Chitarrone

Harpsichord

Viol

Hautbois/Oboe

 Spinet/ Harpsichord:

Chittarrone:

Lute:

MUSIC, DANCE AND SPECIAL EFFECTS IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

Music was an extra effect added in the 1600's through a French influence. The musicians would also reside in the Lords rooms. Elizabethan music was heard in churches, in the streets, in the courts, and in theaters and has a specific rhythm that reminds Baroque music. Anthems, madrigals, and operas were popular musical forms of the period. Two English composers of the Elizabethan Age were William Byrd, John Dowland and Thomas Tallis. William Shakespeare's plays are full of songs and references to music. Theater musicians played either on stage, above the stage, or even under the stage. In the Elizabethan era, most actors had to be able to sing and dance to be able to perform any role in a play. Not being able to sing or dance could damage their chances of being successful.

Instruments

Several musical instruments were invented during this time, and belonged to four kinds of musical kinds (string, keyboard, wind and percussion): The hautboy, an early version of the oboe (used in Shakespeare’s Macbeth); an early violin, called a viol, and a keyboard known as the spinet or harpsichord. The Chittarone is a lute which could reach 6 feet tall. It had an elongated neck to which long bass strings were attached to an additional peg-box. But the most popular instrument played in the Elizabethan era was the lute, a musical instrument from the Medieval era, which is a kind of guitar. The different instruments were used to represent the status of each person. If the scene was happy, a fast beat type of song was played while if the scene indicated sorrow or sadness, the music was much slower.

Hautboy:

                                 

YANAGITA tokinori – woodwind maker.Baroque and early classical flute traverse and oboe (hautboy) maker.

Viol:

                                                       

 

COSTUMES IN THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

          People in the Elizabethan era were not allowed to wear whatever they like. There were a several laws called Sumptuary Laws. The penalties for violating Sumptuary Laws could be harsh. Also the clause applied to actors and their costumes. Acting Troupes had to be licensed; the licenses were granted by the Queen to the aristocracy for the maintenance of troupes of players.

The Elizabethan theatre costumes were colourful, vibrant and eye catching. Almost everything colors of clothing had its own meaning and conveyed an enormous amount of information during the Elizabethan era and this meaning was totally understood by the audience. The types of materials and fabrics had a great effect too.

          During the Elizabethan era only men were allowed to act in the theatre until 1660, then there weren´t actresses so the men had to represent the female roles. They had to use wigs or periwigs.

The Elizabethan Women's clothing was very elaborate and was constructed with many layers of clothing. A woman’s costume consisted of a singlet or chemise, corset, generally made of whalebone to pinch the waist so as to give an appearance of an incredible petite frame; stocking, pantalets, and under skirt, a stomacher, which was a filler for the deep neck of a dress. Materials like taffeta and brocade was also widely used. The dresses were full skirted and sleeved. The sleeves were worn apart and the ensemble accessorized with shoes, capes, hats and reticules.

          The men’s costume at the Elizabethan theatre was a shirt, stockings, britches, doublet which was a well fitted coat, sleeves separate, same stiff high collar and an overcoat. Also a cape and hat. Cravats were also an integral part of the men’s attire.

          Many of the plays had historical themes featuring the royalty and nobles of the land, for example Elizabethan Nobles and Upper classes wore clothing made of velvets, furs, silks, lace, cottons and taffeta.

The night scenes were often signalled by characters wearing nightdresses.

Images of Costumes in the Elizabethan Theatre

THE STAGE AND THE DECORATION IN THE ELIZABETHAN THEATRE

STAGE

            The stage was composed by a square platform of 14 metres wide and 9 metres to the bottom approximately. It was situated in front of a wall that had two doors. Although this platform was where most of the action took place, there was also an up gallery were other actors and musicians stayed without being seen by the spectators. This up gallery could be used also as a balcony, for example in plays as “Romeo and Juliet”, or as a city wall in “Macbeth”. But it could be also used as a royal box, where important personalities were situated to see the play. This up gallery was also the place were there were situated the machineries to create some “special effects” of the time.

Some critics think that the stage was situated at the bottom of the theatre, so behind it there was no audience. The dressing rooms were there and actors accessed to it through normal doors. But other critics that have studied the Globe’s composition think that the stage could be also situated at the centre of theatre, so the audience was around the stage and the actors had to stay under the stage. Then, they accessed there through trapdoors. These trapdoors could be also used to represent tombstone’s scenes as it was used in “Hamlet”.

Another theme that has been also much investigated is the inside stage, the stage that represented a cave, room, inn... This inside stage was hidden by a curtain and sometimes was called as “baldachin”. Shakespeare used it a lot in “Hamlet”, to recreate the apparition of the phantom, or to recreate private scenes.

DECORATION

           We have to know that there was a big difference between private and public theatres. It is obvious that private theatres had very good decoration to represent different places. This is something that specialist students think because of the data that they had found about the expenses to represent each play at court.

On the other hand, public theatres had not very good decoration. We could not talk about decoration at all. They used little decorative elements to recreate different places. So we can imagine how important these decorative elements were. To explain this importance, I am going to expose some examples. For instance, when actors had a torch it meant that the action took place at night. It is incredible how only some flowerpots could recreate a whole forest to the audience. Another example is when the action took place at palace that it was recreated only by a royal throne.

This absence of decoration was also supplied by the mere text that indicated the place were actors stayed. In other cases, the place was indicated only by a sign or poster.      

            Knowing these little “tricks” it easy to understand how could be made 54 changes of scene in the play “Anthony and Cleopatra”.

The Elizabethan audience was satisfied with this decoration because they think that the importance of the play resided in the text and not in the decorative elements.

LOCATION

When Shakespeare was 12 years old, it was built the first theatre in London. It was possible to build private and public playhouses and an organization of amateur and professional companies of players thanks to the popularity of all sorts of plays. The places where the plays were given by the strolling troupes were open squares of the town, in the courtyards of inns, in the halls of nobleman...

The streets were so crowded of people that, after the performance of the plays, loafers and beggars took advantage of this situation and it began to occur crimes. In 1576 it was published an order banning the performances in the city boundaries, but it was not enforced enough. The players were not allowed to establish in the city, but they could build their playhouses just on the other bankside.

The first theatre

The first theatre was called "The Theatre" and it was built in 1576 by the Earl of Leicester's Players. The design of this theatre was polygonal and it was made of wood. It had three galleries and the main area of the theatre was opened to the sky, with a great yard to let the spectators stand and see the function if they could not afford for a ticket.

In 1599 Burbage's sons had problems with the land and some disputes, so they decided to take all the timbres of The Theatre to build a new playhouse on bankside. It was called The Globe. In this theatre were performanced the firsts Shakespeare's plays.

Private and public theatres

Although the Globe was the most important Elizabethan theatre, there were built a lot of other theatres, each one different form the other. The theatres were divided into two main types: public and private. Public theatres, such as The Theatre, The Globe, The Curtain and the Swan, were opened to the air. Private theatres, such as Blackfriars and Cockpit, were smaller and more expensive than the public ones. They were built like a hall, rectangular, more similar to the theatres we know nowadays. They had a more exclusive audience. The cheapest seat cost sixpence. However, in the public theatre, a seat in the galleries cost two pence or a single pence to stand on the yard.

Elizabethan playhouses

INTRODUCTION TO THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

The English Renaissance theatre, also known as modern English Theatre was based in London between the Reformation and the closure of the Theatres in 1642.

Mainly associated with the term “Elizabethan Theatre”, the English Renaissance Theatre is fact differenced in two terms “Elizabethan Theatre” and “Jacobean Theatre”. Still, it is true that the most famous plays were written during the Elizabethan period.

At the very beginning theatre was something for the commons. Mystery plays, which were part of religious festivals and represented biblical scenes, or the morality plays, which recreated stories which provided the audience a particular moral guidance, were performed in the streets as something everyone could enjoy.

Lately the foundation of companies of player that performed seasonally took place, resulting in the professional players that performed on the Elizabethan stage. So occurred that the mystery and morality plays were slowly substituted by those tours and in 1572 a law definitely stopped the work of those companies that lacked formal patronage by labelling them vagabonds, as a measure against the plague.

The authorities disliked those public performances and this led the local players to the suburbs, especially to the liberty of Southwark, to which dwellers could access but which remained outside the law.

Under Elisabeth everyone watched the same plays at the playhouses, the court enjoyed the same performances as the commons, but later on, with the development of private theatres, drama became more refined, focusing on the tastes and values of an upper-class audience, as it became a business.

            As the majority of the times it was the same playwright who directed, his decisions were fundamental. As he was the one having already an image on his mind, he was the one deciding not only who was going to act, and which entonation and body expression each actor should use in each moment, but also what was going to be the decoration and which costumes the actor would be wearing.

Something interesting about the cast selection in those days is that women were not aloud to perform. Being female actresses bounded, they were substituted by young boys dressing female costumes and who had a very high voice tune.

To make them look more like women they were obliged to wear white make up, which had a lead base that made it poisonous. This make up damaged the actor’s skin and that’s why many of them presented skin diseases and many other directly died.

Another curious fact about the performances is that many times the actors were part of the decoration. They played the role of trees or maybe the sun when there was no other way to put it on stage.

That gave a more realistic view of the play and helped giving those elements life, as for example in the case of personifications.