108-550: Gerard Langbaine (15 July 1656 – 23 June 1692) was an English dramatic biographer and critic, best known for his An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691), the earliest work to give biographical and critical information on the playwrights of English Renaissance theatre . He is sometimes called Junior or the Younger to distinguish him from his father (1609–58) of the same name, a Doctor of Divinity who
216-491: A rococo style; of all his writings, Pegasides Pleyn ("The Palace of Maidens"), a didactic poem in sixteen books dedicated to a discussion of the variety of earthly love, is the most remarkable. Houwaert's contemporaries nicknamed him the " Homer of Brabant"; later criticism has preferred to see in him an important link in the chain of didactic Dutch which ends in Cats . The stir and revival of intellectual life that arrived with
324-518: 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
432-792: 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
540-491: A flock of learned exiles from Flanders and Brabant. Visscher realised that the path of literary honour lay not along the utilitarian road cut out by Jacob van Maerlant and his followers, but in the study of beauty and antiquity . In this he was aided by the school of ripe and enthusiastic scholars who began to flourish at Leiden , such as Drusius , Vossius and Hugo Grotius , who themselves wrote little in Dutch but chastened
648-715: 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,
756-414: 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
864-460: A number of politico-theological issues, but also decided to appoint a committee to translate the Bible. Representatives of nearly all provinces participated in the project, which sought to use a language intermediate between the main Dutch dialects to be intelligible to all Dutchmen. With the resulting translation, called Statenvertaling or "States' Translation", an important cornerstone was laid for
972-458: A section of the Boecxken which has proved of inestimable value to historians. All these lyrics, however, whether of victory or of martyrdom , are still very rough in form and language. In Philips van Marnix, lord of Sint-Aldegonde (1538–1598), a personage came forward in the ranks of liberty and reform. He was born at Brussels in 1538, and began life as a disciple of Calvin and Beza in
1080-562: A succession of dramatic victories, and it was not until two years after the death of that great poet that Vondel appeared before the public with a second tragedy. Another five years later, in 1625, he published what seemed an innocent study from the antique, his tragedy of Palamedes, or Murdered Innocence , but which was a thinly-veiled tribute to Johan van Oldebarnevelt , the Republic's Grand Pensionary who had been executed in 1618 by order of stadtholder Maurice of Nassau . Vondel became in
1188-551: 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
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#17327866786141296-591: A week the most famous writer in Holland and for the next twelve years, until the accession of stadtholder Frederick Henry , Vondel had to maintain a hand-to-hand combat with the Calvinists of Dordrecht. This was the period of his most stinging satires; Cats took up weapons on behalf of the Counter-Remonstrants and a war of pamphlets in verse raged. Vondel, as the greatest playwright of the day,
1404-552: A whole cycle of love songs. His ideas on the subject of drama were at first a development of the medieval abele spelen (see Medieval Dutch literature ), but in 1612 he struck out a new and more characteristic path in his Klucht van de koe ("Farce of the Cow"). From this time until his death he continued to pour out comedies, farces and romantic dramas, in all of which he displayed a rough genius not unlike that of Ben Jonson , his immediate contemporary. Bredero's last and best piece
1512-414: 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
1620-593: The Hebrew . He occupied the last years of his life in preparing a Dutch version of the Bible , translated directly from the original. At his death, only Genesis was found completely revised; but in 1619 the Synod of Dort placed the unfinished work in the hands of four theologians . This translation by Marnix proved the starting point for a new complete translation of the Bible into Dutch. The Synod had been convened to settle
1728-594: 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
1836-504: The Netherlands (north). The rise of the northern provinces to independent statehood was accompanied by a cultural renaissance. The north received a cultural and intellectual boost whereas in the south, Dutch was to some extent replaced by French and Latin as the languages of culture. At Amsterdam two men took a very prominent place thanks to their intelligence and modern spirit. The first, Hendrick Laurensz. Spieghel (1549–1612)
1944-526: The Protestant congregations , Jan Utenhove printed a volume of Psalms in London in 1566; Lucas de Heere and Petrus Datheen translated hymns of Clément Marot . Datheen was not a rhetorician, but a person of humble origin who wrote in unadorned language, and his hymns spread far and wide among the people. Very different in tone were the battle songs of liberty and triumph sung a generation later by
2052-532: 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
2160-454: 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
2268-583: The Reformation found its first expression in the composition of Psalms . The earliest printed collection appeared at Antwerp in 1540, under the title of Souter-Liedekens (" Psalter Songs") and was dedicated to a Dutch nobleman , Willem van Zuylen van Nieuvelt, by whose name it is usually known. This collection, however, was made before the Reformation in the Low Countries really set in. For
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#17327866786142376-625: The Reformation spread across Northern and Western Europe and the Netherlands fought for independence in the Eighty Years' War . In the middle of the 16th century, a group of rhetoricians (see Medieval Dutch literature ) in Brabant and Flanders attempted to put new life into the stereotyped forms of the preceding age by introducing in original composition the new-found branches of Latin and Greek poetry . The leader of these men
2484-936: 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
2592-478: The Zedekunst ("Art of Ethics ", 1586), a philosophical treatise in prose in which he tried to adapt the Dutch tongue to the grace and simplicity of Michel de Montaigne 's French . His humanism unites the Bible, Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius in one grand system of ethics and is expressed in a bright style. Coornhert died at Gouda on October 29, 1590; his works were first collected in 1630. By this time,
2700-402: The odes of Huygens alike found their first admirers and their best critics . Of the daughters of Roemer Visscher, Tesselschade (1594–1649) wrote some well-received lyrics ; she also translated Tasso . Visscher's daughters were women of universal accomplishment and their company attracted to his house all the most gifted youths of the time, several of whom were suitors, but in vain, for
2808-640: The second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679. As a result, the 1711 edition, printed in eight octavo volumes, is sometimes known as the Langbaine edition – although Langbaine did not edit any plays, of Beaumont and Fletcher or anyone else. Lee, Sidney (1892). "Langbaine, Gerard (1656–1692)" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography . Vol. 32. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 93–94. English Renaissance theatre Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age The English Renaissance theatre or Elizabethan theatre
2916-523: 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
3024-518: 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,
3132-542: The 17th and 18th centuries. In the North American colony of New Netherland , poems in Dutch were composed and published by Jacob Steendam and Pieter Corneliszoon Plockhoy . While most of the writers of Holland clustered around the circle of Amsterdam, a similar school arose in Middelburg , the capital of Zeeland. The ruling spirit of this school was Jacob Cats (1577–1660). In this voluminous writer
3240-402: The 17th century distinguished themselves very prominently in the movement of learning and philosophic thought , but the names of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) and Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) belong more to philosophy and politics than literature. The period from 1600 to 1650 was a blossoming time in Dutch literature. During this period the names of great genius were first made known to
3348-418: The Dutch nation from its commencement. For fifty years, and these the most glorious in the annals of the Dutch republic, these two streams of influence, one towards beauty and melody, the other towards lively comedy, ran side by side, often in the same channel, and producing a rich harvest of great works. It was in the house of the daughters of Visscher that the tragedies of Vondel, the comedies of Bredero and
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3456-587: The Eglantine. Quite early in life he proceeded to Haarlem , becoming pensionary of the town. In 1566 Coornhert was imprisoned for his support of the Reformers, and in 1572 he became secretary to the States of Holland. He practised the art of etching and spent all his spare time in the pursuit of classical learning . In 1585 he translated Boethius , and then gave his full attention to his original masterpiece,
3564-516: 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
3672-406: 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
3780-485: 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
3888-471: 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 the economics of the profession, the character of the drama changed towards
3996-557: The Great , while from 1628 to 1642 he wrote his masterpiece, the Nederduytsche Historiën ("History of the Netherlands"). Hooft was a purist in style. In his poetry, especially in the lyrical and pastoral verse of his youth, he is full of Italian reminiscences both of style and matter; in his noble prose work he has set himself to be a disciple of Tacitus . Hooft is considered one of the greatest historians, not merely of
4104-408: The Low Countries, but of Europe. His influence in standardising the language of his country can hardly be overrated. The literary circle founded by Roemer Visscher later centered around Hooft, in whose castle at Muiden they regularly convened, and after which they were later called Muiderkring or "Circle of Muiden". Very different from the long and prosperous career of Hooft was the brief life of
4212-545: The Roman Catholic Church"). In this satire he was inspired by François Rabelais , of whom he was a disciple. It is written in prose that is considered to mark an epoch in the language and literature of the Low Countries. Overwhelmed with the press of public business , Marnix wrote little more until in 1580 he published Het boeck der psalmen Davids ("The Book of the Psalms of David "), newly translated out of
4320-553: 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
4428-533: The United Provinces , with Amsterdam at its head, had suddenly risen to first rank among the nations of Europe and it was under the influence of so much new ambition that the country asserted itself in a great school of painting and poetry. The intellectual life of the Low Countries was concentrated in the provinces of Holland and Zeeland , while the universities of Leiden , Groningen , Utrecht , Amsterdam , Harderwijk and Franeker were enriched by
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4536-672: 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
4644-477: The best idea if we point to Jean Racine . In 1654 Vondel brought out what most consider the best of all his works, the tragedy of Lucifer , from which it is said Milton drew inspiration. Vondel is the typical example of Dutch intelligence and imagination at their highest development. The Republic's colonies, of which the Dutch East Indies were the most important, started to produce writers as well,
4752-600: The best-known of all Dutch writers, Joost van den Vondel (1587–1679), was Het Pascha ("The Passover", 1612), a tragedy on the Exodus of the people of Israel . It was written in alexandrines , in five acts, and with choral interludes between the acts. He would go on to write all of his plays in this fashion, but for a number of years after his debut wrote no original material at all, instead opting to translate du Bartas . The short and brilliant life of Bredero, his immediate contemporary and greatest rival, burned itself out in
4860-684: 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
4968-573: 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
5076-427: The daughters of Roemer Visscher. Huygens had little of the sweetness of Hooft or of the sublimity of Vondel, but his genius was bright and vivacious, and he was a consummate artist in metrical form. The Dutch language has never proved so light and supple in any hands as in his, and, he attempted no class of writing, whether in prose or verse, that he did not adorn by his delicate taste and sound judgment. Two Dutchmen of
5184-449: 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
5292-415: 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
5400-456: 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 the later part of the reign of Charles I , few new plays were being written for
5508-560: 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,
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#17327866786145616-491: 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
5724-408: 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
5832-569: The first of which was Abraham Alewijn (b. 1664), a comedy playwright who lived in Java and whose plays were produced in Batavia . Another writer from the colonies was Willem Godschalk van Focquenbroch (1640–1670), who lived and worked from 1668 in the Dutch possession of Elmina in present-day Ghana . His comedy Min in het Lazarus-huys ("Love in the Madhouse ", 1672) was very popular in
5940-564: 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
6048-531: 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
6156-569: The genuine Dutch habit of thought, the utilitarian and didactic spirit reached its zenith of fluency and popularity. During early middle life he produced the most important of his writings, his didactic poems, the Maechdenplicht ("Duty of Maidens") and the Sinne- en Minnebeelden ("Images of Allegory and Love"). In 1624 he moved from Middelburg to Dordrecht, where he soon after published his ethical work called Houwelick ("Marriage"); and this
6264-463: The greatest comic dramatist that the Low Countries have produced. Gerbrand Adriaensz Bredero (1585–1618), the son of an Amsterdam shoemaker , knew no Latin and had no taste for humanism; he came out of the rich humour of the people. Bredero entered the workshop of the painter Francisco Badens , but accomplished little in art. His life was embittered by a hopeless love for Tesselschade, to whom he dedicated his plays, and whose beauty he celebrated in
6372-439: The hand of Anna or of Tesselschade. Of this Amsterdam school, the first to emerge into public notice was Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft (1581–1647). His Achilles and Polyxena (1598) displayed ease in the use of rhetorical artifices of style. In his pastoral drama of Granida (1605) he proved himself a pupil of Guarini . In tragedy he produced Baeto and Geraard van Velsen ; in history he published in 1626 his Life of Henry
6480-481: 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. Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age literature Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age Dutch Renaissance and Golden Age literature is the literature written in the Dutch language between around 1550 and around 1700. This period saw great political and religious changes as
6588-474: 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
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#17327866786146696-495: The man who in 1614 first collected Spieghel's writings and published them in a volume together with his own verse. Roemer Visscher (1547–1620) proceeded a step further than Spieghel in the cultivation of polite letters. He was deeply tinged with a spirit of classical learning. His own disciples called him the Dutch Martial , but he was at best little more than an amateur in poetry, although an amateur whose function it
6804-613: The neighborhood of Oxford. In 1690 he acquired a post at the University, as "yeoman bedel in arts," and in the following year was promoted to "esquire bedel of law and architypographus." (In his post as "architypographus" or printer, he issued an Appendix to the University Catalogue of Graduates.) Langbaine's widow Mary remarried after his death to the University College fellow William Smith , contrary to
6912-475: 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
7020-478: 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
7128-539: 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
7236-757: 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
7344-408: 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
7452-456: 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
7560-523: 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
7668-460: 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, the rhetorical canons of memory ( memoria ) and delivery ( pronuntiatio ), gesture and voice, as well as exercises from
7776-461: The religious and political upheaval in the Low Countries had resulted in 1581 in an Act of Abjuration of Philip II of Spain , a key moment in the subsequent eighty years' struggle 1568–1648. As a result, the southern provinces , some of which had supported the declaration, were separated from the northern provinces as they remained under Habsburg rule. Ultimately, this would result in the present-day states of Belgium and Luxembourg (south) and
7884-891: The right way to breed, keep and train a horse, for ordinary hunting and plates was published in Oxford in 1685 for Nicholas Cox, bookseller. Copies of this 98 page discourse are found in the British Library and the Library of Congress. Langbaine was active in the period when the first attempts were being made to clarify and comprehend the lush confusion of English drama in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first catalogues of plays had been printed by Richard Rogers and William Ley, in their edition of The Careless Shepherdess (1656), and by Edward Archer, in his edition of The Old Law (also 1656). Francis Kirkman issued two subsequent, more complete lists in 1661 and 1671. Langbaine
7992-685: The rules forbidding fellows to have wives. Langbaine devoted his critical energies to the attempt to bring order and understanding to the stage drama of his era. He compiled A New Catalogue of English Plays (1688), in which he traced the sources of many plays of English Renaissance and Restoration drama, to the prose tales of Cinthio , Bandello , Belleforest and similar authors, and ultimately to classical sources. Langbaine has been called "the only serious scholar in this field for many years". By his own testimony (in A New Catalogue ), Langbaine collected printed editions of 980 plays and masques , not counting drolls and interludes. (Langbaine's Catalogue
8100-599: 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
8208-637: The schools of Geneva . It was as a defender of the Dutch iconoclasts that he first appeared in print in August 1566. He soon became one of the leading spirits in the war of Dutch independence and the intimate friend of the Prince of Orange . The lyrics to Wilhelmus , the Dutch national anthem , an apology of the actions of the Prince of Orange composed around 1568, are attributed to Marnix. In 1569 Marnix completed Biëncorf der Heilige Roomsche Kercke ("Beehive of
8316-543: 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
8424-498: 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
8532-467: 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
8640-402: The standard Dutch language as it appears today. Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert (1522–1590), was the Low Countries' first truly humanist writer. Coornhert was a typical burgher of North Holland , equally interested in the progress of national emancipation and in the development of national literature. He was a native of Amsterdam, but he did not take part in the labours of the old chamber of
8748-413: The style of the rising generation by insisting on a pure and liberal Latinity . Out of that generation arose the classic names in Dutch literature: Vondel , Hooft , Cats , and Huijgens . In their hands the language took at once its highest finish and melody. By the side of this serious and aesthetic growth there is to be noticed a quickening of the broad farcical humour which had been characteristic of
8856-593: 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
8964-464: 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
9072-408: 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
9180-478: 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
9288-611: 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,
9396-506: The victorious Reformers, the Gueux songs. The famous songbook of 1588, Een Geusen Lied Boecxken ("A Gueux Songbook"), was full of ardent and heroic sentiment. In this collection appeared for the first time such classical snatches of Dutch song as "The Ballad of Heiligerlee " and "The Ballad of Egmont and Horne ". The political ballads, with their ridicule of the Spanish leaders, form
9504-404: 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
9612-501: 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
9720-399: 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
9828-401: 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
9936-689: Was De Spaansche Brabanber Jerolimo ("Jerolimo, the Spanish Brabanter"), a satire upon the exiles from the south who filled the halls of the Amsterdam chambers of rhetoric with their pompous speeches and preposterous Burgundian phraseology . Bredero was closely allied in genius to the dramatists of the Shakespearian age , but he founded no school and stands as a solitary figure in Dutch literature. He died on August 23, 1618, of complications caused by pneumonia . The first work of one of
10044-576: Was Johan Baptista Houwaert (1533–1599), a personage of considerable political influence in his generation. Houwaert held the title of Counsellor and Master in Ordinary of the Exchequer to the Duchy of Brabant. He considered himself a devout disciple of Matthijs de Casteleyn, but his great characteristic was his unbounded love of classical and mythological fancy. His didactic poems are composed in
10152-535: Was Provost of The Queen's College, Oxford (1646–58) and Keeper of the University Archives. The younger Langbaine was born in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford; his father's second son, he was apprenticed to a bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard in London, but was sent to University after his older brother William died in 1672. He was educated at University College, Oxford , married, and settled in
10260-571: Was a friend and confidant of Kirkman; in fact, the strongest criticism mounted against Langbaine is that he accepted Kirkman's attributions with too much credulity. Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets was extended in subsequent editions. Both the Account and the New Catalogue were included in the 1711 edition of the plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher canon, the first since
10368-457: Was a humanist, less polemical than Coornhert. His chief contribution to literature was his Twe-spraack van de Nederduytsche Letterkunst ("Dialogue on Dutch Literature"), a philological exhortation urging the Dutch nation to purify and enrich its tongue at the fountains of antiquity. That Spieghel was a Catholic prevented him perhaps from exercising as much public influence as he exercised privately among his younger friends. The same may be said of
10476-482: Was asked in 1637 to write the first-night piece for the opening of a new and soon leading public theatre in Amsterdam. On the January 3, 1638, the theatre was opened with the performance of a new tragedy out of early Dutch history and to this day one of Vondel's best-known works, Gysbreght van Aemstel . The next ten years Vondel supplied the theatre with heroic Scriptural pieces, of which the general reader will obtain
10584-484: 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
10692-804: 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
10800-583: Was first published in November 1687 under a false title, Momus Triumphans: or The Plagiaries of the English Stage , which mocked what others considered Langbaine's obsessive concern with plagiarism . In the correct edition that followed, Langbaine complained that "My friends may think me Lunatick." He blamed John Dryden for the trick, and became a determined enemy of the poet/dramatist.) Langbaine work The Hunter. A discourse of horsemanship: directing
10908-423: Was followed by an entire series of moral pieces. Cats is considered somewhat dull and prosaic by some, yet his popularity with the middle classes in Holland has always been immense. A versatile poet was the diplomat Sir Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), perhaps best known for his witty epigrams . He threw in his lot with the school of Amsterdam and became the intimate friend and companion of Vondel, Hooft and
11016-633: 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
11124-591: 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
11232-533: 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,
11340-468: 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
11448-524: 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 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
11556-446: Was to perceive and encourage the genius of professional writers. Roemer Visscher stands at the threshold of the new Renaissance literature, himself practising the faded arts of the rhetoricians, but pointing by his counsel and his conversation to the naturalism of the great period. It was in the salon at Amsterdam which Visscher's daughters formed around their father and themselves that the new school began to take form. The republic of
11664-674: 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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