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.