Chapter 6: the Golden Ages, Part 1
Renaissance Theatre
The Roman Empire fell over several generations, and many people of the Roman Empire fled to the east as the empire crumbled. As they fled, the people took with them their literature, art, and knowledge. As a result, the Byzantine Empire became a stockpile of European treasures while the continent of Europe passed through the Dark and Middle Ages.
Then in 1453 A.D., the head of the Byzantine Empire, the city of Constantinople, fell. The flow of knowledge and art shifted back toward Europe, bringing many scholars and manuscripts to Italy. Included in this treasure of art and science, Greek and Roman plays returned.
In 1465, the printing press was introduced in Italy. This provided the opportunity for mass production and mass dissemination of the classical texts. All of the Greek and Roman plays (then-known) were published between 1472 and 1518.
The classical texts were printed in Latin, the language of the scholars and the Church. However, these texts provided models for the writers of the day, and new works began to appear following the patterns and ideas developed by the Greeks and Romans.
Because the Latin texts provided models for development of theatre in the various countries of Europe, and because different countries were influenced differently by the classical texts, the theatre of each country developed its own unique characteristics.
Neoclassicism
As the classical texts were being rediscovered in Italy (and then in Europe), a philosophy developed in Renaissance thinking which honored and adopted the teaching of the Greek and Roman authors. The authority of the ancient texts developed into what is now called the Neoclassical Ideal. The Ideal was fully developed in Italy by 1570 and, from there, it spread throughout Europe.
Aristotle’s The Poetics and Horace’s Art of Poetry were the ancient texts most referenced by the Renaissance artists. Italian scholars added their own interpretations, developing commentaries for the aspiring artists of their day. Scaliger and Castelvetro both wrote works of dramatic criticism worthy of consideration by the theatre student.
The Neoclassical Ideal was based primarily on two concepts taken from Aristotle and Horace – Verisimilitude and the Unities.
Verisimilitude, or the appearance of truth, can be discussed in terms of three components. First, there is Reality. For the dramatist, this meant restricting one’s playwrighting to only those events that could actually happen in real life. Second, there is Morality. Not only should the playwright show events that could happen in real life, the playwright was urged to select stories and events which showed (or educated) the audiences regarding preferred moral behaviors and beliefs. Third, there is Generality. According to Aristotle, this is the key to truth.
Truth, for the Neoclassicist, was defined as those typical and normative traits which are discoverable through the rational and systematic examination of phenomena, whether natural or man-made. In other words, truth was defined as the absolute which remained after all variables had been identified and removed. Truth was the General.
The concept of verisimilitude, therefore, urged playwrights to write plays which took events from real life, selecting and organizing those events to demonstrate moral patterns, and which demonstrated the overarching truths of the universe and of human existence.
The second concept of the Neoclassical Ideal dealt with the unities of Time, Place, and Action. In terms of Time, the play script should deal with an action which takes place within a single, 24-hour period. In terms of Place, the play script should have an action that takes place in a single location, or in several locations which are all within a single day’s journey. A play could have scenes inside and outside a character’s home, or within a single town, so long as the characters could conceivably reach each location within a single, 24-hour period. And, in terms of Action, the play should have only one storyline or action.
These concepts of Verisimilitude and the Unities quickly moved from mere suggestions for effective drama to requirements for acceptable drama. The Ideal quickly became Law.
Commedia dell'arte
The Neoclassical Ideal was the academic and artistic goal; Commedia was popular with the common people.
Commedia was a unique phenomenon. Historians are not certain how commedia came into existence.
One theory is that commedia was the result of surviving Roman actors banding together in small groups, moving from village to village during the Middle Ages, evolving their own particular style of performance. If not the work of surviving Roman actors, passing their knowledge and skills to generation after generation, commedia may have developed from improvisations from the plays of Plautus and Terence which continued to be performed in small villages in Italy during the Middle Ages.
Another theory is that performers in the Byzantine Empire fled to Europe when Constantinople fell in 1453.
Regardless of its origins, commedia dell’arte was a unique style of performance with two major characteristics.
First, the plays had no scripts as we know them today. All performances were improvised around a story which the actors knew well. The performance was improvised and new each time; the story the actors performed had been performed hundreds of times.
Second, the performances utilized stock characters. A stock character is a stereotypical character which shows up in different plays or stories. There is always a father-figure. In commedia, he was Pantalone. Pantalone usually had a friend who was an educated scholar, Dottore. Pantalone usually had another friend who was an experienced soldier or warrior, Capitano.
Commedia performances were typically comedies. Pantalone was often greedy, intrusive, and lascivious. Dottore often spouted Latin phrases that even he didn’t understand. And Capitano typically was cowardly when pressed to prove his courage.
In addition, commedia performances almost always included a pair of young lovers and a collection of comic servants. The most famous of these comic servants is Arlecchino, or Harlequin. It was the comic servant, Arlecchino, who would serve as the most intelligent character in the play, oftentimes speaking directly to the audience.
The stock figures of Pantalone, Dottore, Capitano, and the servants were always masked. Indeed, over time, the masks and costumes became very conventionalized and standardized. Pantalone wore a red tunic, a black cloak, and a skullcap. Dottore was always dressed in a comic version of academic robes. Capitano was typically dressed in some form of warrior’s costume or uniform. Their half-masks included white hair for Pantalone and a large mustache for Capitano.
Commedia companies were like a family. They would travel together (typically the lead actor, who played Pantalone, would also serve as the director and manager) and perform together. As older actors retired, and younger actors aged, the young lovers and servant actors found themselves taking over the roles of Pantalone, Dottore, and Capitano.
Commedia scripts did not exist as we know them. Typically, an outline of the story being performed would be posted just offstage where the actors could refresh their memories regarding what scene was next. Certain pieces of stage business, which were effective for getting a laugh, would be repeated in later performances. These bits of business were called lazzi, and an actor would develop a full repertoire of them.
Later playwrights, like Carlo Goldoni, wrote scripts based upon commedia dell’arte performances. Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters is an example of what commedia performances may have been like.
The Spanish Golden Age
part by the Moorish occupation. Ferdinand and Isabella united Aragon and Castille in 1479, and brought together most of the peninsula into a single nation by 1492. Seeking to convert the new nation to Christianity, Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Moor and the Jew and initiated the Inquisition.
Religious dramas were introduced to promote Christianity and educate the masses. These dramas were much like those performed elsewhere in Europe, until they began to take on their own unique characteristics after 1550. The Spanish version of the cycle play was the autos sacramentales.
Autos sacramentales were a mixture of morality and cycle plays. The dramas included human and supernatural characters interrelating with allegorical figures such as Sin, Beauty, and Grace. The plays were performed on carros, wheeled wagons, which moved about the towns from location to location.
During this time period also, the relations between Spain and Italy were strong, and the classical texts being widely distributed in Italy began to have great influence in Spain as well.
The century from 1580 to 1680 is referred to as the Spanish Golden Age. This age saw the dramatic genius of such writers as Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderon among others. By 1700, approximately 30,000 plays had been written and performed. However, with Spanish financial and political power failing, and with the death of Calderon in 1681, the impressive period of dramatic production faded to a close.
Lope de Vega
Lope Felix de Vega Carpio was born in 1562. He was a literary prodigy, able to read and write both Spanish and Latin at the age of five. He eventually attended college, and then joined the military.
Lope de Vega began writing plays at a young age, and continued writing dramas and poetry throughout his life. His life was filled with passion, as he moved from one love affair to another. He survived the English defeat of the Spanish Armada. And, late in life, he joined the priesthood.
Estimates of his total dramatic output range from 1,800 to 2,200 plays over the span of his lifetime. Approximately 500 plays have survived.
Fuente Ovejuna – The inhabitants of a small village live out their meager lives under the oppression of a feudal lord and his military garrison. One day, the lord rapes a young woman of the village. The elder men of the village meet secretly that night, and bemoan their impotence in the face of the military might of the garrison. The young woman comes to the secret meeting, still wearing her torn dress and still stained from the rape. She confronts the men who should, by right and honor, avenge her rape. They hang their heads in shame became they can do nothing. But the next morning, the lord is found murdered. The soldiers move into the village and begin questioning and torturing the villages. No one will tell the soldiers anything. In the end, the village is saved through the intervention of the king.
Lope de Vega’s plays are well structured and end happily. He employed effective plot devices to arouse, sustain, and satisfy his audience’s interest. He developed well-rounded characters, both male and female, from all levels of society. And he wrote in both prose and verse.
Lope de Vega died in 1635.
Pedro Calderon
Born in 1600, Pedro Calderon de la Barca grew to prominence as a fine playwright. He challenged the dominance of Lope de Vega, and eventually eclipsed de Vega’s popularity.
The primary contribution of Pedro Calderon to Spanish theatre was through the autos sacramentales. In fact, he is credited with perfecting the form. Devotion to the Cross, written in 1633, is considered his finest work in this genre.
Calderon spent most of his life in secular society, but he was always close to the Church. Even his secular plays addressed the moral issues of the day. In most of his secular plays, Calderon wrestled with conflicting ideas of honor and duty. In Life is a Dream, he also engaged the concept of free will and predestination.
Life is a Dream – Years before the play opens, the King of Poland had a son of whom the astrologers predicted that he would become a vicious tyrant, eventually deposing his own father to ascend to the throne. Fearing the predictions, but unwilling to kill his own son, the king had the boy imprisoned in the mountains with only a single nobleman as his keeper and tutor. At the beginning of the main action, the King of Poland announces that his son, believed to have died at birth, is alive, and he orders that his son be returned to the palace to test the predictions of the astrologers. The boy is drugged, brought to the palace, and dressed in fine clothing. When he awakens, he is told that he is the crown prince. He is told why he has been imprisoned for so long. In his rage, and lacking training in social behaviors and etiquette, he kills a servant and nearly rapes a young maid. The king orders that he be drugged and returned to his prison. When he awakes in his prison cell again, he is told that he has merely been asleep – the adventure in the palace as the prince was just a dream. The peasants of the land, however, learning that a true heir to the throne lives in prison, revolt and free him from his cell. He accepts their call to leadership, and he leads the rebellion against his own father. In a final confrontation with the king, the son withholds the killing blow. He is afraid that this too is all just a dream, that he will awaken again at any moment back in his cell in the mountains, and so he determines to live his life honorably and decently.
Calderon entered the priesthood in 1651. He continued to write autos sacramentales until his death in 1681. With his death, the Spanish Golden Age of drama faded.
Elizabethan Theatre
Conflicts and wars on the British Isles during the late Middle Ages delayed the advent of Renaissance in England. Henry VII ascended the throne of England in 1485. He invited scholars and artists from Italy into his court, and they brought with them Humanist philosophy and Renaissance theatre and drama.
However, the theatre practices of the Middle Ages maintained their popularity with the English audiences. Thus, English dramas written during this time demonstrate the one influenced by the other.
Restrictions on performances within London prompted dramatists to take their business across the river, outside city limits. The theater buildings they constructed were somewhat circular in nature and open in the center for the light of day to illuminate the stage. Into this open center, the stages themselves were thrust. This provided an open staging with audience on at least three sides.
The shift from cycle play (each playlet on a separate cart) to the permanent theatre stage required a shift in playwrighting. Settings could no longer be designed for any particular scene; the playwrights utilized the technique of spoken décor (where the location and time of day are provided in the dialogue of the characters).
Costuming and mannerisms onstage were contemporary. There was little attempt to provide historically accurate dress or behaviors. The focus was on the text of the play, and the playwrights rose to the challenge. Three Elizabethan playwrights of note were Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson.
Chrisopher Marlowe
The diverse threads of Medieval and Renaissance drama came together in the 1580s, in England, mostly through the work of four young playwrights known as the 'University Wits.' They were Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, John Lyly, and Robert Greene.
Christopher Marlowe was born in 1564. He became a gifted playwright with a particular talent for taking divergent historical events and tying them together into a dramatic action. The playwrighting skills of selecting, arranging, and telescoping were mastered by Marlowe.
Marlowe wrote numerous plays. His plays tended to focus on a primary agent moving through an episodic series of events toward an eventual outcome. A fine example of Marlowe’s work is found in Doctor Faustus, written about 1588.
Doctor Faustus – In the beginning of the story, Doctor Faustus is deciding upon a career, a vocation for his life. He considers philosophy and medicine, among other vocations, and decides upon necromancy (magic). Though warned by friends not to stray from the safety and teachings of the Church, Faustus conjures a devil who eventually negotiates a contract between Faustus and Lucifer. Faustus will receive seven years of power in exchange for his eternal soul. Faustus is a man of science; he does not believe in heaven or hell, or even the existence of his eternal soul. The play then follows Faustus through various episodes, and diverse locations, as he moves through the seven-year period toward his doom. At several points, he considers repentance, but never follows through. In the final scene, the gates of hell are opened and devils drag him down into the depths.
Christopher Marlowe’s life was often as exciting as his dramas. He died in 1593 in a bar fight. Many believed (and still believe) that his death was an elaborate assassination.
He was a brilliant playwright whose work laid the foundation for later writers, including William Shakespeare.
William Shakespeare
Born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564, William Shakespeare would become known as the greatest playwright of all time.
The details of his early life are few, and there are several periods of “lost years” in which the biographical record says nothing. It is believed that he attended grammar school in Stratford, where he would have been taught Latin. This education would have exposed him to the classical works of the Greeks and Romans: history, philosophy, science, and the literary arts.
Despite the gaps in the historical record, William Shakespeare was an established actor by 1592. Eventually he became involved in theatre as an actor, playwright, and producer (having part ownerships in both acting companies and in theater buildings). He was involved in theatre at all levels of production.
The total output of his playwrighting activities is in debate. Most scholars will admit to 36 plays written by Shakespeare; some scholars claim his authorship of 38 plays (Henry VIII and Two Noble Kinsmen may have been written by John Fletcher). However, his plays span the full range of Elizabethan drama: comedies, tragedies, and histories. And in each category, he produced multiple masterpieces.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – This whimsical comedy follows the misadventures of two young couples. Lysander loves Hermia, and the two lovers wish to marry. However, Hermia’s father prefers Demetrius as the better future husband, and he seeks the power of the Duke to enforce his wishes upon his daughter. Hermia’s friend, Helena, loves Demetrius. Given one last night before the Duke enforces the will of the parent upon the child, Hermia and Lysander escape into the forest to elope. Helena informs Demetrius of Hermia’s flight in the hope of winning his love for herself. But Demetrius chases after the young couple, which prompts Helena to race into the forest as well. Meanwhile, the king and queen of the fairies have arrived in the forest for their own reasons, and the king of the fairies, Oberon, decides to intervene in the affairs of the four young lovers. Comedy ensues when Oberon’s messenger, Puck, mistakenly puts magic drops in the eyes of the wrong lovers, confusing matters by prompting both young men to love Helena instead of Hermia. As with all great comedies, the lovers are eventually untangled and properly matched in time for the play to end happily.
Hamlet – Prince Hamlet returns from school for the funeral of his father, only to find his mother quickly married to his uncle, Claudius, who has assumed the throne. Late one night, early in the play, Prince Hamlet receives the visitation of a ghost claiming to be Hamlet’s father. The apparition tells him that Claudius killed his father, and the ghost urges Hamlet to avenge his father’s death. In the following scenes, Hamlet shifts between full commitment to vengeance and overwhelming doubt. Through a play-within-a-play technique, Shakespeare allows Hamlet the certainty he desires. But this certainly alerts Claudius of Hamlet’s suspicions. The play ends with a stage littered with bodies, including those of Claudius, Gertrude (Hamlet’s mother), and Hamlet himself.
Henry V – The play follows the young king Henry as he mobilizes his troops for a war against France. The Battle of Agincourt was a significant victory for the English, and resulted in a marriage between Henry and Katherine of France.
Shakespeare borrowed his story ideas from a wide variety of sources, yet his finished plays have made the original stories distinctly his own. His characters are drawn from all walks of life, and they demonstrate a depth of characterization which continues to draw the attention of actors (both novice and professional). He had a tremendous understanding of human psychology (both male and female), centuries before psychology was an established science.
His language continues to amaze scholars. He mastered both verse and prose styles. He fit the language of the character to its social status and education. He created worlds with mere words.
William Shakespeare died in 1616.
Ben Jonson
If there had never been a William Shakespeare, the world would be more familiar with the work of Ben Jonson. With Shakespeare out of the picture, Jonson was clearly the finest playwright of the Elizabethan theatre. He was born in 1572, approximately eight years after Shakespeare.
Ben Jonson is the one who popularized the comedy of humors.
In the sixteenth century, there was a common belief that there were four major fluids in the human body. Each fluid influenced a particular mindset or temperament. (The four temperaments can be found still influencing psychological thought even today.) The four fluids were referred to as humors; they were blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm.
Blood promoted optimism. From the Latin word for blood, sanguis, we get the English word, sanguine, which we use to describe someone who is cheerful, hopeful, or confident. Yellow bile promoted anger. Black bile promoted melancholia. And phlegm promoted lethargy. Healthy individuals were those whose 'humors' were maintained in balance.
Ben Jonson used this scientific theory and developed numerous comic scripts revolving around characters whose 'humors' were out of balance. Jonson is credited overall with 28 plays.
Volpone – Volpone is a greedy man who, with his servant, develop a scheme to increase their wealth and influence. Volpone takes to his bed and appears to be near death. His servant lets out the word that he is very wealthy and, close to death, has no heir to whom he can will his vast estate. Several men of the town come to visit Volpone, each bearing a gift of some kind, in the hopes of winning Volpone’s favor. One gentleman is even persuaded to name Volpone as his heir, disowning his own son, in the hopes that Volpone will name him as Volpone’s heir in like fashion. Volpone disguises himself and goes around in public, mocking the very men whom he has duped. And then he spies a beautiful young woman, married to an older man who Volpone wants to con as well. Instead of gifts, however, Volpone schemes to have the old husband give his wife to Volpone for a night. Eventually, the entire scheme of plots and counterplots is sorted out in a court of law. Volpone is taken off to prison, his servant is given over to slavery, and the wicked older husband is renounced publicly as his young bride is returned, safely, to her family.
Jonson’s development of comedy of humors capitalized on one of the major trends of his society. He held up to his society a mirror, as it were, which provided a comic reflection of their beliefs and culture. He died in 1637.