Online Shakespeare

Contents

Costumes and Sets in Shakespearean Theatre

THE THEATRES

The first theatres for Elizabethan drama were of two kinds and both were makeshift: the Inn-yards and Great Halls. From what we understand, despite the example of ancient Greece and Rome, there were no specially-designed buildings for presenting plays until the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

Inn Yards:

In mediaeval times plays were performed on carts that the players pushed around from village to village; the actors were known as 'Strolling Players' because they walked or 'strolled' round from place to place, setting up their cart as a stage in the market place or the village square. They were actors, tumblers, jugglers, all rolled into one: they performed plays, they walked on stilts, they juggled, they created slapstick scenes - anything to please, to entertain and, of course, to earn themselves not only applause but money on which to live. At the end of their performance they called upon the audience to be generous and went round with their hats collecting whatever was thrown to them. If their performance pleased the crowd they would be well rewarded; if they did badly they would not have much for supper that night. Life was pretty hard and rewards unreliable for actors.

Gradually, innkeepers learned that business improved whenever Players came to town; entertainment in those days was not easily come by and the arrival of the Players brought everyone together. Labourers and their families rubbed shoulders with farmers and foremen as they all went to watch the plays. Thus, the innkeepers began to offer the shelter of their inn-yards for performances and the Players would stand their carts at one end of the inn-yard whilst the local audience stood around to watch, buying their ale and mead and treating it very much as a festive occasion. 

It was from this that a more involved role of inns developed: a temporary stage would be erected at one end of the yard and the audience would gather, not only in the yard itself, but would be able to pay for a view, perhaps even a seat inside the inn by a window overlooking the yard. Many of these inns had tiers of galleries all round the yard and some of them became almost like permanent theatres, at least for a while. Most such inns have long disappeared.

Great Halls:

More refined performances took place in the great halls of noblemen's houses, of the Inns of Court, or of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges. In 1603 during the Great Plague, the King and his Court left London to stay at Hampton Court Palace and there Shakespeare's company performed their plays to entertain them. 
The Great Halls were, again, make-shift theatres and the Players would act in such places by invitation. A screen would be erected at one end of the hall and behind it there would be room for the actors to dress; in front, they would perform their play. In general, these would be more serious performances, often in celebration of a special occasion.

Advantages & disadvantages:

Outdoor Theatres:

The Fortune theatre - how it looked

In 1575 the London authorities imposed a Code of Practice upon the Players which so displeased them that they withdrew outside the City boundaries. The following year the first custom-made London theatre, appropriately called 'The Theatre' was built in Finsbury Fields and the next year, 1577, The Curtain was built in the same area. Finsbury, now a bustling part of London, was then almost a country area but within easy reach of the City. These two theatres were so successful that ten years later another spate of building began, but this time across the river on Bankside, which gradually became a theatre centre. In 1587 The Rose was built, in 1595 The Swan, in 1599 The Globe and in 1600 The Fortune, all in the same vicinity.

A lot of our knowledge of Shakespeare and his times is gathered from snippets of information all pooled together. Perhaps the most important piece of evidence is an extant copy of a very detailed agreement made between the builder of the Fortune Theatre, one Peter Street 'citizen and carpenter of London' and Philip Henslow and Edward Alleyn. This agreement specifies all sorts of details about the theatre and in particular establishes its measurements:

"The frame of the said house to be set square and to contain four-score foot [one foot is equal to 30 cm and a 'score' is twenty] of lawful assize every way square without and fifty five foot of like assize square every way with in... With a Stage and a Tiring-house to be made, erected and set up within the said frame, with a shadow or cover over the said stage, which stage shall be placed and set ... in such sort as is prefigured in a plot thereof drawn... And which stage shall contain in length forty and three foot of lawful assize, and in breadth to extend to the middle of the yard of the said house"

A fairly close representation of the Fortune can thus be made. Although the Fortune is of less interest than Shakespeare's Globe, it helps to build up the general picture of the kind of theatre in which Shakespeare's plays were first performed.

It is believed that Elizabethan theatres were in general, round, square or octagonal with equal sides. This theory is supported by both the specifications for the Fortune Theatre (above) and also by Shakespeare's words in the Prologue to Henry V:

"pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold 
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?"

The words "this cockpit" and "this wooden O" possibly indicate Shakespeare's awareness of the shape of his theatre; "this unworthy scaffold" may be reminiscent of the makeshift stages of earlier periods. It also appears that the sides were of equal length; it is believed that the Globe was a 24-sided polygon and we know from the specifications quoted above that the Fortune was square.

Theatres were in effect open-air - buildings surrounded an open yard (like the Inn-Yards) with a stage at one end, jutting out into the audience to about half the depth of the theatre; the width was considerably more. Around three sides of the yard were three tiers (or galleries) where wealthier or socially-superior members of the audience sat; the rest of the audience stood in the open yard around the stage and were known as 'the Groundlings'. It was the Groundlings whose presence most impinged upon the Players for they were close to the stage. Shakespeare however, never insulted his audience for he knew they were the lifeblood of the theatre. Some of his contemporaries were less kindly ; Ben Jonson, for instance, castigated the Groundlings in one of his plays, despising the:

"popular applause
Or foamy praise that drops from common jaws,
and John Marston objected to coming too close to the common audience where he maintained he would be, "choked/With the stench of garlic ... pasted to the balmy jacket of a beer- brewer" "

This 'common audience' paid dearly for its entertainment. It cost a penny to get into the theatre and prices were accumulative, so that for a further penny you could sit in the "twopenny gallery" on the top tier and for more pennies still you could get into one of the lower galleries. The Groundling paying his penny would be spending the better part of a day's wages to go to the theatre.

Despite the relative smallness of the theatre historians estimate that around 2500 people could have been accommodated inside. Elizabethans were smaller than we are today and had shorter legs which enabled them to fit into more cramped conditions.

Because of its shape the stage was known as an 'apron stage', 'thrust stage' or 'three-quarters round'. This type of stage generally created a sense of greater intimacy, as if the performance were occurring in the midst of the auditorium, while still allowing for illusionist effects. It was raised a metre or so above the ground and surrounded on three sides by the audience. The main stage had doors on each side at the back and between these doors was a small curtained recess - the inner stage. Unlike the main stage it was possible to curtain this recess off because it was simply like a cupboard in the back of the stage. Above this recess was the upper stage with a balcony and perhaps a small gallery above that. The main stage was hollow and there was access from below through various and probably quite numerous trapdoors. Although theatres were open to the elements, galleries were thatched and there was a thatched roof over the back part of the stage, known as the shadow or heavens; the front of the stage was open to the weather; if it rained the actors, like the groundlings, got wet. Shakespearean plays however were often presented during the warmer months. In 1613 a cannon, discharged during a performance of Shakespeare's Henry VIII, set fire to the thatched roof of the Globe Theatre and destroyed the building.  

The type of stage used had much to do with the form of Shakespeare's plays. Because it was open and free, it permitted quick changes and rapid action. As a result 'Antony and Cleopatra' has more than 40 changes of scene. The outer stage, projecting into the audience, encouraged speechmaking. This may be the reason for the long and impassioned speeches of the plays.
With no women actors, men made up as women seemed somehow natural. With no stage lighting and with the daytime sky above, the author had to write speeches about the time, season and weather of the play (see The Works). There are more than 40 such speeches in 'Macbeth'. The actors were close to the audience; the groundlings were close to the aristocrats. Shakespeare had to appeal to them all. He mixed horseplay with philosophy and coarseness with poetry.

Indoor theatres:

With the growth of outdoor theatres, a number of indoor ones were built for the companies of Boy Actors. These theatres developed from the pattern of the Great Halls. They were smaller than outdoor theatres and, like the Halls themselves, were rectangular, roofed and lit by candles. They were attended by a somewhat different class of audience. Exclusivity was the order of the day with admission charges reflecting the higher social standing of the audience. Compared to the outdoor theatres' 2500 audience, they housed just 700 spectators or thereabouts. Three years before construction of The Globe in 1599 James Burbage had converted an old monastery in London to that of the Blackfriars Theatre on order to house performances by a Boys' Company. Various difficulties followed, however and when Burbage died in 1597 it had still not been used for its intended purpose. His sons, Richard and Cuthbert then formed a syndicate and by 1600 the 'Children of the Chapel', a company of Boy Actors, was giving regular performances there. Then in 1608 the Children's Companies were suppressed and the Blackfriars Theatre was taken over for winter performances by Shakespeare's company, which since the accession of James I in 1603 had been known as the King's Company. In the outdoor theatres all performances took place in the afternoons - 15:00 in the summer and 14:00 in the winter, but even this on a dreary English winter day would mean that it would be dark and cold before the play was over. Thus, the Blackfriars Theatre was an important acquisition for Shakespeare and his Company and it is probable that several of his later plays were written for performance there.

Performances and theatre sets

The ten open air amphitheatres which existed in Shakespeare's time, their locations and dates:

The five hall Playhouses which existed in Shakespeare's time, their locations and dates:

City inns used for plays between the years 1576 and 1594 either in yards or indoors:

Search this Web Site with

Performances and theatre sets

Actors who played in Shakespeare's theatre

Contents