8-5RoleofTheatre

WHAT ROLE DID THEATRE AND DRAMA SERVE IN ELIZABETHAN ENGLAND? WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ELIZABETHAN THEATRES AND DRAMA? //Answer prepared by Maddie L// There are many aspects of Elizabethan Performances, explains the Shakespeare Theatre website. There is speech or the way people speak. Proper Elizabethan language is not modern English or an English accent. You will rarely hear proper Elizabethan language. The pronunciations are very different. The “R” sound in mother is more like “ARRR”. There is also different vocabulary like anon means until later and morrow means day. The grammar is different as well. People would use lots of words instead of just one. Forms of address were also changed. The Elizabethans had a very socially stratified society. People would call each other different things based on social status, familiarity, and age. Insults and cursing were varied and creative. Music was another aspect of Elizabethan theatre, along with dance, swordplay, costume, set design, and general theatricals. Stages were also different back then, say the notes in //A Midsummer Night’s Dream//. They did not drop curtains to show the beginning of a new scene in a different time or place. Shakespeare and many other playwrights of that time signaled a change in time and place to the audience by having every character exit and the people in the next scene enter or reenter. Sometimes they could just use different props to show a change in place. They had no movable scenery though. Playwrights didn’t have to have a specific place or time for all the parts of their plays. Overall, the stages were mostly bare, but they had the occasional rock or mossy bank or tomb. The actors didn’t have to just stay on the stage either. They could go underneath the stage or up in the gallery. The biggest difference between our theatre and Shakespeare’s is that female roles were played by men. Elizabethan theatre and drama was entertainment, and still is. Theatre and drama was a significant part of the culture. The theatre started in town squares by actors acting skits. It then was acted out in great open air amphitheatres, and escaladed into indoor theaters called playhouses. “The theatres were classified into two broad categories: ‘private’ (indoor) or public (outdoor, i.e., with at least a portion of its roof open to the elements),” states the book, //Shakespeare Script, Stage, Screen//. All people came to the theatres, the upper class nobility and lower class commoners, except the Puritans. Queen Elizabeth I even loved watching plays, but she generally had them performed in indoor playhouses. Theatre was a huge industry in the Elizabethan era. Works Cited Bevington, David, Anne Marie Welsh, and Micheal Greenwald. //Shakespeare Script, Stage, Screen//. New York: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006. Print. Gray, Terry. "Theatre." //Mr. William Shakespeare and the Internet//. 02 Feb 2009. 12 Apr 2009 .

Shakespeare, William, Barbara Mowat, and Pual Werstine. //A Midsummer Night's Dream//. New York: Washington Square Press, 1993. Print.