1. Shakespeare’s Theatre
Done by:
Benedict Tan (2)
Keloysius Mak (11)
Keith Ong (14)
Teo Ming Jie (21)
John Yap (23)
2. Richard Burbage (1568-1619)
Richard Burbage (1568-1619) was the
leading actor in the Lord Chamberlain's -
King's Men
He played most of the dramatic leads,
including Richard III, Hamlet, Lear and
Othello.
He may have begun his career at 16 years,
and continued to perform until his death
He was the son of James Burbage, who
constructed the Theatre
He and his brother Cuthbert owned half of
the Globe
Although he did not achieve the financial
success of Shakespeare, Richard did manage
to leave his heirs a modest estate of 300
pounds (To put that into perspective, actors
3. John Heminges (1556-1630)
John Heminges was an actor and
the financial manager of The Lord
Chamberlain’s – King’s men
He was the joint editor of the First
Folio
He was believed to have played the
part of Falstaff (character in King
Henry IV and the Merry Wives of
Windsor)
4. Augustine Philips (? – 1605)
He was one of the first generation of English
actors to achieve wealth and a degree of social
status by means of his trade
He was one of the six sharers in the Globe
Theatre when it was built in 1598–9, with a
one-eighth share.
Over time this made him a comparatively
wealthy man, at least as far as Elizabethan
actors were concerned.
Like Shakespeare, Phillips lived for many years
near his occupation in Southwark, in Paris
Garden near the Swan Theatre
5. Shakespeare’s audience
Almost every kind of people:
Lower class: labourers
Middle class: workers, businessmen
Upper class: Gentlemen, Lords
Royalty: Queen Elizabeth
6. Classification via seating
Lower class:
Groundlings (near the stage)
Cost: 1p
Middle Class
Sheltered, raised platforms
Cost: 2p
Upper Class:
Gentlemen’s Room or Lord’s room
Cost: 5-6p
7. The Atmosphere
The audience would eat, drink and talk
throughout the performance
Theatres were open air and used natural
light
Plays were performed in the afternoon in
the daylight
Plays used very little scenery, instead
using language to set the scene
8. The Actors
Over a thousand actors in
Shakespeare’s plays
between the years 1590 and
1642 are known.
Most of them were poor,
although perhaps twenty
famous actors acquired
respectable estates.
The First Folio itself includes
a list of 26 famous actors
9. The Actors
William Shakespeare Samuel Gilburne
Richard Burba(d)ge Robert Armin
John Hemmings William Ostler
Augustine Phillips Nathan Field
William Kempt John Underwood
Thomas Poope Nicholas Tooley
George Bryan William Ecclestone
Henry Condell Joseph Taylor
William Slye Robert Benfield
Richard Cowly Robert Gouge
John Lowine Richard Robinson
Samuel Crosse John Schanke
Alexander Cooke John Rice
10. William Shakespeare
(1564-1616)
It is not known exactly how
many roles Shakespeare
played himself
Shakespeare began his career
on the stage by 1592.
Tradition suggests that
Shakespeare played relatively
minor parts in his own plays,
mainly the parts of older
men.
11. William Shakespeare
Recent scholarship based on computer analysis of
the language in Shakespeare's plays by Donald
Foster proposes that Shakespeare acted in the
following parts (selected):
All's Well That Ends Well:
The Merchant of Venice:
The King Morocco, Messenger,
and the Duke
As You Like It: Adam and Much Ado About Nothing:
Corin The Messenger and the
The Comedy of Errors: Friar
Egeon Othello: Brabantio
Hamlet: The Ghost Richard the Second: Gaunt
Julius Caesar: Flavius and the Gardener
King John: King Philip The Taming of the Shrew:
A Midsummer Night's The Lord (Induction)
Dream: Theseus
12. The actors – the young
Women forbidden to act in Elizabethan
law
Female roles are played by young boys
aged 13-19 (before their voices break)
Boy actors lived with the adult members
of the company
They received vigourous training in
almost every aspect of acting
13. The actors – the young
This included:
Dancing
Music
Singing
Elocution (the study of formal speaking in
pronunciation, grammar, style, and tone )
Memorization
Weaponry
Very little is known about individual boys, no
portraits and only few references survived
14. The actors – the young
There were far fewer boys than men in
the companies, which explains why there
were few female parts
Transvestite theatre (the proper name)
ended with the Restoration in 1660
When woman began appearing in female
parts, old-timers would reminiscence on
the boy Juliet having been the definite
portrayal
15. Society’s view on ‘the theatre’
Well-do-to folk: most viewed actors
as rogues and scoundrels (but they
still watched the plays)
Common folk: clamoured to see
actors perform
Despite disapproval, actors were
called frequently to act in court
Shakespeare’s company, for Baron
example, was sponsored from 1596 Hunsdon
to 1603 by George Carey and Baron
Hunsdon (who later became Queen
Elizabeth I’s Lord Chamberlain).
16. The Puritans
Puritan clergy viewed the
theatre as sinful as it diverted
attention from prayer, and
claimed that it stimulated
“whorish lust”
Philip Stubbes, a Puritan leader
was one of the most
outspoken: he claimed that all Philip
acting troupes were “secret Stubbes
conclaves” of sodomy
17. The Anatomie of Abuses
You say there are good Examples to be learned in
[plays]. Truly, so there are: if you will learn
falsehood; if you will learn cozenage; if you will
learn to deceive; if you will learn to play the
hypocrite, to cog, lie, and falsify; if you will learn
to jest, laugh, and leer, to grin, to nod, and mow;
if you will learn to play the vice, to swear, tear,
and blaspheme both Heaven and Earth; if you
will learn to become a bawd, unclean, and to
devirginate maids, to deflower honest wives; (...)
and, finally, if you will learn to condemn God and
all his laws, to care neither for heaven nor hell,
and to commit all kind of sin and mischief, you
need to go to no other school, for all these good
examples may you see painted before your eyes
in interludes and plays.
18. The Crown
The Crown regarded drama
as having the power to
persuade (making action
look real), making it
possible to serve the
government’s interests
Numerous Elizabethan
plays celebrated pious and
patriotic values
Both Queen Elizabeth I Queen Elizabeth I
(reigned 1558-1603) and
her successor King James I
(reigned 1603-25) were
connoisseurs of the drama
19. The decision
However, the Crown eventually bowed to
the pressure of the Puritans, with the
London aldermen (members of the
municipal assembly) banning all
playhouses within the city limits in 1594
Theatres were thus usually set up in
seedy nearby suburbs, where London
aldermen could not get them, side by
side with ale houses, bear-baiting areas
and brothels
20. The Theatre dismantled
In 1597, the Theatre, where the
Lord Chamberlain’s men primarily
performed, was forced to close
because of a dispute with the
landlord
James Burbage (the original
creator) bought the old Blackfriars
monastery, but the project ground James
to a halt due to protests Burbage
James Burbage died soon after on
2nd February, and the landlord
seized the opportunity to try and
dismantle the Theatre
21. The Globe Theatre
One step ahead of the
law, Burbage’s sons
dismantled the Theatre
themselves
The pieces were hauled
across the Thames to a
site in Southwark
It took 6 months to rebuild
the Theatre, and thus the
Globe was built
22. The Globe Theatre
It was one of four major theatres in the area,
along with the Swan, the Rose, and the Hope
The open-air, 20-sided amphitheatre rose three
stories high with a diameter of approximately
100 feet
Its layout was similar (1500 -3000 audience
capacity) to the Coliseum in Rome (50,000
audience capacity)
The rectangular stage platform on which the
plays were performed was nearly 43 feet wide
and 28 feet deep
23. The Globe Theatre
Not one inside picture of
the old Globe exists
However a picture of the Picture of the Swan (top)
Swan has survived
The layout of the open Paper Model made by
air arena featured the John (bottom)
'pit' or the 'yard'
It also has a raised stage
at one end and is
surrounded by three tiers
of roofed galleries with
balconies overlooking the
back of the stage.
24. So how did the constraints of the
Globe affect Shakespeare’s plays?
25. Transvestite performers
The use of male actors for female roles
meant that there were very little scenes
of making love in Shakespeare’s plays
Shakespeare compensated for this by the
frequent use of bawdy puns (often
stunningly vulgar) in the play
E.g “Well, while I live I’ll fear no other
thing/ So sore, as keeping Nerissa’s ring”
(Gratiano, Act 5)
– thing and ring were puns on the male
and female sexual organs
26. Transvestite performers
This also provided dramatic irony in the
cases of a female (played by a male)
dressing up as a male in the plot
E.g Portia and Nerissa in the trial, Jessica
in her elopement (Merchant of Venice)
27. Lack of scenery
Actors could move more freely but
audience had to use their imagination for
scenery
This made it necessary to create the
atmosphere through language
E.g “Two households, both alike in
dignity, /In fair Verona, where we lay our
scene,” – Prologue, Romeo and Juliet
28. Structure of theatre
The Globe’s structure, with partially
enclosed galleries and a open yard,
presented a problem in acoustics
There was a need to compensate by
actors’ delivery, “with energy and
precision, not to themselves, but to all
parts of the audience”
29. Presence of audience
Shakespeare had to write his plays to be enjoyed
– there was thus a need to accommodate various
styles in his plays
Therefore, sources for his plays ranged form the
Latin Classics, the Bible, in popular ballads and in
true accounts of murders
Story of a pound of flesh – present in religious
tales in India and Persia
Highly likely to have been influenced by
Christopher Marlowe’s play “The Jew of Malta” as
well as a late 14th century drama “The
Blockhead”-
The latter has the implacable Jew, the lady of
Belmont finding a loophole, and the episode of he
ring
30. Theatrical conventions
Fine writing was not original writing –
plagiarising of plots was common
Julius Caesar, Anthony and Cleopatra, and
Coriolanus: taken from Plutarch’s Lives
Othello: Cinthio’s Gil Hecatommithi
As You Like It: Thomas Lodge’s Roaslynde
But, compare the difference:
31. Translation of Plutarch’s Lives
Therefore, when she was sent unto by divers
letters, . . . she disdained to set forward otherwise,
but to take her barge in the river Cydnus; the poop
whereof was of gold, the sails of purple, and the
oars of silver, which kept stroke in rowing after the
sound of the music of flutes, howboys [oboes],
cithernes [guitars], viols, and such other
instruments as they played upon in the barge.
And now for the person of her self, she was laid
under a pavilion of cloth of gold of tissue,
apparelled and attired like the goddess Venus,
commonly drawn in picture: and hard by her, on
either hand of her, pretty fair boys apparelled as
painters do set forth god Cupid, with little fans in
their hands, with the which they fanned wind upon
her.
32. Anthony and Cleopatra
The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie
In her pavilion, cloth-of-gold of tissue,
O'erpicturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork of nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
(2.2.193-207)
33. Political Censors
The Master of Revels was a political
censurer who examined all plays for
political slander
Shakespeare’s history plays, therefore,
had to present Queen Elizabeth and the
Tudor line in a favourable light
This is evident in King Richard III (where
Richard is probably not as bad as he is
portrayed) as well as King Henry IV, V, VI
34. “Anglo-Superiority”
This censorship was probably why
Shakespeare portrayed foreigners in a
bad light
Examples (The Merchant of Venice):
Portia’s comment on her suitors in Act 1,
Scene 2: based on common stereotypes
Portrayal of Shylock as the villain
Portia’s comment on Morocco in Act 2, Scene
7 (“May all of his complexion choose me
so”); Act 1, Scene 2 (“I rather he shrive me
than wife me”)
35. Other factors
There was a need to fill the large stage
completely – presence of battles, duels,
songs, dances, balls, fights to fill the
space
Plays on stage were often shortened for
lack of time, thus the play we read today
maybe unlike the actual performance
It was a theatrical convention to have
scenes should contrast with each other in
style
36. The burning of the Globe
In 1613, a cannon was fired
as part of the performance
of the play King Henry VIII
The flaming wadding landed
on the Globe’s roof and
burnt it down.
Everyone escaped
unharmed (One man’s
pants were set on fire, but
the flames were doused
with beer)
37. The shutting of the theatres
The Globe was immediately
rebuilt and continued in
operation
Anti-theatrical Puritan
parliamentarians, however,
finally got their way by
deposing and executing King
Charles I in 1642 and shut the
theatres King Charles I
The theatres were not to be
opened for another 20 years
40. Let’s go on a virtual tou
(Note: 10 seconds of silence
have been inserted here. Please
click on the link yourself to open
the video)
41. Its construction
In 1970 American actor and director
Sam Wanamaker, founded the
Shakespeare Globe Trust in order to
build a faithful recreation of
Shakespeare’s Globe close to its
original location.
Despite many disbelieving that such
could happen, he persevered and in
1987, the foundations were built
The actual construction started in
1993, and the New Globe Theatre
officially opened in 1997
42. The structure
With the motive being to create a faithful
reconstruction, the structure was planned
painstakingly
‘Green’ oak was cut and fashioned according to
16th-century practice and assembled in two-
dimensional bays on the Bankside site
Oak laths and staves supported lime plaster
mixed according to a contemporary recipe and
the walls are covered in a white lime wash.
The roof is made of water reed thatch, based on
samples found during the excavation.
43. The Design
Open-air stage
similar to an
amphitheatre
99 feet in diameter
20 sided circular-
shaped building
Traditional building
materials such as
timber, nails, stone
(flint), plaster and
thatched roof used
44. The stage wall
Behind the pillars is stage
wall, also known as' Frons
Scenae '
Doorway to the left and
right behind pillars in
structure and curtained
central doorway for
entrances by actors.
Above door area is highly
decorative screen
' Herculean ' oak pillars
are painted to look like
marble with golden leaves
45. The ' Heavens '
The pillars support roof
called 'Heavens'. The
Heavens are painted
with the sun, moon
and the zodiac animals.
This area above stage
is hidden from
audience
A selection of ropes &
rigging found here are
used for special effects
on stage.
46. The ' Tiring House '
Side doors and
central door lead
to small structure,
back stage, called
Virtual model by Google
'Tiring House'.
Earth (top)
Area is used by
actors to change Paper model (bottom)
costumes and
attire.
47. Overall design and structure
Open air arena, called '
pit ' or ' yard ', is 80 feet
in diameter and has
raised stage at one end
Surrounded by three
tiers of roofed galleries
with balconies
overlooking back of
stage.
The stage projects
halfway into the ' pit '
Two sets of external
stairs in the structure ,
either side of the
theater.
48. Globe Theatres around the
world (selected)
U.S.A.
Cedar City, Utah, Adams
Shakespearean Theatre
(top)
Germany
Neuss am Rhein, Globe
Neuss (bottom)
Italy
Rome, built 2003
Japan
Tokyo, Isozakia Arata's
Panasonic Globe Theatre
in Tokyo, built 1988
50. References
http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/image58448-.html
http://www.globe-theatre.org.uk
http://www.sgc.umd.edu/plans.htm
http://shakespeare.palomar.edu/
http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/virtualtour
http://virtual.clemson.edu/caah/Shakespr/VRGLOBE/2c2.php
http://shakespeare.about.com/od/theglobe/a/Th_Expereince.htm
“The Friendly Shakespeare” by Norrie Epstein
“The Idiot’s Guide to Shakespeare” by Laurie Rozakis
“The Merchant of Venice: Total Study Edition” edited by Robert
Wilks
“An Oxford Guide to Shakespeare” by Stanley Wells and Lena
Cowen Orlin
