How and where were plays performed before the new London theatres opened in Shakespeare's time?

Answer 1

Shakespeare actually came just after the beginning of the Elizabethan/Jacobean drama boom between 1590 and 1642. There are relatively few plays in the period before 1590. An important play was the revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd which provided the style and form for Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Hamlet, and such later plays as Webster's Duchess of Malfi (1612) and Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy (1607). Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (ca. 1589) had historical, romantic and magical aspects, with a plot as diverse and complex as A Midsummer Night's Dream. Comedies had been around for a long time as witness Gammer Gurton's Needle (ca. 1555) and Ralph Roister Doister (1553) both of which owed something to Roman Comedy (as did Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors). Some of Shakespeare's plays had elements of the pastoral, popularized by Sir Philip Sydney's novel Arcadia. Pastorals were to become even more popular in Jacobean theatre. The early play Gorbaduc (1561) was not only in blank verse but was also in essence a history play, although from the shadowy period of pre-saxon history where we find Cymbeline and King Lear.

In essence, then, most of the genres which Shakespeare used were those of his predecessors. Although Shakespeare did innovate, he mainly shines over his contemporaries in his complex characters, powerful language and universal themes, rarely matched in any other playwrights of the day. He rarely indulged in satire, which was found in such plays as Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Dekker's Satiromastix or Jonson's Cynthia's revels. The topical nature of these plays makes them uninteresting today.

Answer 2

All types: among his earliest plays are the Henry VI plays, which are histories, The Comedy of Errors, which is of course a comedy, and Titus Andronicus, a tragedy. The kind of comedy sometimes called a "romance" is typical of his late style and does not appear in his early works.

Answer 3

All sorts of plays were put on in Shakespeare's day. Shakespeare's work is itself extremely diverse, including classically-inspired plays like The Comedy of Errors, tragedies, historical plays, fantasies like the Tempest, plays drawn from Greek mythology and Britain's legendary past, plays based on folktale-like plots like The Winter's Tale, and comedies of various kinds, especially romantic ones. Other playwrights were writing satires of contemporary writers (Satiromastix) comedies of manners (Jonson's Every Man in his Humour), epics (Marlowe's Tamburlaine),celebration of contemporary characters (Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl), and, in the case of Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle, a satirical comedy which anticipates the fourth-wall-breaking drama of 20th century playwrights like Brecht and Pirandello.

Answer 4

By "the new London theatres" I presume you mean purpose-built playhouses, or playhouses built for the showing of plays. The first of these was The Red Lion, which was not commercially successful and soon closed. The first successful purpose-built playhouse is generally thought to be The Theatre, built by James Burbage in 1576, although the Newington Butts playhouse was of a similar age.

Before these were built, players performed on improvised stages, including indoor stages in houses and halls and outdoor stages. Outdoor performances in marketplaces go back to the middle ages, but did not enable the players to charge an admission. Inn yards provided a good opportunity for stages: admission could be controlled, and there was room for a reasonably large group of people, some of whom would watch from balconies. The design of these innyards contributed to the design of The Theatre and the many theatres which copied it. As well, innyards continued to be used for theatrical performances even after the new theatres because the City of London would not permit the construction of a playhouse but would allow plays to be performed at these inns.

Answer 5

Well, you can read quite a lot of plays by Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries, like Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson, and Dekker. That will give you the best idea about them.

As for how they were performed, we have a few clues. We know they were performed on a thrust stage because we have a picture of the interior of a theatre (the Swan) from that time. We know that they used natural sunlight and candles to light the stage because they didn't have any other options. We have some idea of costuming because we have a picture called the "Peacham Drawing" of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus being performed. See attached links.

Answer 6

Shakespeare's earliest plays included the comedies Love's Labour's Lost, The Comedy of Errors and The Two Gentlemen of Verona, the tragedy Titus Andronicus and the histories Henry VI parts 1, 2 and 3.

Answer 7

It depends what you mean by "Shakespeare's time" here. English drama developed at an astounding pace from the time of Shakespeare's birth to the time he began writing. Before he was born, people were aware of the indigenous traditions of miracle and mystery plays such as Everyman, which were continually popular with the masses. Many people had enough education to be aware of the Latin dramas of Plautus, Terence and Seneca. People, especially in schools and universities, began experimenting with combining the themes of the Latin plays with the language of the local plays and using structural elements from both. The results were comedies like Ralph Roister Doister and Gammer Gurton's Needle, and tragedies like Gorboduc in the 1560s. But these were not widely popular because there was no popular venue for them. The 1570s saw the development of patronized and therefore legal acting companies and the first purpose-built theatres. These developments resulted in a demand for more plays and better plays, and the technique of playwriting improved astronomically. By the late 1580s when Shakespeare was about to pick up his pen, revenge tragedies like Kyd's Spanish Tragedy were hugely popular, along with the epic tragedies of Marlowe, comedies like Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, and histories like Peele's Edward I. Shakespeare picked up on all of these genres.