Discussion/Review

• of Shakespeare's times, • what his theater was like, • how the plays were performed and how the playhouse

influenced how the plays were written, • what the acting company was like and how the size and

composition of the acting company influenced the plays, • who Shakespeare's competitors were and how rivalry influenced

Shakespeare's plays.

• Picture Shakespeare coming to London in the late 1580s in his early to mid-20s, arriving from the small town of Stratford.

• The London theater scene was incredibly full of life. The great playwright of the time was Christopher Marlowe (exactly as in Shakespeare in Love).

• Two principal producers ruled the London stage: • Philip Henslowe who managed a company called the Admiral's Men and

had as his theater, The Rose. • In competition to Henslowe, James Burbage and his two sons formed a

rival company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

• Henslowe and other producers basically hired playwrights to write their plays.

• It was feast or famine for the playwrights, just as we see in the movie.

• When they sold a play, they got rich for a time, but when they were in the process of writing, Henslowe and other producers dribbled money advances out in small amounts to the writers (just as in Shakespeare in Love).

• The Master of the Revels, had the power to censor writing, and in fact the famous writer Ben Jonson was put in jail for several months for a "lewd" and "seditious" play.

• In London at this time, a group known as Puritans regarded attending plays as immoral and made life difficult for producers and playwrights because the Puritans often held political positions in London.

• Part of the solution to the Puritan problem was to situate the theaters just outside the London city limits.

• On the other hand, attending plays was immensely popular with most people.

• Furthermore, Queen Elizabeth, a highly intelligent and independent woman, was a patron of the theater, just as we see in this movie.

• The Master of Revels often closed the theaters due to plagues. • Theaters were frequently closed between June 1592 and May

1594, just before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. • As a result of the plague, one tenth of London’s population,

20,000 people, died between 1592-93.

• As I said earlier, Henslowe's company hired its playwrights on a play by play basis.

• A newer, competing company was organized by James Burbage and his two sons in 1594.

• One son, Richard, had ambitions to become a great actor. • His father, James, was able to secure the patronage of the Lord

Chamberlain, so the acting company became known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men.

• The Burbages wanted a resident playwright for their acting company, and Shakespeare became the Burbages' principal playwright.

• Significantly, Shakespeare became an official member of the Burbage company.

• Richard Burbage played the main tragic roles, William Kempeplayed the clown parts, and William Shakespeare, was the company's poet / playwright.

• Shakespeare, who had just turned 30, stayed with this company exclusively for his entire career.

• It was unusual that the partners of a theater company were actors, and friends in addition, but Burbage, Kempe, and Shakespeare along with John Heminge and Henry Condell (who published Shakespeare's collected works in the First Folio after his death) were all good friends as well as fellow actors and fellow owners.

• During his first four years with The Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare wrote Love's Labor's Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, Richard II, Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Romeo and Juliet.

• These plays were an artistic advance beyond his earlier plays and established his reputation.

• The Lord Chamberlain's Men owned a theater with the catchy name of "Theater." The problem was that they didn't own the land the Theater was built on. They rented the land. When their lease ran out, the landlord tried to gouge them. That caused Shakespeare and the other partners to come up with one of the great schemes in all theater history.

• During the night of Dec. 28, 1598, while the landlord was out of town, the Lord Chamberlain's Men disassembled the Theater beam by beam and carted it across to the south side of the Thames River. There they reassembled the Theater and renamed it the Globe.

• It was now in the heart of the entertainment district but outside of the city limits, so it was free of many restrictions. The Globe's neighbors were the Bear Garden (where bear baiting was held), brothels, the Swan theater, and Henslowe's theater, the Rose.

• The movie gives an excellent sense of what the theater looked like and how close the audience was to the stage, which was thrust out into the audience.

• Although the audience capacity was 2500, the farthest seat was near by our standards. People in the audience would freely comment on and respond to the plays since the standing audience of "groundlings" might be just two to three feet from the actors.

• As you saw from the movie the setup of the theater stage remained the same from scene to scene.

• Costumes were important but scenery was not used. • The stage thrust out into the audience and included a trap door.• It was used by Hamlet's father's ghost as well as a grave for

Ophelia in Hamlet. • The doors between the pillars at the back of the stage were for

entrances and exits, and their was a balcony up above. The balcony is where Juliet is when Romeo comes to gaze upon her.

• Shakespeare's acting company was what we call a repertory company today—that is, all the actors stayed together, most from season to season.

• Shakespeare, as part owner of the building and the company, wrote his plays with the actors in mind.

• In every play he uses all of them, some in more than one role. He writes the plays with their strengths and weaknesses in mind.

• If you read a number of his plays, you can see how similar parts are included in each play because he had an actor who could act well in particular types of roles.

• The most unusual aspect of the acting companies of Shakespeare's day was how many plays they performed in a season.

• They usually put on a different play every day. One company one year put on 38 different plays, of which 21 were brand new that year! Can you imagine learning so many new plays in a year? Imagine acting in Hamlet one day, Romeo and Juliet the next, and so on.

• The main parts were taken by the eight principal actor-owners (including Shakespeare). All the actors were on the weekly payroll. They employed several more regular actors and four or five boy-actors for the female roles.

• Remember, women didn't act. Women's roles were played by pre-pubescent boys. The Juliet in Shakespeare in Love looks a little old to be pre-pubescent, but that was the idea.

• Therefore, Shakespeare would never have written parts for women that would have put them in bed as lovers. Love-making would always consist of words and flirting and courteous kisses. A good example is the meeting of Romeo and Juliet when they "kiss" palm to palm.

• Unlike today, when movie and theater directors usually assemble a cast after the script has been written, in Shakespeare's day, the company of players came first.

• We actually possess the by-laws of the Lord Chamberlain's Men's incorporation.

• The two Burbage brothers owned 50 percent of the company. • Five other shareholders owned the other half, so Shakespeare

had a 10 percent stake in the business. • The Globe and Shakespeare's plays made considerable profit.

Soon, they were building a second theater, the Blackfriars, which became even more profitable than the Globe.

• So, while Shakespeare is partly running the business, he is simultaneously writing the plays and acting in them.

• You can imagine how his acting benefited his writing—he knew what would work on stage because he would have to act in the plays he wrote. And he was sure to write plays that would be popular, because he was becoming a wealthy man because of the success of his plays.

• With his wealth, he was able to restore his father's good name after he fell on hard times.

• Shakespeare became a "gentleman," bought the largest house in his hometown, Stratford, retired there in his mid-40s and died there at the age of 52.

• So we should never imagine Shakespeare as a man who wrote merely because of inspiration. He may have been inspired, but he had to make sure his inspiration made money.

• At the time Shakespeare was becoming established, the most renowned playwright in London was Christopher Marlowe.

• Shakespeare surely felt a strong competition with him. • Marlowe's early, untimely death opened up the scene for

Shakespeare.• Young Webster – the boy who liked gore in the movie – went on

to become well-known playwright, John Webster.