8-3RoleofTheatre

=What Role Did Theater and Drama Serve in Elizabethan England? What are the Characteristics of Elizabethan Theater and Drama?=

//Prepared by Emily B.//

Drama was very significant in Elizabethan England. However, it was not always this way. Before Queen Elizabeth I, drama and the performing arts were not very popular at all. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, England underwent a dramatic change in priorities. The importance of art and literature became highly prevalent since the Queen loved plays and drama. Elizabethan drama placed its roots in the church. Since all services were held in Latin, a language common people did not speak, priests acted out the stories of the bible in order for the people to understand them. Beginning in church behind the altar, plays grew more popular as more people wanted to see them. When there were not enough priests to fill the roles, commoners were given parts. Eventually, the common people took over the plays and the church became less involved. According to the website Elizabethan-Era.org, “The Church had lost some of the great power it had once held over Europe, and people were again free to look back upon the scholars and writers of Greece and Rome.” From the sudden heightening of plays and the performing arts, playwrights lifted Elizabethan theater to new levels. Men like Shakespeare dared to write plays about real people in a variety of real situations. Plays by playwrights such as Euripides, Plautus, and Seneca, which were once banned by the Church, were once again being read and performed. Through this, Shakespeare produced plays that were far more sophisticated and entertaining than any plays of the past. Audiences expressed their enjoyment by demanding more and more plays. The public shared a great deal of interest in the theaters and playwrights of this time. Though the main role of these plays were entertainment, the public enjoyed them because the importance it had through expression of freedom, occupation, and bringing back the past. (16th Century England, pgs 107-108) The first theatre in England was called “The Theatre”, eventually giving its name to all buildings of its kind. As dictated in Tudor England (49) “The design of this theater was basically wooden and with many straight sides making up a rough circle of walls.” It also had three galleries full of seating stacked one above another. The main area of the theatre was open to the sky, the basic amphitheater style, with a large yard for spectators to stand and watch the action if they could not afford a seat. In 1599, the Theatre was torn down and a new playhouse was built which they named The Globe. The Globe is famously remembered as the theatre in which many of Shakespeare’s plays were first performed. The growth of theater during the Elizabethan Era was an unprecedented leap in culture, and set the stage for plays and theater today.