The English Renaissance theatre, also known as modern English Theatre was based in London
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.
