulges in a slur on Middleton's great success, A Game at Chess . It has been argued that Middleton's Inner Temple Masque (1619) sneers at Jonson (then absent in Scotland ) as
896-506: A lavish performance of the Shakespeare/Fletcher Henry VIII . The Globe was rebuilt by the following spring, at a cost of £1400. The thatch roof was replaced with tile. During the winter of 1613–14 the company played at Court sixteen times. In 1614 Alexander Cooke and William Ostler both died; their places as sharers were taken, perhaps, by William Ecclestone and Robert Benfield . Ostler's death may have been sudden, and
1024-453: A legacy in the 1603 will of Thomas Pope , and he witnessed the 1605 will of Augustine Phillips, whose sister he most likely married. Gough was never a prominent actor, and little is known about the roles he played. In one particular, the new patent was out of date the day it was issued. On 13 March 1619, Richard Burbage died. In April or May Joseph Taylor transferred from Prince Charles's Men to take Burbage's place; he would play Hamlet and
1152-665: A license from the Master of the Revels . The sharers in the King's Men depended upon a crew of hired men to make their performances work. On 27 December 1624, Sir Henry Herbert issued a list of the company's 21 hired men who could not be arrested or "press'd for soldiers" without the allowance of the Lord Chamberlain or the Master of the Revels . The list includes supporting actors like Robert Pallant, musicians, and functionaries like Edward Knight
1280-709: A licensed acting company, they were allowed to dress above their standing in society for specific roles in a production. The growing population of London, the growing wealth of its people, and their fondness for spectacle produced a dramatic literature of remarkable variety, quality and extent. About 3,000 plays were written for the Elizabethan stage, and although most of them have been lost, at least 543 remain. The people who wrote these plays were primarily self-made men from modest backgrounds. Some of them were educated at either Oxford or Cambridge , but many were not. Although William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson were actors,
1408-414: A little under 12 shillings per week—roughly twice as much as the average artisan's income of 1 s . per day. At the end of his career, Thomas Heywood would famously claim to have had "an entire hand, or at least a main finger" in the authorship of some 220 plays. A solo artist usually needed months to write a play (though Jonson is said to have done Volpone in five weeks); Henslowe's Diary indicates that
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#17328442215321536-724: A peak of notoriety when his dramatic allegory A Game at Chess was staged by the King's Men . The play used the conceit of a chess game to present and satirise the recent intrigues surrounding the Spanish Match . Though Middleton's approach was strongly patriotic, the Privy Council silenced the play after nine performances, having received a complaint from the Spanish Ambassador. Middleton faced an unknown, probably frightening degree of punishment. Since no play later than A Game at Chess
1664-413: A rarity: almost every character is selfish, greedy and self-absorbed. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside offers a panoramic view of a London populated entirely by sinners, in which no social rank goes unsatirised. In the tragedies Women Beware Women and The Revenger's Tragedy , amoral Italian courtiers endlessly plot against each other, resulting in a climactic bloodbath. When Middleton does portray good people,
1792-425: A requirement they flouted whenever possible, often with impunity.) In response to this local opposition, the King's Men obtained a renewal of their royal patent dated 27 March 1619. The patent named the twelve current shareholders in the company; in addition to the veterans Burbage, Lowin, Heminges, and Condell, the list includes William Ecclestone, Robert Gough, Richard Robinson, Nicholas Tooley, and John Underwood, and
1920-431: A score of plays for several companies and in several genres, notably city comedy and revenge tragedy . He continued to collaborate with Dekker: the two produced The Roaring Girl , a biography of the contemporary thief Mary Frith . In the 1610s, Middleton began a fruitful collaboration with the actor William Rowley , producing Wit at Several Weapons and A Fair Quarrel . Working alone in 1613, Middleton produced
2048-513: A significant portion of the company's repertory in the 1619–22 era. Fletcher's Women Pleased and the Fletcher/Massinger collaborations The Custom of the Country and The Little French Lawyer were acted by the King's Men in this period. Casts lists in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio give the same roster for all three plays: Taylor, Lowin, Underwood, Benfield, Tooley, Ecclestone, and
2176-547: A team of four or five writers could produce a play in as little as two weeks. Admittedly, though, the Diary also shows that teams of Henslowe's house dramatists— Anthony Munday , Robert Wilson , Richard Hathwaye , Henry Chettle , and the others, even including a young John Webster —could start a project, and accept advances on it, yet fail to produce anything stageworthy. Short yellow lines indicate 27 years—the average age these authors began their playwriting careers Genres of
2304-407: A workload twice as great as was typical under Elizabeth . The King's Men needed more men, and in 1604 the number of sharers was increased from eight or nine, ten, eleven and twelve. The new sharers included John Lowin , Alexander Cooke , and Nicholas Tooley . May 1605 brought the death of Augustine Phillips. In his will, Phillips left legacies to Shakespeare, Burbage, and eight other members of
2432-462: Is diverse even by the standards of his age. He did not have the kind of official relationship with a particular company that Shakespeare or Fletcher had. Instead he appears to have written on a freelance basis for any number of companies. His output ranges from the "snarling" satire of Michaelmas Term (performed by the Children of Paul's ) to the bleak intrigues of The Revenger's Tragedy (performed by
2560-655: Is recorded, it has been suggested that the sentence included a ban on writing for the stage. Middleton died at his home at Newington Butts in Southwark in 1627, and was buried on 4 July in St Mary's churchyard. The old church of St Mary's was demolished in 1876 for road-widening. Its replacement elsewhere in Kennington Park Road was destroyed in the Second World War, but rebuilt in 1958. The old churchyard where Middleton
2688-559: Is reported to have played Othello and Richard III during his years with the company (which extended at least through 1642). Robert Gough died in 1624. Also in 1624, the King's Men gave their sensational production of Middleton's A Game at Chess , which ran for an unprecedented nine days straight (6–16 August, Sundays excepted), and also got them prosecuted and fined by the Privy Council . The company got into more trouble in December, for performing Massinger's The Spanish Viceroy without
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#17328442215322816-472: Is unknown, but it must have occurred in the 1616–19 era, between Field's joining the company and Burbage's death. Field may also have played the title role in George Chapman 's Bussy D'Ambois in this period. He is reported to have played the role at some time in his career, and the King's Men had the play in their repertory for many years. 1619 was a pivotal year in the company's history. The residents of
2944-522: The Admiral's/Palsgrave's Men in the Fortune Theatre fire of December 1621 (a disaster that was, for that company, the beginning of the end). 1609 was another plague year during which the company travelled, although nine plays were still performed at Court. (Royal patronage was an advantage in difficult times: special payments in times of plague were made to the company in 1603, 1608, 1609, and 1610.) 1610
3072-492: The King's Men ). His early work was informed by the flourishing of satire in the late Elizabethan period, while his maturity was influenced by the ascendancy of Fletcherian tragicomedy . His later work, in which his satirical fury is tempered and broadened, includes three of his acknowledged masterpieces. A Chaste Maid in Cheapside , produced by the Lady Elizabeth's Men , skilfully combines London life with an expansive view of
3200-527: The Long Parliament , pushed by the Parliamentarian party , under Puritan influence, banned the staging of plays in the London theatres though it did not, contrary to what is commonly stated, order the closure, let alone the destruction, of the theatres themselves: Whereas the distressed Estate of Ireland, steeped in her own Blood, and the distracted Estate of England, threatened with a Cloud of Blood by
3328-546: The Master of the Revels on 22 June 1622. On St. Stephen's Day , 26 December 1622, The King's Men acted another Fletcher/Massinger play, The Spanish Curate , at Court. 1623: The First Folio gives a list of names of the 26 "principal actors" in Shakespeare's plays, providing a fairly comprehensive roster of important members of the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men through the previous thirty years. In addition to eight men on
3456-592: The National Theatre , and The Old Law by the Royal Shakespeare Company . The Changeling has been adapted for film several times. The tragedy Women Beware Women remains a stage favourite. The Revenger's Tragedy was adapted for Alex Cox 's film Revengers Tragedy , the opening credits of which attribute the play's authorship to Middleton. Middleton wrote in many genres, including tragedy , history and city comedy . His best-known plays are
3584-520: The Red Bull (1604). Elsewhere, the Vagabonds Act 1572 left itinerant actors liable to prosecution as vagrants and caused them to seek wealthy sponsors who could provide a permanent play house for them. At the same time, members of the aristocracy found it useful to have a playing company available to entertain royal or noble guests and thus advance their social status. Archaeological excavations on
3712-449: The Red Lion , opened in 1567 but it was a short-lived failure. The first successful theatres, such as The Theatre , opened in 1576. The establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an essential enabling factor in the success of English Renaissance drama. Once they were in operation, drama could become a fixed and permanent, rather than transitory, phenomenon. Their construction
3840-888: The Whitefriars (1608) and the Cockpit (1617). With the building of the Salisbury Court Theatre in 1629 near the site of the defunct Whitefriars, the London audience had six theatres to choose from: three surviving large open-air public theatres—the Globe, the Fortune, and the Red Bull—and three smaller enclosed private theatres: the Blackfriars, the Cockpit, and the Salisbury Court. Audiences of
3968-524: The prompter and John Rhodes the wardrobe keeper. The spring of 1625 brought a period of uncertainty. The new king, Charles I , had long had his own troupe of actors, Prince Charles's Men ; would he make them the new King's Men? The existing company's established prestige – they were widely recognised the best in the land – led to a continuance of royal patronage. The Prince Charles's company folded after their patron became king, with three of its members, Thomas Hobbs, William Penn, and Anthony Smith, joining
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4096-412: The "oaths, profaneness, and public ribaldry" in their plays. And on 24 October, John Lowin and Eliard Swanston apologised to Herbert for giving offence. (Joseph Taylor and Robert Benfield were reportedly present at the meeting, but were uninvolved in either the offence or the apology; apparently Swanston and Lowin were in the cast of The Woman's Prize but Benfield and Taylor were not.) After this incident,
4224-510: The 1400s, dramas were often restricted to mummer plays with someone who read out all the parts in Latin. With the rediscovery and redistribution of classical materials during the English Renaissance , Latin and Greek plays began to be restaged. These plays were often accompanied by feasts. Queen Elizabeth I viewed dramas during her visits to Oxford and Cambridge. A well-known play cycle which
4352-461: The 1610–13 period. Shank may have taken Robert Armin's place in the King's Men after Armin's death in 1615. Shank also trained apprentices for the company – Thomas Holcombe, John Thompson , Thomas Pollard , and John Honyman . Robert Gough had been associated with the actors of the company perhaps as far back as 1591, when he may have been a boy player in The Seven Deadly Sins ; he received
4480-508: The 1630s benefited from a half-century of vigorous dramaturgical development; the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare and their contemporaries were still being performed on a regular basis, mostly at the public theatres, while the newest works of the newest playwrights were abundant as well, mainly at the private theatres. Around 1580, when both the Theater and the Curtain were full on summer days,
4608-411: The 1679 Beaumont and Fletcher folio is the only surviving list that includes both Taylor and Condell. Not long after this, Condell must have retired from the stage. Another blow hit the company in the following year, 1620, when Nathaniel Field died at the young age of 33. His place as sharer was taken by John Rice . The works of Fletcher and his collaborators, especially Massinger, continued to make up
4736-452: The Blackfriars and the Globe, to his surviving family. Opposition from the King's Men's Blackfriars neighbours reached another peak around 1630. In 1631 a commission investigated the possibility of buying out the Blackfriars property, and concluded that the company's investment in the property, over the coming fourteen years of their unexpired lease, was £2900 13 s . 4 d . This figure, however, covered only theatre rent and interest; in response
4864-455: The Blackfriars represented an enormous advantage for the company. It allowed the company to perform year round instead of only in clement weather. The Blackfriars hall is thought to have been 66 by 46 feet (20 by 14 metres), including the stage; its maximum capacity was likely in the hundreds of spectators. This can be compared with the maximum capacity at the Globe Theatre of 2500 to 3000. Yet
4992-473: The Blackfriars to the Globe should have allowed the King's Men to at least double their income from public performances. Their new wealth allowed the King's Men to overcome major adversity: when the Globe Theatre burned down in 1613 (see below), the company could afford an expensive rebuild, replacing the vulnerable thatch roof with tile. The fact that the King's Men had a second theatre meant that they did not lose all their playscripts and costumes, as happened to
5120-506: The Elizabethan court included St. George’s Chapel , the Chapel Royal, and St. Paul’s . These schools performed plays and other court entertainments for the Queen. Between the 1560s and 1570s these schools had begun to perform for general audiences as well. Playing companies of boy actors were derived from choir schools. John Lyly is an earlier example of a playwright contracted to write for
5248-406: The Elizabethan era was to make up for the lack of scenery, set, and props on stage. It created a visual effect for the audience, and it was an integral part of the overall performance. Since the main visual appeal on stage were the costumes, they were often bright in colour and visually entrancing. Colours symbolized social hierarchy, and costumes were made to reflect that. For example, if a character
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5376-430: The Elizabethan era, research has been conclusive about how many actors and troupes there were in the 16th century, but little research delves into the roles of the actors on the English renaissance stage. The first point is that during the Elizabethan era, women were not allowed to act on stage. The actors were all male; in fact, most were boys. For plays written that had male and female parts, the female parts were played by
5504-482: The King's Men had their old play texts re-examined by Herbert for new productions, something that was previously not required. This meant more fees paid to Herbert. The text of Fletcher's play was repaired adequately by the next month, when the company performed The Taming of the Shrew and The Woman's Prize before the King and Queen at St. James's Palace on 26 and 28 November 1633. According to Herbert, Shakespeare's play
5632-521: The King's Men performing Ben Jonson's The Alchemist and describes Desdemona (in Othello) both of which had been performed earlier that year in London. The record is held at Corpus Christi and a copy can be viewed at the Folger Exhibition, Shakespeare Documented. In 1611 Jonson's Catiline was performed; apart from Richard Robinson's substitution for Armin, the cast roster was the same as for Sejanus
5760-424: The King's Men produced an itemised account of their investment, valuing the whole at £21,990, more than seven times as much as the commission's figure. The company's interest in the theatre was never bought out. Upon John Heminges' death in 1630, his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres passed to his son William. William Heminges's disposal of his shares five years later would cause a major controversy within
5888-416: The King's Men's leading playwright would be filled by Fletcher and his various collaborators through the coming years, with Philip Massinger assuming greater prominence in the 1630s. Nathan Field joined the company in 1616; already a prominent actor, he would go on to write plays for the King's Men in his all-too-brief career with the company. Nathan Field's contribution to the King's Men is illustrated by
6016-453: The King's Men. Though the early-to-mid-1620s was a period of economic depression in England, the King's Men prospered: the company had fifteen sharers in 1625. This abundance of personnel allowed the company to stage productions with larger casts than before [see: The Lover's Melancholy ; The Novella ]. Also in 1625, Richard Perkins terminated his brief period with the King's Men to become
6144-540: The Swan. Theatres were also constructed to be able to hold a large number of people. A different model was developed with the Blackfriars Theatre , which came into regular use on a long-term basis in 1599. The Blackfriars was small in comparison to the earlier theatres and roofed rather than open to the sky. It resembled a modern theatre in ways that its predecessors did not. Other small enclosed theatres followed, notably
6272-631: The Tourneur attribution. The Oxford Middleton and its companion piece, Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture , offer extensive evidence both for Middleton's authorship of The Revenger's Tragedy , for his collaboration with Shakespeare on Timon of Athens , and for his adaptation and revision of Shakespeare's Macbeth and Measure for Measure . It has also been argued that Middleton collaborated with Shakespeare on All's Well That Ends Well . However, these latter collaborative attributions are not universally accepted by scholars. Middleton's work
6400-664: The ban to be temporary ("... while these sad causes and set Times of Humiliation do continue, Public Stage Plays shall cease and be forborn") but does not assign a time limit to it. Even after 1642, during the English Civil War and the ensuing Interregnum ( English Commonwealth ), some English Renaissance theatre continued. For example, short comical plays called drolls were allowed by the authorities, while full-length plays were banned. The theatre buildings were not closed but rather were used for purposes other than staging plays. The performance of plays remained banned for most of
6528-428: The boys Richard Sharpe and Thomas Holcombe. Around 1621, the King's Men performed The Duchess of Malfi again. When the play was first printed two years later, in 1623, the quarto featured a combined cast list for both the King's Men's productions, c. 1614 and c. 1621 (the latter occurred between the deaths of Burbage in 1619 and Tooley in 1623). Together these cast lists give a mixed picture of change and stability in
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#17328442215326656-575: The characters have small roles and are shown as flawless. Due to a theological pamphlet attributed to him, Middleton is thought by some to have been a strong believer in Calvinism . English Renaissance theatre Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age The English Renaissance theatre or Elizabethan theatre was the theatre of England from 1558 to 1642. Its most prominent playwrights were William Shakespeare , Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson . The term English Renaissance theatre encompasses
6784-677: The children's companies; Lyly wrote Gallathea , Endymion , and Midas for Paul’s Boys. Another example is Ben Jonson , who wrote Cynthia’s Revels . Academic drama stems from late medieval and early modern practices of miracles and morality plays as well as the Feast of Fools and the election of a Lord of Misrule . The Feast of Fools includes mummer plays . The universities, particularly Oxford and Cambridge , were attended by students studying for bachelor's degrees and master's degrees, followed by doctorates in Law, Medicine, and Theology. In
6912-569: The clothes back to theatre companies. In the Tudor and Elizabethan eras, there were laws stating that certain classes could only wear clothing fitting of their status in society. There was a discrimination of status within the classes. Higher classes flaunted their wealth and power through the appearance of clothing, however, courtesans and actors were the only exceptions – as clothing represented their 'working capital', as it were, but they were only permitted to dress so while working . If actors belonged to
7040-462: The company in this era. In both productions, Tooley and Underwood played the Madmen in addition to their other roles. Along with the permanent company members or sharers, the cast included four hired men or boys, Pallant, Pollard, Sharpe, and Thompson; note also the doubling (and in the case of Pallant, more than doubling) of roles. The Fletcher/Massinger collaboration The Sea Voyage was licensed by
7168-545: The company, plus two apprentices, and £5 to the hired men "of the company which I am of". (Phillips also leaves a bequest to Christopher Beeston , as a former "servant". Beeston was almost certainly another former apprentice.) The company gave ten court performances in the winter of 1605–06 and, unusually, three Court performances in the summer of 1606, during a state visit by the King of Denmark. Each Court performance earned them £10. They also toured that summer, and were in Oxford at
7296-399: The company; see 1635 below. The boy player Stephen Hammerton joined the King's Men in 1632. Richard Sharpe died in the same year; he was the boy actor who played in both productions of The Duchess of Malfi, and later graduated to young male leads, as Hammerton would do over the coming decade. In 1633, the company had difficulties with Sir Henry Herbert , the Master of the Revels , over
7424-551: The consequences of the prolonged theatre closing due to plague in 1636–37. Comedian John Shank died in 1636, as did Cuthbert Burbage. A royal warrant of 1636 reveals that Shakespeare's nephew William Hart (1600–39), the son of the poet's younger sister Joan, was an actor in the company at the time. In the later 1630s the company took up the practice of staging plays written by courtiers favoured by Queen Henrietta Maria , like William Cartwright 's The Royal Slave (1636) or Sir John Suckling's Aglaura (1637); they were rewarded with
7552-468: The content of their plays. On 19 October, Herbert forbad the performance of The Woman's Prize , Fletcher's sequel to Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew , because of its "foul and offensive" content. The company acted the Fletcher/Beaumont play The Scornful Lady instead. On 21 October, Herbert addressed a letter to Edward Knight, the "book-keeper" or prompter of the company, on the subject of
7680-449: The different roles simultaneously. The reason for this was for the acting companies to control salary costs, or to be able to perform under conditions where resources such as other actor companies lending actors were not present. There were two acting styles implemented: formal and natural. Formal acting is objective and traditional, while natural acting attempts to create an illusion for the audience by remaining in character and imitating
7808-415: The different roles they played. At some points, the bookkeeper would not state the narrative of the scene, so the audience could find out for themselves. In Elizabethan and Jacobean plays, the plays often exceeded the number of characters/roles and did not have enough actors to fulfil them, thus the idea of doubling roles came to be. Doubling roles is used to reinforce a plays theme by having the actor act out
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#17328442215327936-447: The economics of the profession, the character of the drama changed towards the end of the period. Under Elizabeth, the drama was a unified expression as far as social class was concerned: the Court watched the same plays the commoners saw in the public playhouses. With the development of the private theatres, drama became more oriented towards the tastes and values of an upper-class audience. By
8064-516: The end of July, among other stops. Nine performances at Court marked the winter of 1606-07, including a performance of 26 December of King Lear ; the following winter, 1607–08, saw thirteen Court appearances. From July to December 1608 the theatres were closed due to plague. The King's Men toured the countryside; they were in Coventry in late October. The Blackfriars Theatre , owned by the Burbage family,
8192-545: The era survived not in printed texts but in manuscript form. The rising Puritan movement was hostile toward theatre, as they felt that "entertainment" was sinful. Politically, playwrights and actors were clients of the monarchy and aristocracy, and most supported the Royalist cause. The Puritan faction, long powerful in London, gained control of the city early in the First English Civil War , and on 2 September 1642,
8320-491: The existence of major English playing companies from 1572 (" Acte for the punishment of Vacabondes ", which legally restricted acting to players with a patron of sufficient degree) to 1642 (the closing of the theatres by Parliament ). A variety of strolling players, and even early London-based troupes existed before 1572. The situations were often fluid, and much of this history is obscure; this timeline necessarily implies more precision than exists in some cases. The labels down
8448-408: The fictional circumstances. The formal actor symbolises while the natural actor interprets. The natural actor impersonates while the formal actor represents the role. Natural and formal are opposites of each other, where natural acting is subjective. Overall, the use of these acting styles and the doubled roles dramatic device made Elizabethan plays very popular. One of the main uses of costume during
8576-480: The first time Christopher Beeston acted with his old colleagues since leaving the Lord Chamberlain's Men nearly a decade earlier. In the winter of 1612–13, great Court festivities celebrating the marriage of the Elector Palatine to King James' daughter Princess Elizabeth were held. The King's Men gave 20 performances, including seven plays by Shakespeare ( Much Ado About Nothing twice), one by Jon Cardenio
8704-555: The foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late 20th century showed that all the London theatres had individual differences, but their common function necessitated a similar general plan. The public theatres were three stories high and built around an open space at the centre. Usually polygonal in plan to give an overall rounded effect, although the Red Bull and the first Fortune were square. The three levels of inward-facing galleries overlooked
8832-464: The galleries, using cushions for comfort. In the Globe Theatre, nobles could sit directly by the side on the stage. The acting companies functioned on a repertory system: unlike modern productions that can run for months or years on end, the troupes of this era rarely acted the same play two days in a row. Thomas Middleton 's A Game at Chess ran for nine straight performances in August 1624 before it
8960-417: The later part of the reign of Charles I , few new plays were being written for the public theatres, which sustained themselves on the accumulated works of the previous decades. The English grammar schools , like those on the continent, placed special emphasis on the trivium : grammar, logic, and rhetoric . Though rhetorical instruction was intended as preparation for careers in civil service such as law,
9088-638: The lavish costumes of the productions. The company's repertory narrowed in this era; they produced fewer new plays, and those they did stage were mainly these subsidised courtly works. Their economic situation also worsened; from a high of fifteen in 1625, the number of sharers dropped to nine by 1636. Unable to foresee the coming collapse of 1642, the King's Men undertook a major expansion around 1640. They brought in five new men as actors and sharers: William Allen , Theophilus Bird , Michael Bowyer , Hugh Clark , and William Robbins . All five were veterans of Queen Henrietta's Men ; and all five were made Grooms of
9216-413: The leading man of the newly formed Queen Henrietta's Men . When the King's Men premiered Massinger's The Roman Actor late in 1626, the cast included a new boy player, John Honyman , aged 13. William Trigg was another boy playing female roles for the company in the 1626–32 period; but after that his activities are unknown. Henry Condell died in December 1627. He left shares in the company's theatres,
9344-409: The left indicate the most common names for the companies. The bar segments indicate the specific patron. In the case of children's companies (a distinct legal situation) some founders are noted. King%27s Men (playing company) The King's Men was the acting company to which William Shakespeare (1564–1616) belonged for most of his career. Formerly known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men during
9472-469: The legal system and may have incited his repeated satire against the legal profession. Middleton attended The Queen's College, Oxford , matriculating in 1598, but he did not graduate. Before he left Oxford sometime in 1600 or 1601, he wrote and published three long poems in popular Elizabethan styles. None of them appears to have been especially successful, and one, Microcynicon: Six Snarling Satires , ran foul of an Anglican church ban on verse satire and
9600-474: The majority do not seem to have been performers, and no major author who came on to the scene after 1600 is known to have supplemented his income by acting. Their lives were subject to the same levels of danger and earlier mortality as all who lived during the early modern period: Christopher Marlowe was killed in an apparent tavern brawl, while Ben Jonson killed an actor in a duel. Several were probably soldiers. Playwrights were normally paid in increments during
9728-489: The manuscript of that play reveals that Robert Gough was cast as Memphonius, while Richard Robinson was the Lady. On Sunday 12 and Monday 13 January 1612, the King's Men joined with Queen Anne's Men to give Court performances of two Queen's Men's plays by Thomas Heywood , The Silver Age and The Rape of Lucrece. No cast list for these performances has survived; but given the two companies' known personnel, this might have been
9856-475: The new hybrid subgenre of the tragicomedy enjoyed an efflorescence, as did the masque throughout the reigns of the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I . Plays on biblical themes were common, Peele's David and Bethsabe being one of the few surviving examples. Only a minority of the plays of English Renaissance theatre were ever printed. Of Heywood's 220 plays, only about 20 were published in book form. A little over 600 plays were published in
9984-424: The newest members, Nathan Field, Robert Benfield, and John Shank . Shank would be the company's primary clown in the years to come; his specialties were dancing and knockabout physical comedy. He was a veteran of several troupes over the previous decades, going back perhaps to Pembroke's Men and Queen Elizabeth's Men in the reign of Elizabeth; he had been with the Admiral's/Prince Henry's/Palsgrave's company in
10112-472: The next eighteen years, becoming allowed again after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The theatres began performing many of the plays of the previous era, though often in adapted forms. New genres of Restoration comedy and spectacle soon evolved, giving English theatre of the later seventeenth century its distinctive character. English Renaissance playing company timeline This timeline charts
10240-528: The open centre, into which jutted the stage: essentially a platform surrounded on three sides by the audience. The rear side was restricted for the entrances and exits of the actors and seating for the musicians. The upper level behind the stage could be used as a balcony , as in Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra , or as a position from which an actor could harangue a crowd, as in Julius Caesar . The pit
10368-456: The original 1603 royal patent (Shakespeare, Burbage, Heminges, Condell, Phillips, Cowley, Sly, and Armin), the list includes William Kempe , Thomas Pope , George Bryan , John Lowin , Samuel Crosse , Alexander Cooke , Samuel Gilburne , William Ostler , Nathan Field , John Underwood , Nicholas Tooley , William Ecclestone , Joseph Taylor , Robert Benfield , Robert Gough , Richard Robinson , John Shank , and John Rice. Sometime in 1623,
10496-745: The other being Spectacles of Pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious Mirth and Levity: It is therefore thought fit, and Ordained, by the Lords and Commons in this Parliament assembled, That, while these sad causes and set Times of Humiliation do continue, Public Stage Plays shall cease, and be forborn, instead of which are recommended to the People of this Land the profitable and seasonable considerations of Repentance, Reconciliation, and Peace with God, which probably may produce outward Peace and Prosperity, and bring again Times of Joy and Gladness to these Nations. The Act purports
10624-617: The other great Shakespeare/Burbage roles. Yet Burbage was missed: in May 1619 the Lord Chamberlain, William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke , wrote to a colleague that while others had gone to see a play, "I being tender-hearted, could not endure to see so soon after the loss of my old acquaintance Burbage." In August 1619, the company premiered its production of the controversial play John van Olden Barnavelt . And sometime in this immediate post-Burbage period, they must also have staged Fletcher's The Humorous Lieutenant . The cast list for that play in
10752-408: The period as a whole, most commonly in individual quarto editions. (Larger collected editions, like those of Shakespeare's , Ben Jonson's , and Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, were a late and limited development.) Through much of the modern era, it was thought that play texts were popular items among Renaissance readers that provided healthy profits for the stationers who printed and sold them. By
10880-703: The period between 1562—following a performance of Gorboduc , the first English play using blank verse , at the Inner Temple during the Christmas season of 1561—and the ban on theatrical plays enacted by the English Parliament in 1642. In a strict sense "Elizabethan" only refers to the period of Queen Elizabeth's reign (1558–1603). English Renaissance theatre may be said to encompass Elizabethan theatre from 1562 to 1603, Jacobean theatre from 1603 to 1625, and Caroline theatre from 1625 to 1642. Along with
11008-452: The period included the history play , which depicted English or European history. Shakespeare 's plays about the lives of kings, such as Richard III and Henry V , belong to this category, as do Christopher Marlowe 's Edward II and George Peele 's Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First . History plays also dealt with more recent events, like A Larum for London which dramatizes
11136-426: The play The Knight of Malta , which Field wrote with Fletcher and Massinger. The first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647 gives a list of the principal cast in the company's production of the play, which included Burbage, Field himself, John Underwood, Richard Sharpe, Henry Condell, Robert Benfield, John Lowin, and Thomas Holcombe. (Sharpe and Holcombe were boy actors with the company.) The date of this production
11264-482: The power of love to effect reconciliation. The Changeling , a late tragedy, returns Middleton to an Italianate setting like that of The Revenger's Tragedy , except that here the central characters are more fully drawn and more compelling as individuals. Similar development can be seen in Women Beware Women . Middleton's plays are marked by often amusingly presented cynicism about the human race. True heroes are
11392-517: The previous year. This may have been John Heminges' last production; in 1613 he's described as "stuttering." Heminges normally received the payments for the company's Court performances, as far back as 1595; he continued to be active in the company's financial affairs even after he left the stage. Between October 1611 and April 1612 the King's Men performed 22 plays at Court, including The Winter's Tale and The Tempest . Their connection with The Second Maiden's Tragedy also dates from this period;
11520-513: The public theatres (like the Globe) took place in the afternoon with no artificial lighting, but when, in the course of a play, the light began to fade, candles were lit. In the enclosed private theatres (like the Blackfriars) artificial lighting was used throughout. Plays contained little to no scenery as the scenery was described by the actors or indicated by costume through the course of the play. In
11648-432: The reign of Queen Elizabeth I , they became the King's Men in 1603 when King James I ascended the throne and became the company's patron. The royal patent of 19 May 1603 which authorised the King's Men company named the following players, in this order: Lawrence Fletcher , William Shakespeare , Richard Burbage , Augustine Phillips , John Heminges , Henry Condell , William Sly , Robert Armin , Richard Cowley , "and
11776-553: The rest of their associates...." The nine cited by name became Grooms of the Chamber . On 15 March 1604, each of the nine men named in the patent was supplied with four and a half yards of red cloth for the coronation procession. In their first winter season, between December 1603 and February 1604 the company performed eight times at Court and eleven times in their second, from November 1604 through February 1605, including seven plays by Shakespeare and two by Ben Jonson . This represented
11904-538: The rhetorical canons of memory ( memoria ) and delivery ( pronuntiatio ), gesture and voice, as well as exercises from the progymnasmata , such as the prosopopoeia , taught theatrical skills. Students would typically analyse Latin and Greek texts, write their own compositions, memorise them, and then perform them in front of their instructor and their peers. Records show that in addition to this weekly performance, students would perform plays on holidays, and in both Latin and English. Choir schools connected with
12032-599: The sack of Antwerp in 1576. A better known play, Peele's The Battle of Alcazar (c. 1591), depicts the battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578. Tragedy was a very popular genre. Marlowe's tragedies were exceptionally successful, such as Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta . The audiences particularly liked revenge dramas , such as Thomas Kyd 's The Spanish Tragedy . The four tragedies considered to be Shakespeare's greatest ( Hamlet , Othello , King Lear and Macbeth ) were composed during this period. Comedies were common, too. A subgenre developed in this period
12160-543: The season, The First Part of Hieronimo , based on Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy , 15 times. They never played the same play two days in a row, and rarely the same play twice in a week. The workload on the actors, especially the leading performers like Richard Burbage or Edward Alleyn , must have been tremendous. One distinctive feature of the companies was that only men or boys performed. Female parts were played by adolescent boy players in women's costume. Some companies were composed entirely of boy players. Performances in
12288-418: The sixteen shares in the Globe, Cuthbert Burbage and Mrs. Robinson each owned three and a half shares, Shank had three, and Taylor, Lowin, and Mrs. Condell each owned two. Herbert ordered the existing shareholders to sell shares to Swanston, Benfield, and Pollard, though Burbage and Shank resisted. The King's Men accompanied Charles I on a royal progress in 1636. In so doing they evaded, at least to some degree,
12416-498: The social and economic life of the era. Those who were purely playwrights fared far less well: the biographies of early figures like George Peele and Robert Greene , and later ones like Brome and Philip Massinger , are marked by financial uncertainty, struggle and poverty. Playwrights dealt with the natural limitation on their productivity by combining into teams of two, three, four, and even five to generate play texts. The majority of plays written in this era were collaborations, and
12544-467: The solo artists who generally eschewed collaborative efforts, like Jonson and Shakespeare, were the exceptions to the rule. Dividing the work, of course, meant dividing the income; but the arrangement seems to have functioned well enough to have made it worthwhile. Of the 70-plus known works in the canon of Thomas Dekker , roughly 50 are collaborations. In a single year (1598) Dekker worked on 16 collaborations for impresario Philip Henslowe, and earned £30, or
12672-508: The theatre shares he'd inherited from his father upon John Heminges's death (1630). He sold (clandestinely, perhaps) two shares in the Blackfriars and three in the Globe to King's Man John Shank, for £506. In response to the sale, three other King's Men, Eliard Swanston, Thomas Pollard, and Robert Benfield, appealed to the Lord Chamberlain (then Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke ) for a chance to buy shares for themselves. Several documents in this matter, including back-and-forth statements from
12800-441: The three petitioners and from Cuthbert Burbage and John Shank, still exist; they contain abundant information on the company's business c. 1635. When the petitioners began their campaign, the eight Blackfriars shares were distributed this way: Shank held two, and Taylor, Lowin, Underwood, Cuthbert Burbage, Mrs. Condell (Henry Condell's widow), and Winifred Robinson (Richard Burbage's widow and Richard Robinson's wife) had one each. Of
12928-461: The ticket prices at the Blackfriars were five to six times higher than those at the Globe. Globe tickets ranged from a penny to sixpence (1 d . to 6 d .); tickets at the Blackfriars ranged from sixpence to two shillings sixpence (6 d . to 2 s . 6 d .; 1 shilling = 12 pence). The cheapest admission at the Blackfriars equalled the most expensive at the Globe; the most expensive seat at the Blackfriars cost five times as much as its Globe counterpart. Adding
13056-593: The time period of the play. The most expensive pieces were given to higher class characters because costuming was used to identify social status on stage. The fabrics within a playhouse would indicate the wealth of the company itself. The fabrics used the most were: velvet, satin, silk, cloth-of-gold, lace and ermine. For less significant characters, actors would use their own clothes. Actors also left clothes in their will for following actors to use. Masters would also leave clothes for servants in their will, but servants weren't allowed to wear fancy clothing, instead, they sold
13184-409: The time. Elizabethan actors never played the same show on successive days and added a new play to their repertoire every other week. These actors were getting paid within these troupes so for their job, they would constantly learn new plays as they toured different cities in England. In these plays, there were bookkeepers that acted as the narrators of these plays and they would introduce the actors and
13312-408: The total theater capacity of London was about 5000 spectators. With the building of new theater facilities and the formation of new companies, London's total theater capacity exceeded 10,000 after 1610. Ticket prices in general varied during this time period. The cost of admission was based on where in the theatre a person wished to be situated, or based on what a person could afford. If people wanted
13440-472: The tragedies The Changeling (with William Rowley ) and Women Beware Women , and the cynically satirical city comedy A Chaste Maid in Cheapside . Earlier editions of The Revenger's Tragedy attributed the play to Cyril Tourneur , or refused to arbitrate between Middleton and Tourneur. However, since the statistical studies by David Lake and MacDonald P. Jackson, Middleton's authorship has not been seriously contested, and no further scholar has defended
13568-469: The turn of the 21st century, the climate of scholarly opinion shifted somewhat on this belief: some contemporary researchers argue that publishing plays was a risky and marginal business —though this conclusion has been disputed by others. Some of the most successful publishers of the English Renaissance, like William Ponsonby or Edward Blount , rarely published plays. A small number of plays from
13696-607: The university, the Inns of Court elected their own Lord of Misrule . Other activities included participation in moot court , disputation , and masques . Plays written and performed in the Inns of Court include Gorboduc , Gismund of Salerne , and The Misfortunes of Arthur . An example of a famous masque put on by the Inns was James Shirley 's The Triumph of Peace . Shakespeare 's The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night were also performed here, although written for commercial theater. The first permanent English theatre,
13824-410: The upscale Blackfriars neighbourhood, many of whom were wealthy and influential politically and socially, had never been happy about the presence of a theatre in their midst; in the spring of 1619 they complained more loudly than usual about the traffic problems associated with the theatre, which blocked access to the local churches. (All the playing companies were required to cease activity during Lent –
13952-566: The veteran clown William Rowley joined the King's Men for the final two years in his stage career. He would play the Fat Bishop in the next year's A Game at Chess . Richard Perkins , a leading actor from Queen Anne's Men and the Red Bull company, also joined the King's Men late in 1623. 1624: Eliard Swanston left the Lady Elizabeth's Men to join the King's Men. Previous Lady Elizabeth's veterans to join include Nathan Field, John Rice, and (via Prince Charles's Men ) Joseph Taylor. Swanston
14080-404: The workload. Shakespeare produced fewer than 40 solo plays in a career that spanned more than two decades: he was financially successful because he was an actor and, most importantly, a shareholder in the company for which he acted and in the theatres they used. Ben Jonson achieved success as a purveyor of Court masques , and was talented at playing the patronage game that was an important part of
14208-494: The writing process, and if their play was accepted, they would also receive the proceeds from one day's performance. However, they had no ownership of the plays they wrote. Once a play was sold to a company, the company owned it, and the playwright had no control over casting, performance, revision or publication. The profession of dramatist was challenging and far from lucrative. Entries in Philip Henslowe 's Diary show that in
14336-399: The years around 1600 Henslowe paid as little as £6 or £7 per play. This was probably at the low end of the range, though even the best writers could not demand too much more. A playwright, working alone, could generally produce two plays a year at most. In the 1630s Richard Brome signed a contract with the Salisbury Court Theatre to supply three plays a year, but found himself unable to meet
14464-401: The youngest boy players. Stronger female roles in tragedies were acted by older boy players because they had more experience. As a boy player, many skills had to be implemented such as voice and athleticism (fencing was one). In Elizabethan entertainment, troupes were created and they were considered the actor companies. They travelled around England as drama was the most entertaining art at
14592-412: Was "liked", but Fletcher's play was "very well liked." On 7 April 1634, the King's Men played George Chapman 's Bussy D'Ambois at Court. The title role was reportedly played by Eliard Swanston; Joseph Taylor, at this point in his career, was too "grey" for the role of a young firebrand. The company played the same play at Court again on 27 March 1638. In the early 1630s, William Heminges sold off
14720-611: Was a better year, with public performances at the Globe – Othello and Jonson's Sejanus among others. By this time the company had been augmented by John Underwood and William Ostler , both veterans of the Children of the Chapel /Queen's Revels company. The company left London and performed in Oxford in August, 1610. They were paid by the Oxford Municipal Authorities. A letter by Oxford student at Corpus Christi, Henry Jackson and dated September 1610 and in latin, describes
14848-514: Was born in London and baptised on 18 April 1580. He was the son of a bricklayer, who had raised himself to the status of a gentleman and owned property adjoining the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. Middleton was five when his father died and his mother's subsequent remarriage dissolved into a 15-year battle over the inheritance of Thomas and his younger sister – an experience that informed him about
14976-503: Was buried survives as a public park in Elephant and Castle . Middleton's work has long been praised by literary critics, among them Algernon Charles Swinburne and T. S. Eliot . The latter thought Middleton was second only to Shakespeare. Middleton's plays were staged throughout the 20th century and into the 21st, each decade offering more productions than the last. Even some less familiar works of his have been staged: A Fair Quarrel at
15104-440: Was burned. Nevertheless, his literary career was launched. In the early 17th century, Middleton made a living writing topical pamphlets, including one – Penniless Parliament of Threadbare Poets – that was reprinted several times and became the subject of a parliamentary inquiry. At the same time, records in the diary of Philip Henslowe show that Middleton was writing for the Admiral's Men . Unlike Shakespeare, Middleton remained
15232-478: Was closed by the authorities; but this was due to the political content of the play and was a unique, unprecedented and unrepeatable phenomenon. The 1592 season of Lord Strange's Men at the Rose Theatre was far more representative: between 19 February and 23 June the company played six days a week, minus Good Friday and two other days. They performed 23 different plays, some only once, and their most popular play of
15360-769: Was constructed in Shoreditch in 1576 by James Burbage with his brother-in-law John Brayne (the owner of the unsuccessful Red Lion playhouse of 1567) and the Newington Butts playhouse was set up, probably by Jerome Savage, some time between 1575 and 1577. The Theatre was rapidly followed by the nearby Curtain Theatre (1577), the Rose (1587), the Swan (1595), the Globe (1599), the Fortune (1600), and
15488-419: Was organised into a partnership in August that year, with five of the seven shares going to members of the King's Men – Shakespeare, Burbage, Heminges, Condell, and Sly. Sly, however, died soon after, and his share was split among the other six. (The two non-actors involved in the arrangement were Cuthbert Burbage , Richard's brother, and Thomas Evans, agent for theatre manager Henry Evans .) The acquisition of
15616-535: Was performed again at Court on 8 June 1613, before the ambassador from Savoy. The second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 provides partial cast lists for three King's Men productions from the c. 1613 period, for Fletcher's Bonduca and Valentinian and the Beaumont and Fletcher collaboration The Captain . On 29 June 1613, the Globe Theatre burned down, its thatch roof set afire by squibs set off during
15744-504: Was problematic in that he died intestate. His father-in-law, John Heminges, seized control of his theatre shares. Ostler's widow, Thomasine Heminges Ostler, sued her father in 1615 for control of the shares – a suit that was apparently unsuccessful. In the winter of 1614–15 the King's Men performed at Court only eight times, half their workload of the previous year. During the next winter, 1615–16, they were back up to fourteen Court performances. On 23 April 1616, Shakespeare died. His role as
15872-566: Was prompted when the Mayor and Corporation of London first banned plays in 1572 as a measure against the plague, and then formally expelled all players from the city in 1575. This prompted the construction of permanent playhouses outside the jurisdiction of London, in the liberties of Halliwell/Holywell in Shoreditch and later the Clink , and at Newington Butts near the established entertainment district of St. George's Fields in rural Surrey. The Theatre
16000-591: Was royalty, their costume would include purple. The colours, as well as the different fabrics of the costumes, allowed the audience to know the status of each character when they first appeared on stage. Costumes were collected in inventory. More often than not, costumes wouldn't be made individually to fit the actor. Instead, they would be selected out of the stock that theatre companies would keep. A theatre company reused costumes when possible and would rarely get new costumes made. Costumes themselves were expensive, so usually players wore contemporary clothing regardless of
16128-473: Was the city comedy , which deals satirically with life in London after the fashion of Roman New Comedy . Examples are Thomas Dekker 's The Shoemaker's Holiday and Thomas Middleton 's A Chaste Maid in Cheapside . Though marginalised, the older genres like pastoral ( The Faithful Shepherdess , 1608), and even the morality play ( Four Plays in One , ca. 1608–13) could exert influences. After about 1610,
16256-468: Was the place where the poorest audience members could view the show. Around the 1600s a new area was introduced into the theaters, a 'gullet'. A gullet was an invisible corridor that the actors used to go to the wings of the stage where people usually changed clothes quickly . The playhouses were generally built with timber and plaster. Individual theatre descriptions give additional information about their construction, such as flint stones being used to build
16384-663: Was written and performed in the universities was the Parnassus Plays . Upon graduation, many university students, especially those going into law, would reside and participate in the Inns of Court . The Inns of Court were communities of working lawyers and university alumni. Notable literary figures and playwrights who resided in the Inns of Court include John Donne , Francis Beaumont , John Marston , Thomas Lodge , Thomas Campion , Abraham Fraunce , Sir Philip Sidney , Sir Thomas More , Sir Francis Bacon , and George Gascoigne . Like
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