How did Shakespeare's company light their plays?

Answer 1

Shakespearean theaters did not have had the elaborate sets that we sometimes see today; however, they did use smaller props such as tables, benches and so on. To compensate for the lack of scenery, actors wore very elaborate costumes, which were contemporary sixteenth and seventeenth century costume no matter what the purported setting of the play.

Answer 2

Their lighting was pretty straightforward. If it was an outdoor theatre, the lighting was the sun. If indoor, it was candles. They had no lighting plot--the light was there for the entire play without change.

They did have effects, though. Actors could fly in out of the roof over the stage, as the god Jupiter does in Cymbeline. There was also a trapdoor leading to the understage, which enabled witches, ghosts and the like to appear mysteriously. Sometimes the actors wore a bladder filled with pigs' blood, so that when they were stabbed, they could bleed profusely (the costume department must have hated this). In one notorious case, a cannon providing a sound effect accidentally set fire to the roof of the theatre.

Answer 3

In Shakespeare's day, there were two kinds of lighting: sunlight and candlelight. When the plays were put on outdoors, they used sunlight; indoors they used candlelight. The cost of candles was one of the reasons that tickets to indoor performances cost more.

Answer 4

The scripts themselves are almost silent as to props and completely silent as to lighting. Setting is mostly implied in the dialogue. This is because the theatre for which Shakespeare wrote mostly was 1. outdoors, using natural light, so lighting instructions would be pointless 2. on a thrust stage with no wings and a back wall used up with two doors, a concealment space and a balcony, so there was no place to put decorative scenery, and just enough to bring on functional set props like a table and chairs for the tavern in Henry IV or the banquet in Macbeth, the bed in Othello, the ladder in Titus Andronicus, or a throne for the second scene of Henry V. The pillars which held up the "heavens" (the roof) doubled as trees in As You Like It and so on.

Answer 5

The Globe Theatre was an open air amphitheater. All plays were produced during daylight hours.

Answer 6

They had a large hole in the roof so light could get in. these were called wooden-O playhouses

Answer 7

Two kinds of lighting were used: natural sunlight and candlelight, depending on whether the theatre in question was an outdoor or indoor one.

Answer 8

I don't hav a clu

Answer 9

What? WITH THE SUN?