essay on renaissance drama

Renaissance Drama in English Literature: Notes on Characteristics & Themes

Back to: History of English Literature All Ages – Summary & Notes

Table of Contents

Main Features

• University Wits: Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, George peel, Thomas Nashe and Thomas Lodge. The generation was educated at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
• They used the poetry to make theatre, breathe life into dead classical models and bring a new audience to the issues and conflicts which the stage could dramatize.
• Marlowe has been described as a sexual-political thinker.
• He wrote one of the renowned work Dr Faustus .
• During the age, comedy and tragedy were the two main types of drama.
• Both these genres were derived from Latin sources
• Comedy: from the works of Terence and Plautus.
• Tragedy: from the  Seneca.
• First comedy: Ralph Roister Doister by Nicholas Udall (1552).
• First tragedy: Gorboduc by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville.
• Gorboduc replaced the awkward distancing of characters speaking in rhymed verse with the blank verse that became a standard form of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama .
• Interludes, morality plays and mystery plays contributed to the development of Renaissance drama.
• The Four PP by John Haywood was a link between later medieval morality plays and 16th-century theatre. 

• Fixed theatres were established in London which was open to the sky.
• Daytime performances started taking place.
• The thrust stage was pushed out into the audience who stood around it on three sides.
• The development of theatre paved the way for the growth of an acting culture.
• Around 12000 new words were introduced in the English language from more than 50 languages.
• Inkhorn Controversy came into existence- Some writers believed that Greek and Latin words were better than the English words while some others like John Cheke felt that such words were not a natural part of English.

• Doctor Faustus

Christopher Marlowe

• Literature Notes
• The Renaissance Theater
• Play Summary
• About Doctor Faustus
• Character List
• Summary and Analysis
• Christopher Marlowe Biography
• Critical Essays
• Faustus — Medieval or Renaissance Hero
• Faustus as Dramatic Character
• The Character of Mephistophilis and the Concept of Hell
• Servant-Master Relationship in Doctor Faustus
• Motif of the Fall
• The Appetites
• Style — Marlowe's Mighty Line
• Stage Performance
• Textual Problems
• Essay Questions
• Cite this Literature Note

Critical Essays The Renaissance Theater

The medieval drama had been an amateur endeavor presented either by the clergy or members of the various trade guilds. The performers were not professional actors, but ordinary citizens who acted only in their spare time. With the centralization of the population in the cities during the later part of the Middle Ages, the interest in secular drama began to increase.

At the end of the medieval period, when there were still some guild productions, a rivalry developed between the amateur actor and the new professional actor which stimulated interest in the art of acting. In the sixteenth century, the Elizabethan stage became almost wholly professional and public. Professional groups were formed which charged admission fees to allow audiences to witness their performances. The new theater groups devoted their entire time to the art and craft of play producing. The art of acting be-came a profession during the Elizabethan period which would furnish a good livelihood for the actor. Likewise, the production of plays at this time was a good financial venture.

Because of the Act of 1545, which classed any person not a member of a guild as a vagabond and subject to arrest, the groups of actors were exposed to a new danger since many of them were no longer members of a guild and were devoting themselves to traveling about the country and acting. In order to save themselves from being arrested, many of the actors put themselves under the patronage of an important person. Then they could be called a servant of this person and would be free of the charge of being a vagabond. Although many times the relationship between actors and patrons was only nominal, there were a few of these patrons who did give some financial assistance to the actors.

Late in the century, Queen Elizabeth gave permission for a group of actors to perform in London in spite of local rules against actors. Elizabeth stipulated that they could act in London as long as their performances met the approval of the Master of the Revels. By the end of the century, there were always a number of groups of companies playing in London and also others touring the outlying districts.

The actors, usually young males, organized themselves into companies in which each of them would own a certain number of shares. These companies were cooperative and self-governing and divided the profit from the performances. The company would either lease or build its own theater in which to perform, hire men to play the minor parts, and get young apprentice boys to play the female parts in the plays. The important members of the company usually played definite types of characters. For example, Richard Burbage would always play the leading tragic roles, whereas such actors as William Kempe and Robert Armin would play the comic roles.

Plays were often written for a particular troupe or company, and often at their direction. For example, a playwright might read the first act to the members of the company and then accept their criticism and suggestions for changes. Consequently, many plays might be considered as the combined effort of dramatists and actors.

The method of acting was peculiar to the Elizabethan period. The actors expressed themselves in a highly operatic manner with flamboyant expressions. The gestures were stylized according to certain rhetorical traditions. Rhetoric books of the time told exactly how to use one's hands to express fear or anger or other emotional states.

The Elizabethan stage was a "presentational theater" in that there was no attempt to persuade the audience that they were not in a theater and no attempt was made to create any dramatic illusions because there was very little scenery. Also, the actors could speak directly to the audience; the soliloquy, a speech spoken directly to the audience, was a typical characteristic of Elizabethan drama. Since the stage was relatively unadorned, the actors depended upon the visual color and pageantry of their elaborate costumes to give color to the play. Sometimes there was an attempt to wear historical costumes, but most often the actors wore decorative and elaborate Elizabethan dress.

The Elizabethan stage also was a repertory stage; that is, an actor would have memorized certain roles for a limited number of plays. Therefore, each company would present only a given number of plays at prescribed intervals. An incomparable record of the repertory system is Henslowe's diaries. Henslowe kept valuable records of the plays which were performed by the Admiral's company, with which he was associated from 1592 to 1597.

From Henslowe's records we have derived the following information about the repertory season. The plays were performed almost daily throughout the year except when the companies observed a Lenten suspension. Then oftentimes there was a summer break from mid-July to the beginning of October. In any two-week period, there would be eleven performances and only one would repeat a play. A play would never be presented on two consecutive days. Six out of the ten plays would be new works for that season, two would be carry-overs from the previous year, and two others would be older plays which had been revised. The alteration of plays was generally irregular. But with a new play, there seems to have been a general pattern of presentation. The play would be repeated several times after it had been first staged, then it would be acted two times a month for the first months and gradually would be repeated less frequently until in a year and a half it would generally fade from the repertory.

The Elizabethan theater building evolved from constructions that had previously been used for public entertainments — the bear-baiting ring, the innyard. The first plays were given in inns, where tables would be put together to function as a platform or stage. Then the guests would watch from the balcony of their rooms or from the innyard.

The first regular theater was constructed in 1576 by James Burbage and was called "The Theater." In the next thirty years, eight new theaters were built around London, mostly in the district of Shoreditch or Bankside. They were located in these districts because they were just outside the city limits and thus were not under the jurisdiction of the city council, which opposed the opening of theaters because of fire, sedition, and plague. The most important theaters which were built in this period were the "Curtain" in 1577, the "Rose" in 1587 , the "Swan" in 1595 , the "Globe" (Shakespeare's theater) in 1599, the "Fortune" in 1600, and the "Red Bull" in 1605 .

A few records have survived showing the architecture of the Elizabethan theater. There is one drawing by DeWitt showing the construction of the "Swan" theater. From this sketch, we know that the "Swan" was a three-tiered circular building with a large protruding platform extending out into the center of the enclosure. It was an open structure so that natural light entered through the top. The spectators sat in either the gallery around the sides or down in the "pit."

Considerable information has also been preserved concerning the design of the Globe theater. The "Globe" was octagonal in shape with a platform extending to the center of the theater. The stage had an inner stage which was used for special scenes. There was also a trapdoor in the platform (and sometimes another one in the concealed stage) which was used for the sudden appearance of ghosts and specters. Most of the action of a play would take place on this platform, which contained virtually no scenery.

The Elizabethan theater was an intimate theater since the actor was seldom farther away than forty feet from the audience. This close physical proximity provided for the maximum communication. The spectators were not only sitting in front of the stage but on three sides as well.

Previous Style — Marlowe's Mighty Line

Next Stage Performance

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication
• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health

Renaissance and Reformation

• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section English Tragedy

Introduction.

• Anthologies
• Performance
• Influences on English Renaissance Tragedy
• Revenge Tragedy
• Tragedy of State
• Domestic Tragedy
• Tragicomedy
• Major Critical Works
• Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, Gorboduc
• Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy
• Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus
• Anonymous, Arden of Faversham
• Elizabeth Cary, The Tragedy of Mariam
• Thomas Middleton, The Revenger’s Tragedy
• John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
• Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling
• John Ford, ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Christopher Marlowe
• English Renaissance Drama
• George Buchanan
• William Shakespeare

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Mining and Metallurgy
• Pilgrimage in Early Modern Catholicism
• Racialization in the Early Modern Period
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

English Tragedy by Garrett Sullivan , Tanya Pollard LAST REVIEWED: 05 May 2021 LAST MODIFIED: 23 March 2022 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195399301-0214

The English Renaissance produced some of the major tragic works in Western literature. While most readers associate this period with the plays of William Shakespeare, other playwrights such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Middleton, and John Webster also made enormous contributions to the flowering of the genre. This entry will largely exclude Shakespeare, whose works are admirably covered in the Oxford Bibliographies article by David Bevington (see William Shakespeare ). Most of the playwrights taken up here wrote for the professional playhouses in London between the late 1580s and early 1630s, although the London theater was not the only source of tragic literature: Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville’s Gorboduc was written and performed at the Inns of Court, while Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam is a closet drama, composed with no intention of public performance. Nevertheless, the tragic masterpieces of this era—works such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus , Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy , and Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi— were produced to serve flourishing theatrical enterprises in London’s public and private playhouses. Tragedy was widely believed to be the most elevated dramatic genre, dealing as it does with affairs of state as well as issues of life and death, fate and free will, social corruption and violent retribution, damnation and the possibility (or impossibility) of redemption. The dominant literary strain was that of revenge tragedy, with Kyd’s play providing a template built upon and modified by numerous others. At the same time, the genre was also capacious and flexible. “Domestic tragedies” like the anonymous Arden of Faversham centered not upon the court but the household and seemingly had little to do with affairs of state. Other works feature comic subplots (Middleton and Samuel Rowley’s The Changeling ) or a mordant black humor that borders on self-parody (Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy or John Ford’s ‘ Tis Pity She’s a Whore ). In this regard, English Renaissance tragedy is hardly monolithic. It is instead marked by a vibrancy and experimental energy that are still appreciable today. For information on bibliographies, reference works, and comprehensive literary histories, see the Oxford Bibliographies article on “ English Renaissance Drama ” by David Bevington.

Most general discussions of tragedy trace the genre from its classical origins in ancient Greece through to the present day, Aeschylus to Arthur Miller. Hand in hand with analysis of tragedies themselves are theoretical discussions of the genre, starting with Aristotle’s enduringly influential account, which introduced readers to notions of hamartia and catharsis and emphasized the “tragic” emotions of pity and terror. Poole 2005 , Wallace 2007 , and Bushnell 2008 all offer broad discussions of “tragedy” in literature and life, while Drakakis and Liebler 1998 and Nevitt and Pollard 2019 collect major theoretical statements about the genre. Smith and Sullivan 2010 and Watson 1990 emphasize Early Modern English tragedy, while Hopkins 2010 contributes to a fine series of critical guides centered upon individual works.

Bushnell, Rebecca. Tragedy: A Short Introduction . Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.

An overview of the evolution of tragedy as a theatrical genre from the classical period to the present.

Drakakis, John, and Naomi Liebler, eds. Tragedy . New York: Longman, 1998.

Useful collection of some of the major theoretical statements about the genre by the likes of Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Brecht, Freud, and Derrida.

Hopkins, Lisa, ed. ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore: A Critical Guide . London and New York: Continuum, 2010.

One of a strong new series called Continuum Renaissance Drama —other featured titles focus on Doctor Faustus and The Duchess of Malfi —that offer critical and performance histories as well as new interpretive essays.

Nevitt, Marcus, and Tanya Pollard, eds. Reader in Tragedy: An Anthology of Classical Criticism to Contemporary Theory . London: Bloomsbury, 2019.

Anthology of major texts on tragedy by writers ranging from Plato and Aristotle to 21st-century critics.

Poole, Adrian. Tragedy: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

DOI: 10.1093/actrade/9780192802354.001.0001

Accessible introduction to the history and conceptual breadth of tragedy.

Smith, Emma, and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr., eds. The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Tragedy . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

DOI: 10.1017/CCOL9780521519373

Newly commissioned essays on broad topics—e.g., “Tragedy, family and household” (pp. 17–29), “Renaissance tragedy on film: Defying mainstream Shakespeare” (pp. 116–131)—and individual works—e.g., “ The Revenger’s Tragedy : Original Sin and the allures of vengeance” (pp. 200–210).

Wallace, Jennifer. The Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

A wide-ranging introduction to tragedy that considers the relationship between tragic representation and tragic experience.

Watson, Robert N. “Tragedy.” In The Cambridge Companion to English Renaissance Drama . Edited by A. R. Braunmuller and Michael Hattaway, 292–343. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Rich and insightful essay that offers a theory and history of Renaissance tragedy, with additional discussion of specific tragedies of revenge and theodicy, including The Spanish Tragedy , Doctor Faustus , The Revenger’s Tragedy , and The Duchess of Malfi .

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Renaissance and Reformation »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Aemilia Lanyer
• Agrippa d’Aubigné
• Alberti, Leon Battista
• Alexander VI, Pope
• Andrea del Verrocchio
• Andrea Mantegna
• Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt
• Anne Boleyn
• Anne Bradstreet
• Aretino, Pietro
• Ariosto, Ludovico
• Art and Science
• Art, German
• Art in Renaissance England
• Art in Renaissance Florence
• Art in Renaissance Siena
• Art in Renaissance Venice
• Art Literature and Theory of Art
• Art of Poetry
• Art, Spanish
• Art, 16th- and 17th-Century Flemish
• Art, 17th-Century Dutch
• Artemisia Gentileschi
• Ascham, Roger
• Askew, Anne
• Astell, Mary
• Astrology, Alchemy, Magic
• Augustinianism in Renaissance Thought
• Autobiography and Life Writing
• Avignon Papacy
• Bacon, Francis
• Banking and Money
• Barbaro, Ermolao, the Younger
• Barbaro, Francesco
• Baron, Hans
• Baroque Art and Architecture in Italy
• Barzizza, Gasparino
• Bathsua Makin
• Beaufort, Margaret
• Bellarmine, Cardinal
• Bembo, Pietro
• Benito Arias Montano
• Bernardino of Siena, San
• Beroaldo, Filippo, the Elder
• Bessarion, Cardinal
• Biondo, Flavio
• Bishops, 1550–1700
• Bishops, 1400-1550
• Black Death and Plague: The Disease and Medical Thought
• Boccaccio, Giovanni
• Bohemia and Bohemian Crown Lands
• Borgia, Cesare
• Borgia, Lucrezia
• Borromeo, Cardinal Carlo
• Bosch, Hieronymous
• Bracciolini, Poggio
• Brahe, Tycho
• Bruegel, Pieter the Elder
• Bruni, Leonardo
• Bruno, Giordano
• Bucer, Martin
• Budé, Guillaume
• Buonarroti, Michelangelo
• Burgundy and the Netherlands
• Calvin, John
• Camões, Luís de
• Cardano, Girolamo
• Cardinal Richelieu
• Carvajal y Mendoza, Luisa De
• Cary, Elizabeth
• Casas, Bartolome de las
• Castiglione, Baldassarre
• Catherine of Siena
• Catholic/Counter-Reformation
• Catholicism, Early Modern
• Cecilia del Nacimiento
• Cellini, Benvenuto
• Cervantes, Miguel de
• Charles V, Emperor
• China and Europe, 1550-1800
• Christian-Muslim Exchange
• Christine de Pizan
• Church Fathers in Renaissance and Reformation Thought, The
• Ciceronianism
• Cities and Urban Patriciates
• Civic Humanism
• Civic Ritual
• Classical Tradition, The
• Clifford, Anne
• Colet, John
• Colonna, Vittoria
• Columbus, Christopher
• Comenius, Jan Amos
• Commedia dell'arte
• Concepts of the Renaissance, c. 1780–c. 1920
• Confraternities
• Constantinople, Fall of
• Contarini, Gasparo, Cardinal
• Convent Culture
• Conversos and Crypto-Judaism
• Copernicus, Nicolaus
• Cornaro, Caterina
• Cosimo I de’ Medici
• Cosimo il Vecchio de' Medici
• Council of Trent
• Crime and Punishment
• Cromwell, Oliver
• Cruz, Juana de la, Mother
• Cruz, Juana Inés de la, Sor
• d'Aragona, Tullia
• Datini, Margherita
• Davies, Eleanor
• de Commynes, Philippe
• de Sales, Saint Francis
• de Valdés, Juan
• Death and Dying
• Decembrio, Pier Candido
• Dentière, Marie
• Des Roches, Madeleine and Catherine
• d’Este, Isabella
• di Toledo, Eleonora
• Dolce, Ludovico
• Donne, John
• Drama, English Renaissance
• Dürer, Albrecht
• du Bellay, Joachim
• Du Guillet, Pernette
• Dutch Overseas Empire
• Ebreo, Leone
• Edmund Campion
• Edward IV, King of England
• Elizabeth I, the Great, Queen of England
• Emperor, Maximilian I
• England, 1485-1642
• English Overseas Empire
• English Puritans, Quakers, Dissenters, and Recusants
• Environment and the Natural World
• Epic and Romance
• Europe and the Globe, 1350–1700
• European Tapestries
• Family and Childhood
• Fedele, Cassandra
• Federico Barocci
• Female Lay Piety
• Ferrara and the Este
• Ficino, Marsilio
• Filelfo, Francesco
• Fonte, Moderata
• Foscari, Francesco
• France in the 17th Century
• France in the 16th Century
• Francis Xavier, St
• Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros
• French Law and Justice
• French Renaissance Drama
• Fugger Family
• Galilei, Galileo
• Gallicanism
• Gambara, Veronica
• Garin, Eugenio
• General Church Councils, Pre-Trent
• Geneva (1400-1600)
• Genoa 1450–1700
• George of Trebizond
• Georges de La Tour
• Giambologna
• Ginés de Sepúlveda, Juan
• Giustiniani, Bernardo
• Góngora, Luis de
• Gournay, Marie de
• Greek Visitors
• Guarino da Verona
• Guicciardini, Francesco
• Guilds and Manufacturing
• Hamburg, 1350–1815
• Hanseatic League
• Henry VIII, King of England
• Herbert, George
• Hispanic Mysticism
• Historiography
• Hobbes, Thomas
• Holy Roman Empire 1300–1650
• Homes, Foundling
• Humanism, The Origins of
• Hundred Years War, The
• Hungary, The Kingdom of
• Hutchinson, Lucy
• Iconology and Iconography
• Ignatius of Loyola, Saint
• Inquisition, Roman
• Isaac Casaubon
• Isabel I, Queen of Castile
• Italian Wars, 1494–1559
• Ivan IV the Terrible, Tsar of Russia
• Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples
• Japan and Europe: the Christian Century, 1549-1650
• Jeanne d’Albret, queen of Navarre
• Jewish Women in Renaissance and Reformation Europe
• Jews and Christians in Venice
• Jews and the Reformation
• Jews in Amsterdam
• Jews in Florence
• Joan of Arc
• Jonson, Ben
• Joseph Justus Scaliger
• Juan de Torquemada
• Juana the Mad/Juana, Queen of Castile
• Kepler, Johannes
• King of France, Francis I
• King of France, Henri IV
• Kristeller, Paul Oskar
• Labé, Louise
• Landino, Cristoforo
• Last Wills and Testaments
• Laura Cereta
• Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Leoni, Leone and Pompeo
• Leto, Giulio Pomponio
• Letter Writing and Epistolary Culture
• Literary Criticism
• Literature, French
• Literature, Italian
• Literature, Late Medieval German
• Literature, Penitential
• Literature, Spanish
• Locke, John
• Lorenzo de' Medici
• Lorenzo Ghiberti
• Louis XI, King of France
• Louis XIII, King of France
• Louis XIV, King of France
• Lucas Cranach the Elder
• Lucretius in Renaissance Thought
• Luther, Martin
• Lyric Poetry
• Machiavelli, Niccolo
• Macinghi Strozzi, Alessandra
• Malatesta, Sigismondo
• Manetti, Giannozzo
• Mantovano (Battista Spagnoli), Battista
• Manuel Chrysoloras
• Manuzio, Aldo
• Margaret Clitherow
• Margaret Fell Fox
• Margery Kempe
• Marinella, Lucrezia
• Marino Sanudo
• Marlowe, Christopher
• Marriage and Dowry
• Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots)
• Mary Tudor, Queen of England
• Masculinity
• Medici Bank
• Medici, Catherine de'
• Medici Family, The
• Mediterranean
• Memling, Hans
• Merici, Angela
• Milan, 1535–1706
• Milan to 1535
• Milton, John
• Mirandola, Giovanni Pico della
• Monarchy in Renaissance and Reformation Europe, Female
• Montaigne, Michel de
• More, Thomas
• Morone, Cardinal Giovanni
• Naples, 1300–1700
• Navarre, Marguerite de
• Netherlandish Art, Early
• Netherlands (Dutch Revolt/ Dutch Republic), The
• Netherlands, Spanish, 1598-1700, the
• Nettesheim, Agrippa von
• Newton, Isaac
• Niccoli, Niccolò
• Nicholas of Cusa
• Nicolas Malebranche
• Ottoman Empire
• Ovid in Renaissance Thought
• Panofsky, Erwin
• Paolo Veronese
• Parr, Katherine
• Patronage of the Arts
• Perotti, Niccolò
• Persecution and Martyrdom
• Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia
• Petrus Ramus and Ramism
• Philip Melanchthon
• Philips, Katherine
• Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius
• Piero della Francesca
• Pierre Bayle
• Plague and its Consequences
• Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Hermetic Tradition
• Poetry, English
• Pole, Cardinal Reginald
• Polish Literature: Baroque
• Polish Literature: Renaissance
• Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, The
• Political Thought
• Poliziano, Angelo
• Polydore Vergil
• Pontano, Giovanni Giovano
• Pope Innocent VIII
• Pope Nicholas V
• Pope Paul II
• Portraiture
• Poulain de la Barre, Francois
• Poverty and Poor Relief
• Prince Henry the Navigator
• Printing and the Book
• Printmaking
• Pulter, Hester
• Purity of Blood
• Quirini, Lauro
• Rabelais, François
• Reformation and Hussite Revolution, Czech
• Reformation and Wars of Religion in France, The
• Reformation, English
• Reformation, German
• Reformation, Italian, The
• Reformation, The
• Reformations and Revolt in the Netherlands, 1500–1621
• Renaissance, The
• Reuchlin, Johann
• Revolutionary England, 1642-1702
• Ricci, Matteo
• Richard III
• Rienzo, Cola Di
• Roman and Iberian Inquisitions, Censorship and the Index i...
• Ronsard, Pierre de
• Roper, Margeret More
• Royal Regencies in Renaissance and Reformation Europe, 140...
• Rubens, Peter Paul
• Russell, Elizabeth Cooke Hoby
• Russia and Muscovy
• Ruzante Angelo Beolco
• Saint John of the Cross
• Saints and Mystics: After Trent
• Saints and Mystics: Before Trent
• Salutati, Coluccio
• Sandro Botticelli
• Sarpi, Fra Paolo
• Savonarola, Girolamo
• Scandinavia
• Scholasticism and Aristotelianism: Fourteenth to Seventeen...
• Schooling and Literacy
• Scientific Revolution
• Scève, Maurice
• Sephardic Diaspora
• Sforza, Caterina
• Sforza, Francesco
• Shakespeare, William
• Ships/Shipbuilding
• Sidney Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke
• Sidney, Philip
• Simon of Trent
• Sir Robert Cecil
• Sixtus IV, Pope
• Skepticism in Renaissance Thought
• Slavery and the Slave Trade, 1350–1650
• Southern Italy, 1500–1700
• Southern Italy, 1300–1500
• Spanish Inquisition
• Spanish Islam, 1350-1614
• Spenser, Edmund
• Sperone Speroni
• Spinoza, Baruch
• Stampa, Gaspara
• Stuart, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia
• Switzerland
• Tarabotti, Arcangela
• Tasso Torquato
• Tell, William
• Teresa of Avila
• Textiles: 1400 to 1700
• The Casa of San Giorgio, Genoa
• The Radical Reformation
• The Sack of Rome (1527)
• Thirty Years War, The
• Thomas Wyatt
• Tornabuoni, Lucrezia
• Trade Networks
• Tragedy, English
• Translation
• Transylvania, The Principality of
• Traversari, Ambrogio
• Universities
• Valeriano, Pierio
• Valla, Lorenzo
• van Eyck, Jan
• van Schurman, Anna Maria
• Vasari, Giorgio
• Vega, Lope de
• Vegio, Maffeo
• Venice, Maritime
• Vergerio, Pier Paolo, The Elder
• Vermeer, Johannes
• Vernacular Languages and Dialects
• Vida, Marco Girolamo
• Virgil in Renaissance Thought
• Visitors, Italian
• Vives, Juan Luis
• Walter Ralegh
• War and Economy, 1300-1600
• Warfare and Military Organizations
• Weyden, Rogier van der
• Wolsey, Thomas, Cardinal
• Women and Learning
• Women and Medicine
• Women and Science
• Women and the Book Trade
• Women and the Reformation
• Women and the Visual Arts
• Women and Warfare
• Women and Work: Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
• Women Writers in Ireland
• Women Writers of the Iberian Empire
• Women Writing in Early Modern Spain
• Women Writing in English
• Women Writing in French
• Women Writing in Italy
• Wroth, Mary
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [66.249.64.20|185.66.15.189]
• 185.66.15.189

• University Libraries
• Research Guides
• Course Guides

16th- & 17th-Century English Literatures (Professor Greenberg)

• Renaissance Drama
• Glossaries, Dictionaries & Encyclopedias
• Research Resources

Finding Books

• Shakespeare
• Research Help & Tutorials

• British Library English and Drama Blog On literature and theatre collections from the 16th century to the present day
• British Printed Images to 1700 A free database of thousands of prints and book illustrations from early modern Britain in fully-searchable form.
• Document Analysis Learn how to observe and describe an early modern printed text’s discrete features; part of The Kit Marlowe Project.
• Early Modern English Drama EMED features the plays by other playwrights from Shakespeare's time, illuminating an extraordinary era of artistic ferment.
• English Broadside Ballad Archive EBBA has made broadside ballads from many different holdings easily and fully accessible: gathered together on one site as ballad sheet facsimiles, facsimile transcriptions, text transcriptions, and recordings, and extensively catalogued.
• ESS Medieval and Renaissance Web A list of scholarly resources for European Middle Ages and the Renaissance (includes paid and free sites). A section of the Association for College and Research Libraries.
• Folger Digital Texts Free, high-quality digital texts of Shakespeare's plays start with the basics: superb source texts, meticulously edited on the basis of current scholarship.
• Folger Library Blogs Whatever your interests in Shakespeare, the early modern period, teaching, or rare books, the Folger has a blog for you.
• The Kit Marlowe Project Learn about one of Shakespeare’s most influential contemporaries and collaborators, Christopher Marlowe.
• Of Pilcrows Blog Professor Claire M. L. Bourne's blog on recent renaissance scholarship.
• Cahiers Élisabéthains Chaucer to Restoration drama. Focus on Elizabethan literature and drama.
• Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies Publishes articles by graduate students and new scholars (within five years of receiving the PhD) working in any field of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance.
• English Literary Renaissance Current criticism and scholarship of Tudor and early Stuart English literature, 1485-1665, including Shakespeare, Spenser, Donne, and Milton. It is unique in featuring the publication of rare texts and newly discovered manuscripts of the period and current annotated bibliographies of work in the field.
• Exemplaria Medieval, Early Modern, Theory
• Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies Official publication of the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies and regularly publishes articles and reviews on cultural history from the late fifteenth to the late nineteenth centuries.
• Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England Essays & studies dealing with medieval & early English drama
• Renaissance and Reformation Protestant Reformation, Renaissance History
• Renaissance Drama An annual publication dedicated to the investigation of traditional canons of drama, as well as to the exploration of the significance of performance, broadly construed, in early modern cultures.
• Renaissance Papers A selection of papers read at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Renaissance Conference.
• Renaissance Quarterly The leading American journal of Renaissance studies, encouraging connections between different scholarly approaches to bring together material spanning the period from 1300 to 1700.
• Renaissance Studies A multi-disciplinary journal which publishes articles and editions of documents on all aspects of Renaissance history and culture. The articles range over the history, art, architecture, religion, literature, and languages of Europe during the period.
• SEL: Studies in English Literature Four fields of British literature in rotating, quarterly issues: English Renaissance, Tudor and Stuart Drama, Restoration and Eighteenth Century, and Nineteenth Century.
• The Sixteenth Century Journal Research and inquiry into the sixteenth century broadly defined (i.e., 1450-1648).

Choose the "Books Only" tab and search by keyword, author, title, or call number.  Note that this search will search books worldwide.  This may be especially useful if you wish to request the book via Interlibrary Loan  (free to students) by using the "Request It" button. 

• << Previous: Glossaries, Dictionaries & Encyclopedias
• Next: Shakespeare >>
• Last Updated: May 31, 2023 12:04 PM
• URL: https://libguides.unm.edu/renaissance

Renaissance Theater: Origin, Characteristics, Playwrights and Representative Works

He Renaissance theater refers to the European drama from about the fifteenth century to the early seventeenth. In this period, the rediscovery and imitation of classical works established the foundations of modern theater. In this sense, the Renaissance was mainly concerned with culture and classical ideals.

The Renaissance drama of Italy, France, Spain and England reflected an interest and emulation of the Greek and Roman classics. One of the two directions taken by the Renaissance theater in Europe was based on the recreation of the past, a movement called Neoclassicism: it followed the rules of the ancients as interpreted by the moderns.

The other direction of the theater was more centered in the words and the scenes of the Elizabethans and the Spaniards. The theater of England was the most prolific in the works of Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlow and others.

For its part, the Spanish theater resembled the Elizabethan theater in its presentation, but it was based more on the religious theme and medieval conventions than on altering the strong religious influence of the Church and the government.

• 1.1 Renaissance tragedy
• 2 characteristics
• 3.1 Tragedy
• 4 Representative works
• 5 References

Renaissance theater began in Italy, with scholars who initially tried to recreate the original Greek and Roman works, and then adapt them to contemporary dress and speech.

The new interest in classical drama began with the rediscovery of Euripides, Seneca, Plautus and Terence. The Poetics of Aristotle came to light in the fifteenth century; this defined the classic genres of tragedy and comedy.

Thus, the profession of the actor went from having a bad reputation to assume a new dignity, and formed the first professional companies.

The design of the Renaissance stage can also be traced back to classic models, especially to Vitruvius (1st century BC). His ideas influenced the construction of the first permanent theater houses in Italy and France.

On the other hand, the theaters of Great Britain and Spain adapted the characteristics of the patios of inns where representations had been carried out previously.

Greco-Roman ideas influenced the architecture of Italian theater. Classic devices such as the periaktoi , a rotating prismatic construction for the rapid change of scenery.

New features were also introduced, such as the proscenium arch. This consists of a framework that separates the stage from the audience. Through this arch you can see the action of a play.

Renaissance tragedy

In the field of tragedy, the main influence on the writers of the Renaissance was the work of Seneca. Already in 1315 Albertino Mussato (1261-1329) wrote a Latin tragedy, Ecerinis .

The first major tragedy of the Renaissance was the Sofonisba by Giangiorgio Trissino, written in 1515.

In the Renaissance theater the solemn scenes of tragedy were often interspersed with interludes: songs and dances taken from Greco-Roman satirical works.

These interludes eventually became the masquerade in England, the opera in Italy and the ballet in France.

The discovery of Roman comedy, with its characteristic characters and intricate plots, inspired Renaissance playwrights to write similar works.

The first significant comedy written in Italian was Calender (1506) by Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena (1470-1520).

In sixteenth-century Italy the authors of the comedy began to combine aspects of Roman comedy and tragedy with elements of the liturgical drama. Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533). One of the main writers of the erudite comedy was Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533).

characteristics

- Unlike actors in medieval theater, the Renaissance theater was composed of professional actors: some specialized in tragic roles and others in comic roles. As they were not members of a guild, they were placed under the patronage of royalty. In this way they were considered servants and, therefore, they were allowed to act.

- They were all men. The younger ones played the female roles. They used certain dramatic gestures in a consistent manner to signify specific emotions of the audience.

- It consisted of an intimate theater, since the actor was not more than twelve meters from his audience; and it was unified, inasmuch as it allowed the attendance of all social classes.

- At first the theaters were represented in taverns with tables set together as a stage. Later they were built three stories high, around an open space in the center.

- Often, dramatists would write plays for a particular company. They read the play to the actors and they gave their opinions. Therefore, plays used to be joint ventures between writer and actor.

- Interpretations of a work were very frequent; with the passage of time, this frequency decreased. After about a year and a half, the work ceased to be interpreted.

Playwrights

In the Renaissance theater, dramatists of both tragedy and comedy in Italy, Spain, England and France stood out.

Giangiorgio Trissino, Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio, Pietro Aretino, Giovanni Giraldi and Torquato Tasso.

Juan de la Cueva

William Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe.

Étienne Jodelle, Pierre Corneille, Thomas Corneille, Jean Racine and Jean Galbert de Campistron.

Nicolás Machiavelli and Ludovico Ariosto.

Lope de Rueda and Bartolomé de Torres Naharro.

William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.

Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), Jacques Grévin and Pierre de Larivey.

Representative works

The most representative works of the Renaissance theater belong to the English playwright William Shakespeare. Among his most famous productions are:

- Ricardo III (1592-93).

- The Taming of the Shrew (around 1594).

- Summer night Dream (1596).

- The merchant of Venice (1596-97).

- Much ado About Nothing (1598-99).

- Romeo and Juliet (1595-96).

- Julius Caesar (1599-1600).

- Hamlet (1600-01).

- Othello (1603-04).

- King Lear (1605-06).

- Macbeth (1606).

On the other hand, some of Christopher Marlowe's plays are:

- Tamerlane the Great (1587-88).

- Dr. Faust (1588-89).

- The Jew of Malta (around 1590).

From the dramatist Ben Jonson, the following works stand out:

- Every man out of his mood (1598).

- The holidays of Cynthia (1600).

- The poetaster (1601).

• Law, J. (2013). The Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theater. London: Bloomsbury.
• Dublin Institute of Technology. (s / f). Renaissance: Theater and Dr. Faustus. Taken from comp.dit.ie.
• Hochman, S. (1984). Encyclopedia of World Drama. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Westwood, M. (2012, May 24). What are main characteristics of Renaissance drama? Taken from enotes.com.
• Galens, D. (2002). Literary Movements for Students. Farmington Hills: Gale.

Recent Posts

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Philosophy › Renaissance Literary Theory and Criticism

Renaissance Literary Theory and Criticism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 19, 2020 • ( 1 )

For its contribution to Renaissance literary culture at large, Renaissance literary criticism is a tentative and often unsatisfying body of work, shedding less light on that culture than might be hoped. The most durably interesting texts have proven to be manifestoes by working poets, notably Joachim DuBellay’s La Défense et illustration de la langue française (1549) and Sir Philip Sidney ‘s Defence of Poetry (1595 [wr. 1579-83]), which can be read as glosses on the literary programs of, respectively, the Pléiade and the so-called golden age of Elizabethan poetry. But these are brief documents, shaped by immediate polemical needs, and notoriously slippery bases for generalization. Elsewhere, commentary on literary topics is dominated by humanist Latinity, within which contemporary vernacular literature is at an obvious and severe disadvantage. (Few contemporary readers of the work that Marco Girolamo Vida entitled De arte poetica [1527] would have been surprised to discover that it was essentially a training guide for the composition of a NeoLatin epic along Virgilian lines.)

Even for the revered classics, moreover, we have very little in the way of sustained and coherent interpretation; for ancient authors—and for those few Renaissance writers, such as Petrarch, who attained comparable standing— the major vehicle for commentary is the humanist annotated edition, atomistic in its form and for the most part philological or antiquarian in its interests. On what is now perhaps the most prestigious single corpus of Renaissance literary achievement, English popular drama, the record of contemporary response is spectacularly meager; the results of assiduous scholarly searches for fugitive remarks in published and unpublished sources serve for the most part to illustrate the age’s inarticulateness in the face of its own most impressive works. Sidney’s Defence appears to tell us that he would have found Shakespeare’s plays distasteful; an apparently typical seventeenth-century commentator (Abraham Wright) calls Hamlet “an indifferent play, the lines but mean,” though he praises the lead role as “an indifferent good part for a madman” ( Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage , ed. Brian Vickers, 4 vols., 1974-76,1:29).

Sir Philip Sidney/Artuk.org

The desire for some extraliterary guidance to the literary sensibility of the time has accordingly involved a certain amount of conjecture and creative scholarship. Modern critics of Renaissance literature have asked their questions of various kinds of extraliterary materials: rhetorical and mythographic treatises, numerological tracts, handbooks of courtly etiquette, theological debates, and so on. Such sources, skillfully handled, can give a far better sense than Renaissance literary criticism itself can of what contemporary writers had in mind when they wrote and of what contemporary readers would have been looking for; they can orient us as well to the age’s aesthetic ambience, its identifying sense of the artificial. (Erasmus’s modest composition manual De copia [1514, with several subsequent versions] has proved to be a particularly fruitful starting point.) They also sometimes reveal the roots of precisely the modern questions that they help answer: the most vehement, indeed bloody, religious controversy of the age centers on a question of signification—the exact linguistic status of the Eucharistic host—and indeed establishes some of the vocabulary of modern Semiotics in the course of fiery and technical debates about idolatry and sacramentality.

Perhaps the most commonly employed supplement to the corpus of Renaissance literary criticism is the humanist version of Neoplatonism, as initiated by Marsilio Ficino in the late fifteenth century. This philosophical movement, bearing Pl a t o ‘s name but also owing much to Plotinus and late classical hermetic texts, asserts an especially radical assimilation of physical into mental reality; and though Ficino himself has little directly to say on the matter, this assimilation is achieved in a way that promises to make art the firm ally rather than, as Plato himself would have it, the enemy of the higher truth. The philosophy is indeed used by some Renaissance writers to elucidate particular literary works. Giordano Bruno’s  De gli eroici furori (1585), a tumultuously intellectualized reading of a series of Italian love sonnets, is perhaps the most extravagant example; Cristoforo Landino’s Disputationes camaldulenses (published in 1480), on the philosophic content of the Aeneid , had the cachet of Ficino’s Florentine circle and is probably the most influential; George Chapman’s annotated translation of Homer (completed in 1616), setting out the Neoplatonic message encrypted in the very origins of Western literature, is now the best-known.

A significant tradition in modem criticism has sought to expand on such efforts in a systematic way. The life’s work of Frances Yates is an attempt to excavate in historically objective terms a vast intellectual synthesis in which Neoplatonism merges with a wide range of occult, magical, and scientific thought and to read some of the most valued artifacts of Renaissance culture, including Shakespearean drama, in the context of that synthesis. Even commentators skeptical of the results can find in the Neoplatonic focus on the mind and its theoretically limitless powers a way to do justice to an intuited sense of the sweep and power of the Renaissance imagination. When Julius Caesar Scaliger writes of the poet as another god, creating another nature, or when Sidney celebrates the poet for confecting a golden world such as nature herself could never provide, or when any number of critics locate poetry’s origin in a divinely inspired furor poeticus , we seem to hear an almost Romantic faith in the preemptive authority of poetic invention, and it seems only helpful to take the remarks out of context and set them beside passages from Plotinus and Ficino.

In context, however, the Neoplatonic intimations of Renaissance literary critics are usually transient and entangled in other agendas, the unraveling of which requires other kinds of patience. As a specific body of texts, Renaissance criticism is best studied as its own enterprise, at most points less mature than that of contemporary literature, but developing on its own schedule. So considered, its integrity comes from its being part of the history of literary criticism as an intellectual discipline; indeed, something like the modern sense of that discipline first takes form in sixteenth-century Italy, where a newly amplified body of knowledge about literary history is codified and promulgated and where an identifiable tradition of commentary and debate on certain specific questions of literary theory arises and sustains itself. The effort continues earlier efforts to classify literary discourse within the medieval schema of the arts, in particular to specify its exact relation to history and moral philosophy, and also gears with the humanist revival of classical rhetoric to yield a new interest in the systematic classification of literary genres and their rules. But the real momentum, characteristically, seems to come from two major classical texts, both of them known but not intensively studied during the Middle Ages: Horace ‘s Ars Poética and Aristotle ‘s Poetics . Their joint impact derives both from the specific opinions on literature that they advance (harmonizing them, like harmonizing the Gospels, becomes a common endeavor) and from the model they offer for literary criticism as an intellectual activity; what there is of a Platonic tradition in the field clearly suffers from the lack of a comparable text on which to build.

Aristotle’s work is especially momentous and novel in its impact. A fresh Latin translation by Giorgio Valla was published in 1498; the Greek editio princeps was printed by Aldus Manutius in 1508; and Bernardo Segni’s Italian translation, the first into any European vernacular, appeared in 1549. The key date seems to have been 1536, when Alessandro de’ Pazzi published a bilingual Greek and Latin edition; in that form the work quickly became a major focus of intellectual attention. Some of the most important critical works of the sixteenth century are specifically in the form of commentaries on Aristotle; the century sees at least a half-dozen of major stature, including particularly significant ones by Francesco Robortelli (1548), Pier Vettori (1560), and Lodovico Castelvetro (1570). An eclipse in certain circles of his prestige as a philosopher—it was in 1536 that Peter Ramus earned his master’s degree in Paris by defending the proposition that all Aristotle’s teachings are false—coincides with a powerful respect for this effectively new discovery. All its concepts and conclusions are worked over in detail, though the most important point of interest is unquestionably mimesis. A Latin equivalent— imitatio —is settled on early, but the meaning attached to it goes through some remarkable changes, prompted both by contemporary agendas and by problems in Aristotle’s own text. Imitatio is variously taken to concern the truth value of poetry, its artful verisimilitude, a particular mode of representation (i.e., dramatization rather than narration), or even, in one tortuous but not uncommon train of thought, the story being told ( imitatio as synonymous with mythos or fabula ). These and other usages jostle the only meaning that is universally agreed upon, though the only one that unmistakably does not derive from Aristotle: imitatio as one writer’s mimicking of another writer or group of writers, in particular, as the key humanist enterprise of imitating classical antiquity. The irresolutions of usage themselves measure the urgency of the issues being gathered for attention.

The dogmatic uniformity of the criticism that results is sometimes exaggerated; both the troublesomeness of the material and the combative style of Renaissance scholarship ensure that its history is a history of unresolved controversy in which even Aristotle’s own authority is not beyond question. It has sometimes seemed convenient, though, to let Julius Caesar Scaliger’s Poetics stand as a synthetic, or at least typical, statement. The work’s flamboyantly named author (1484-1558), an Italian adventurer and claimant to princely ancestry who turned to literature after marrying and settling in southern France, first made a name for himself in the 1530s with two virulent attacks on Erasmus’s Ciceronianus . Ad hominem arguments aside, the encounter located Scaliger as a defender of classical imitatio of a fairly narrow sort.

Scaliger’s posthumously published Poetics (1561) is in one of its dimensions a massive codification of such a program for poetry. After an opening glance at Aristotle’s incompleteness (and Horace’s and Vida’s inadequacy), the general topic is systematically organized into seven books, containing a very large number of chapters. The first four books identify and analyze traditional genres, meters, subject matter, sentiments, styles, and figures of speech and provide detailed illustrations from classical and occasionally Neo-Latin verse (including Scaliger’s own). Two final books catalogue and evaluate the classical and Neo-Latin poets themselves. (Bilingual poets, such as Poliziano, are reviewed for their Latin verse alone.) Prominence is given to the concept of imitatio in a sense that affirms poetry’s obligation and power to represent external reality; but Scaliger also makes clear that the reality he has in mind is already so perfectly captured in the best classical poetry—most especially by Virgil, whom in an extended syncrisis he judges easily superior to Homer—that the poet can best go about his business practicing imitatio in the specifically Renaissance sense of the term. In his opening section he traces the history of poetry back to the origins of speech— “the soul’s ferryman” ( portitor amini [Poetices I])—in the need to transmit information and provoke response; he regards this need as more fundamental than imitation as such, and his often quoted remark about the divine character of the poet’s power comes in the context of an assertion of poetry’s fundamentally suasive purpose.

That didactic dimension is almost universally affirmed in the Renaissance, but Italian criticism does provide one extended and rigorous dissent. In the most explicitly innovative of the Aristotelian commentaries, which announces the “discovery” that the text of the Poetics is a collection of rough notes put aside in expectation of further revision and hence calling not so much for explication as for rethinking, Castelvetro (1505-71), an excommunicated heretic no less contentious by nature than Scaliger, argues with remarkable consistency that pleasure, the first half of the Horatian dulce et utile, is the sole end of poetry of all sorts. This intent is also linked to an overt denial to the poet of any divine power or authority to create his own reality; to that end, Castelvetro propounds a doctrine of imitatio that is essentially a stern standard of verisimilitude that ties poetry very closely to history and on the basis of which he is willing to criticize even Virgil. These principles lead him to what proves to be the most influential feature of his commentary, the extrapolation of a few brief remarks from Aristotle into the firm doctrine of the three unities of dramatic composition: the requirement of a single action, transpiring at a single location, during a period of fictional time that Castelvetro specifies as no more than 12 hours. This tripartite rule becomes notorious for its legislative dogmatism, though Castelvetro urges it with constant reference to the needs and expectations of an actual theatrical audience. He may have drawn on personal experience—he is very possibly the author of Gl’ingannati (1531), the comedy that supplied Shakespeare the main plot of Twelfth Night —and in the next century Castelvetro’s doctrine (generally cited as Aristotle’s doctrine) does in fact play a useful role in theatrical history, helping the French classical stage achieve its special kind of austere focus.

For all their differences, Scaliger and Castelvetro nevertheless resemble each other and most of their fellow critics in being what Bruno sarcastically calls regolisti di Poesia , “poetry’s rule-mongers” ( Scritti scelti di Giordano Bruno e di Tommaso Campanella , ed. Luigi Firpo, 2d ed., 1968, 185); the generic rules they seek are supposed to have an a priori rationality and to be essentially timeless and unchanging. Rarer but in some ways more interesting are occasional accounts of literary history as a history of deliberate experiment and change; it is in these accounts, indeed, that Renaissance criticism comes closest to dealing successfully with Renaissance literature.

The most consequential figure in this regard is Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio (1504-73), an author of novelle (including the source for Othello ) and neo-Senecan tragedies, who in 1554 published his Discorsi on narrative poetry, drama, and satire. The essay on drama proceeds in constant reference to Aristotle, but its most striking arguments are for conscious generic innovation against the classical grid; in particular, Giraldi proposes a tragedia di lieto fin, “tragedy with a happy ending,” as the best dramatic type for contemporary practice. He is of course defending his own productions in this line; and both his arguments and his plays look forward to an important debate toward the end of the century—precipitated by Giambattista Guarini’s II pastor fido (1589)—concerning the viability of tragicomedy as a distinctly modern theatrical genre. The essay on narrative poetry is concerned with the relation of the neo-chivalric romanzo, in particular Orlando furioso, to the classical epic tradition. Against complaints that Ariosto had written a work too sprawling and unruly to meet classical standards, Giraldi argues that precisely by showing how such diversity could be effectively linked together within a single poem—by showing how a narrative could achieve distinction with an aesthetic of variety rather than one of unity—the writers of romanzi had established a new genre that is in fact superior to classical epic. He suggests that a movement in this direction can be detected within the classical epic tradition itself. The controversy prompted Torquato Tasso (1544-95) to attempt a somewhat different reconciliation of the two genres in a series of writings over the course of almost 30 years. The theory achieves final if somewhat uneven form in his influential Discorsi del poema eroico (1594); they may be read in connection with his own romantic epic, Gerusalemme liberata (1581), which is, among other things, a practical illustration of how narrative form may embody unity precisely through diversity.

Perhaps the most surprising theorist, and the object of a good deal of fresh interest and respect in the twentieth century (he is singled out for praise by Benedetto Croce and George Saintsbury), is Francesco Patrizi (1529-97), sometimes called da Cherso to distinguish him from the fifteenth-century bishop of the same name, who also wrote on literary matters. He participates briefly, on behalf of Ariosto, in the dispute over the romanzi; in his Della poetica (of which two books were published in 1586 and five more were discovered in manuscript in 1949) he sets out an extended critique of the prevailing way in which the rules of poetry were being sought. A professor of philosophy at Ferrara and then Rome, Patrizi starts with a comprehensively anti-Aristotelian agenda, which he applies to literary criticism with vehemence and thoroughness; the second book of his treatise is an emphatic, extended rejection of imitatio (in any sense of the term) as essential to poetry. His alternative program shows traces of Platonism—he is fully committed to the doctrine of the furor poeticus —but in many ways now seems even more innovative. He is even less interested than Giraldi Cinthio in uncovering transhistorical regulations for poetic form; the only indispensable requirement that Patrizi acknowledges for poetry is that it be written in verse, and his extensive and often laborious use of evidence from literary history is perhaps the least prescriptive of any Renaissance theorist’s. His main aesthetic criterion, the subject of his third book, is in fact a species of surprise, the poet’s ability to provoke maraviglia , “astonished admiration.” The criterion is not new; its pedigree reaches back to Ciceronian rhetorical theory, and several sixteenth-century critics had sought to add it in one way or another to the Horatian list. But Patrizi makes the concept unprecedentedly emphatic and central. In support of his position, he repeatedly cites Longinus’s On the Sublime , which in effect takes the place of Aristotle’s Poetics; Patrizi is the first to make extensive use of what becomes one of the key critical texts for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, just as he is among the first to give voice to the aesthetic ambitions of Marinismo and analogous movements in seventeenth-century literature.

FutherReading Lodovico Castelvetro, Castelvetro on the Art of Poetry (ed. and trans. Andrew Bongiorno, 1984), Poetica d’Aristotele vulgarizzata e sposta (ed. Werther Romani, 2 vols., 1978-79); Giambattista Giraldi Cinzio, Giraldi Cinthio on Romances (trans. Henry L. Snuggs, 1968), Scritti critici (ed. Camillo Guerreri Crocetti, 1973); Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, Della poetica (ed. Danilo Aguzzi Barbagli, 3 vols., 1969-71); Julius Caesar Scaliger, Poetices libri septem (1561, facs. reprint, 1964), Select Translations from Sealiger’s Poetics (ed. and trans. Frederick Morgan Padelford, 1905); G. Gregory Smith, ed., Elizabethan Critical Essays (2 vols., 1904); J. E. Spingarn, ed., Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century (3 vols., 1908-9); Torquato Tasso, Discourses on the Heroic Poem (trans. Mariella Cavalchini and Irene Samuel, 1973); Marco Girolamo Vida, The De Arte Poetica (ed. and trans. Ralph G. Williams, 1976). J. W. H. Atkins, English Literary Criticism: The Renascence (1947); Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text (1979); Vernon Hall, Jr., Renaissance Literary Criticism: A Study of Its Social Context (1945); Baxter Hathaway, The Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy (1962); Arthur F. Kinney, Continental Humanist Poetics (1989), Humanist Poetics (1986); George Saintsbury, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, vol. 2 (1900); J. E. Spingarn, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (1899); Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (2 vols., 1961); Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964). Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

Share this:

Categories: Philosophy

Tags: Benedetto Croce , Defence of Poetry , Discorsi del poema eroico , Disputationes camaldulenses , ELIZABEHAN POETRY AND PROSE , Elizabethan Literary Criticism , European Literary Criticism , Francesco Patrizi , Francesco Robortelli , George Saintsbury , Gerusalemme liberata , Giambattista Giraldi Cinthio , Gl'ingannati , II pastor fido , imitatio , Joachim DuBellay , Julius Caesar Scaliger , La Défense et illustration de la langue française , Literary Criticism , Literary Criticism in the Renaissance , Literary Theory , Lodovico Castelvetro , Pier Vettori , Poetics , Renaissance , Renaissance literary criticism , Renaissance Literary Theory and Criticism , Renaissance Theory and Criticism , Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry , Torquato Tasso

Related Articles

Very useful site for English learners…kindly guide me how can I be in touch with this?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

English Renaissance Drama

English Renaissance play grew out of the established Medieval tradition of the enigma and morality dramas. These public eyeglassess focused on spiritual topics and were by and large enacted by either choristers and monastics. or a town’s shopkeepers ( as subsequently seen fondly memorialized by Shakespeare’s ‘mechanicals’ in A Midsummer Night’s Dream ) .

At the terminal of the 15th century. a new type of drama appeared. These short dramas and revels were performed at baronial families and at tribunal. particularly at holiday times.

These short amusements. called “Interludes” . started the move off from the didactic nature of the earlier dramas toward strictly secular dramas. and frequently added more comedy than was present in the medieval predecessors. Since most of these vacation revels were non documented and play texts have disappeared and been destroyed. the existent dating of the passage is hard. The first extant strictly secular drama. Henry Medwall’s Fulgens and Lucres. was performed at the family of Cardinal Morton.

where the immature Thomas More was functioning as a page. Early Tudor interludes shortly grew more luxuriant. integrating music and dance. and some. particularly those by John Heywood. were to a great extent influenced by Gallic travesty.

Not merely were dramas switching accent from learning to entertaining. they were besides easy altering focal point from the spiritual towards the political. John Skelton’s Magnyfycence ( 1515 ) . for illustration. while on the face of it resembling the mediaeval fable dramas with its characters of Virtues and Vices. was a political sarcasm against Cardinal Wolsey.

Proficient in: Drama

“ She followed all my directions. It was really easy to contact her and respond very fast as well. ”

Magnyfycence was so incendiary that Skelton had to travel into the sanctuary of Westminster to get away the wrath of Wolsey.

The first history dramas were written in the 1530’s. the most noteworthy of which was John Bale’s King Johan. While it considered affairs of morality and faith. these were handled in the visible radiation of the Reformation. These dramas set the case in point of showing history in the dramatic medium and laid the foundation for what would subsequently be elevated by Marlowe and Shakespeare into the English History Play. or Chronicle Play. in the latter portion of the century.

Not merely was the Reformation taking clasp in England. but the air currents of Classical Humanism were brushing in from the Continent. Interest grew in the classics and the dramas of classical antiquity. particularly in the universities. Latin texts were being “Englysshed” and Latin poesy and dramas began to be adapted into English dramas. In 1553. a headmaster named Nicholas Udall wrote an English comedy titled “Ralph Roister Doister” based on the traditional Latin comedies of Plautus and Terence.

The drama was the first to present the Latin character type stat mis gloriosus ( “braggart soldier” ) into English dramas. honed to flawlessness subsequently by Shakespeare in the character of Falstaff. Around the same clip at Cambridge. the comedy “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” . perchance by William Stevens of Christ’s College. was diverting the pupils. It paid closer attending to the construction of the Latin dramas and was the first to follow the five-act division.

Writers were besides developing English calamities for the first clip. influenced by Greek and Latin authors. Among the first forays into English calamity were Richard Edwards’ Damon and Pythias ( 1564 ) and John Pickering’s New Interlude of Vice Incorporating the History of Horestes ( 1567 ) . The most influential author of classical calamities. nevertheless. was the Roman playwright Seneca. whose plants were translated into English by Jasper Heywood. boy of dramatist John Heywood. in 1589. Seneca’s plays incorporated rhetorical addresss. blood and force. and frequently shades ; constituents which were to calculate conspicuously in both Elizabethan and Jacobean play.

The first outstanding English calamity in the Senecan mold was Gorboduc ( 1561 ) . written by two attorneies. Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton. at the Inns of Court ( schools of jurisprudence ) . Apart from following Senecan conventions and construction. the drama is most of import as the first English drama to be in clean poetry. Blank poetry. non-rhyming lines in iambic pentameter. was introduced into English literature by sonneteers Wyatt and Surrey in the 1530’s. Its usage in a work of dramatic literature paved the manner for “Marlowe’s mighty line” and the keen poesy of Shakespeare’s dramatic poetry. With a new swayer on the throne. Queen Elizabeth I. who enjoyed and encouraged the theatrical humanistic disciplines. the phase was set for the organic structure of dramatic literature we today name Elizabethan Drama.

The Social and Political Climate

In 1600. the metropolis of London had a population of 245. 000 people. twice the size of Paris or Amsterdam. Playwriting was the least personal signifier of authorship. but clearly the most profitable for literary work forces since the demand was so great: 15. 000 people attended the wendy houses hebdomadally. What is frequently exploited in the dramas is the tenseness between a Court civilization and a commercial civilization. which in bend reflected the tenseness between the City authorities and the Crown. The period from 1576 ( day of the month of the first public theater in London ) to 1642 ( day of the month that the Puritans closed the theaters ) is alone in its end product and quality of literature in English.

The monarchy rested on two claims: that it was of godly beginning and that it governed by consent of the people. The period was one of great passage. This period of history is by and large regarded as the English Renaissance. which took topographic point about 100 old ages subsequently than on the continent. The period besides coincides with the Reformation. and the two epochs are of class reciprocally related.

Imposed upon the Elizabethans was a societal hierarchy of order and degree—very much medieval constructs that existed more in signifier than in substance. The society of Shakespeare’s clip had in many ways broken free of these rigidnesss. It was non that people were rejecting the yesteryear ; instead. a new more stiff order was replacing the old. This was set into gesture during Henry VIII’s reign in the 1530s when he assumed more power than had hitherto been known to the monarchy. The Act of Supremacy of 1534 gave to Henry the power of the Church every bit good as temporal power.

By Shakespeare’s clip the province had asserted its right in trying to derive authorization in secular and religious affairs likewise. The alleged “Tudor myth” had sought to warrant actions by the Crown. and choices for the monarchy. as God-sanctioned: to queer those determinations was to transgress. because these people were selected by God.

The population of the City quadrupled from Henry VIII’s reign to the terminal of Shakespeare’s life ( 1616 ) . therefore adding to the necessity for civil control and jurisprudence. The disintegration of the monasteries had caused much civil agitation. and the homeless monastics and nuns had been forced to come in the work force. Thus the employment. or unemployment. job was severe.

Puritanism. which foremost emerged early in Elizabeth’s reign. was a minority force of clerics. Members of Parliament. and others who felt that the Anglican Reformation had stopped abruptly of its end. Puritans used the Bible as a usher to carry on. non merely to faith. but to political and societal life. and since they could read it in their ain linguistic communication. it took on for them a greater importance than it had of all time held. They stressed peculiarly the thought of retrieving the Sabbath twenty-four hours. The struggle between the Puritans and the “players” of the theatre—who performed for the larger crowds that would turn out for productions on the Sabbath—was established early.

The Elizabethan Worldview

The English Renaissance began with the importing of Italian art and doctrine. Humanism. during the reign of Henry VIII. Henry Howard. Earl of Surrey. imported and translated classical Hagiographas. such as Virgil’s Aeneid. the first English work to utilize Blank Verse. Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt in their sonnets besides imitated classical authors such as Petrarch. and are credited as “Fathers of the English Sonnet. “

While the “Great Chain of Being” ( an thought suggested from antiquity ; all that exists is in a created order. from the lowest possible class to flawlessness. God Himself ) was still asserted. the antonym. the world of upset. was merely as prevalent. Not surprisingly. a favourite metaphor in Shakespeare’s plants is the universe upside down. much as Hamlet nowadayss.

The analogical manner was the predominating rational construct for the epoch. which was inherited from the Middle Ages: the analogical wont of head. with its correspondences. hierarchies. and microcosmic-macrocosmic relationships. survived from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Levels of being. including human and cosmic. were habitually correlated. and correspondences and resemblances were perceived everyplace. Man was a go-between between himself and the existence. An “analogy of being” likened adult male to God ; nevertheless. the Reformation sought to alter this position. stressing man’s fallen nature and darkness of ground. The analogy can be seen in the London theater. correlating the disparate planes of Earth ( the phase ) . snake pit ( the cellarage ) . and heaven ( the “heavens. ” projecting above the top of the phase ) . Degree. precedence. and topographic point were afforded all elements. depending on their distance from flawlessness. God.

Because he possessed both psyche and organic structure. adult male had a alone topographic point in the chain—the extremes of human potency are everyplace apparent in the play of the English Renaissance. Natural devolution. in contrast to our optimistic thought of advancement. was everyplace in grounds too—the crude Edenic “golden age” was unrecoverable. and the predicted terminal of the universe was at hand. With alterations in the ways that adult male looked at his existence. upseting finds suggested mutableness and corruptness: the terrorizing consequence of new stars. comets. etc. . added to a pessimism that anticipated marks of decay as revelatory omens of nearing cosmopolitan disintegration.

Hierarchically. the human psyche was threefold: the highest. or rational psyche. which adult male on Earth possessed unambiguously ; the animal. or appetitive psyche. which adult male shared with lower animate beings ; and the lowest. or vegetive ( vegetable ; alimentary ) psyche. concerned chiefly with reproduction and growing. The psyche was facilitated in its work by the body’s three chief variety meats. liver. bosom. and encephalon: the liver served the soul’s vegetal. the bosom its vital. and the encephalon its carnal faculties—motive. chief virtuousnesss. etc.

Man himself was formed by a natural combination of the four elements: the dull elements of Earth and water—both be givening to fall to the centre of the universe—and air and fire—both be givening to lift. When the elements mixed they shaped man’s disposition. Each component possessed two of the four primary qualities which combined into a “humour” or human disposition: Earth ( cold and dry: melancholy ) . H2O ( cold and moist: phlegmatic ) ; air ( hot and moist: sanguine ) ; fire ( hot and dry: choleric ) .

Like his psyche and his temper. man’s organic structure obsessed cosmic affinities: the encephalon with the Moon ; the liver with the planet Jupiter ; the lien with the planet Saturn. Assigned to each of the stars and the domain of fixed stars was a hierarchy of immaterial liquors. angels or devils. On Earth. the fallen angels and Satan. along with such supernatural forces as enchantresss. continued to allure adult male and lead him on to transgress.

Familiar to Shakespeare and his coevalss were the Aristotelean four causes: the concluding cause. or aim or stop for which a alteration is made ; the efficient cause. or that by which some alteration is made ; the stuff cause. or that in which a alteration is made ; and formal cause. or that into which something is changed. Renaissance concern with causing may be seen in Polonius’ laboring of the efficient “cause” of Hamlet’s lunacy. “For this consequence faulty comes by cause” ( 2. 2. 101-03 ) .

In the Aristotelean position. alteration involves a integrity between possible affair and actualized signifier. Change is therefore a procedure of going. affected by a cause which acts determinately towards a end to bring forth a consequence. Implicit in the Elizabethan worldview was the Aristotelean thought of causing as embracing potency and act. affair and head. The London dramatist’s pre-Cartesian existence. so. tended to retain a sense of the sense of purpose of natural objects and their topographic point in the godly strategy.

Towards the mid-seventeenth century a major cleft between the medieval-Renaissance world-view and the modern universe position took topographic point. effected by Renee Descartes ( 1596-1650 ) . Cartesian dualism separated off head from affair. and psyche from body—not a new thought. but reformulated so that the theologians’ philosophies became the philosophers’ ; the jobs of Predestination were all of a sudden the jobs of Determinism.

For Descartes. all nature was to be explained as either idea or extension ; hence. the head became a strictly intelligent substance. the organic structure a soulless mechanical system. Descartes’ doctrine held that one can cognize merely one’s ain clear and distinguishable thoughts. Objects are of import merely in so far as adult male brings his ain judgements to bear upon them. Cartesian incredulity and subjectivism led to the rejection of the old centuries’ Aristotelean positions. as meaningless or obscure. Harmonizing to Aristotle. to cognize the cause of things was to cognize their nature.

For the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. objects influenced each other through common affinities and aversions. Elizabethans accepted the correspondences of understandings and aversions in nature. including a homeopathic impression that “like remedies like. ” Well into the 17th century. alchemical. hermetical. astrological. and other pre-scientific beliefs continued to exercise. even on the heads of distinguished scientists. a discernable influence.

Concerned with the demand to believe. in an age of inchoate uncertainty. theater audiences frequently witnessed in calamities such battles to prolong belief: Hamlet has a demand to swear the Ghost ; Lear has a wracked concern for celestial powers ; and Othello feels a despairing necessity to continue his belief in Desdemona—”when I love thee non. / Chaos is come again” ( 3. 3. 92-3 ) . For Othello and Lear. belief is saneness.

Theologically. in the ulterior 16th century. godly Providence seemed progressively to be questioned. or at least to be regarded as more bafflingly cryptic. The mediaeval sense of security was in a procedure of transmutation. Those alterations coincided with such fortunes as the Renaissance resurgence of Epicureanism. which stressed the indifference of the powers above to man’s concerns. In its topographic point was a particular personal power. which was emphasized in the plants of Machiavelli ( 1469-1527 ) and other Renaissance authors.

Such alterations in the dealingss of adult male and his divinity necessarily provided a clime for calamity. wherein both godly justness ( as in King Lear ) and meaningful action ( as in Hamlet ) seemed every bit unachievable. Lear appears to oppugn the forces above man’s life. and Hamlet the powers beyond his decease. Hamlet’s undertaking is farther complicated. for illustration. by his meaningless pursuit for action—from a Reformation standpoint—of works toward redemption. The way to redemption. of great concern to most Elizabethans. was non through plants or virtue but by cryptic godly election.

The post-Reformation adult male. alienated from the nonsubjective construction of the traditional Church. every bit good as from the release of the confessional. with a burdened and isolated scruples. turned his guilt inward.

The Renaissance epistemic crisis emphasized the impression of the relativity of perceptual experience. nowadays in the appearance-versus-reality motive recurrent through Renaissance play. The Renaissance dramatists’ works mark a passage between absolute natural jurisprudence bestowed by God. and relativistic natural jurisprudence. recognized by adult male.

The Playhouses

The old Medieval phase of “place-and-scaffolds. ” still in usage in Scotland in the early 16th century. had fallen into neglect ; the sort of impermanent phase that was dominant in England about 1575 was the booth phase of the marketplace—a little rectangular phase mounted on trestles or barrels and “open” in the sense of being surrounded by witnesss on three sides.

The phase proper of the booth phase by and large measured from 15 to 25 ft. in breadth and from 10 to 15 ft. in deepness ; its tallness above the land averaged a turn 5 ft. 6 in. . with extremes runing every bit low as 4 ft. and every bit high as 8 ft. ; and it was backed by a cloth-covered booth. normally unfastened at the top. which served as a tiring-house ( short for “attiring house. ” where the histrions dressed ) .

In the England of 1575 there were two sorts of edifices. designed for maps other than the playing of dramas. which were adapted by the participants as impermanent out-of-door wendy houses: the animal-baiting rings or “game houses” ( e. g. Bear Garden ) and the hostel. Presumably. a booth phase was set up against a wall at one side of the pace. with the audience standing in the pace environing the phase on three sides. Out of these “natural” wendy houses grew two major categories of lasting Elizabethan wendy house. “public” and “private. ” In general. the public wendy houses were big out-of-door theaters. whereas the private wendy houses were smaller indoor theaters. The maximal capacity of a typical public wendy house ( e. g. . the Swan ) was about 3. 000 witnesss ; that of a typical private wendy house ( e. g. . the Second Blackfriars ) . about 700 witnesss.

At the public playhouses the bulk of witnesss were “groundlings” who stood in the soil pace for a penny ; the balance were sitting in galleries and boxes for two pence or more. At the private wendy houses all witnesss were seated ( in cavity. galleries. and boxes ) and paid tanner or more. In the beginning. the private wendy houses were used entirely by Boys’ companies. but this differentiation disappeared about 1609 when the King’s Men. in abode at the Globe in the summer. began utilizing the Blackfriars in winter.

Originally the private wendy houses were found merely within the City of London ( the Paul’s Playhouse. the First and Second Blackfriars ) . the public playhouses merely in the suburbs ( the Theatre. the Curtain. the Rose. the Globe. the Fortune. the Red Bull ) ; but this differentiation disappeared about 1606 with the gap of the Whitefriars Playhouse to the West of Ludgate.

Public-theatre audiences. though socially heterogenous. were drawn chiefly from the lower classes—a state of affairs that has caused modern bookmans to mention to the public-theatre audiences as “popular” ; whereas private-theatre audiences tended to dwell of gentlemen ( those who were university educated ) and aristocracy ; “select” is the word most normally opposed to “popular” in this regard.

James Burbage. male parent to the celebrated histrion Richard Burbage of Shakespeare’s company. construct the first lasting theater in London. the Theatre. in 1576. He likely simply adapted the signifier of the baiting-house to theatrical demands. To make so he built a big unit of ammunition construction really much like a baiting-house but with five major inventions in the standard signifier.

First. he paved the ring with brick or rock. therefore paving the cavity into a “yard. “

Second. Burbage erected a phase in the yard—his theoretical account was the booth phase of the market place. larger than used before. with stations instead than trestles.

Third. he erected a lasting tiring-house in topographic point of the booth. Here his head theoretical account was the transition screens of the Tudor domestic hall. They were modified to defy the conditions by the interpolation of doors in the room accesss. Presumably the tiring-house. as a lasting construction. was inset into the frame of the wendy house instead than. as in the older impermanent state of affairs of the booth phase. put up against the frame of a baiting-house. The gallery over the tiring-house ( presumptively divided into boxes ) was capable of functioning diversely as a “Lord’s room” for privileged or high-paying witnesss. as a music-room. and as a station for the occasional public presentation of action “above” as. for illustration. Juliet’s balcony.

Fourth. Burbage built a “cover” over the rear portion of the phase. called “the Heavens” . supported by stations lifting from the pace and surmounted by a “hut. “

And fifth. Burbage added a 3rd gallery to the frame. The theory of beginning and development suggested in the preceding agreements with our main pictural beginning of information about the Elizabethan phase. the “De Witt” drawing of the inside of the Swan Playhouse ( c. 1596 ) .

It seems likely that most of the unit of ammunition public playhouses—specifically. the Theatre ( 1576 ) . the Swan ( 1595 ) . the First Globe ( 1599 ) . the Hope ( 1614 ) . and the Second Globe ( 1614 ) —were of about the same size.

The Second Blackfriars Playhouse of 1596 was designed by James Burbage. and he built his wendy house in the upper-story Parliament Chamber of the Upper Frater of the priory. The Parliament Chamber measured 100 ft. in length. but for the wendy house Burbage used merely two-thirds of this length. The room in inquiry. after the remotion of dividers spliting it into flats. measured 46 ft. in breadth and 66 ft. in length. The phase likely measured 29 ft. in breadth and 18 ft. 6 in. in deepness.

The Staging Conventions

In the private theaters. act-intervals and music between Acts of the Apostless were customary from the beginning. A music-room was at first missing in the public wendy houses. since public-theatre public presentations did non originally use act-intervals and inter-act music. About 1609. nevertheless. after the King’s work forces had begun executing at the Blackfriars every bit good as at the Globe. the usage of inter-act music seems to hold spread from the private to the public wendy houses. and with it seemingly came the usage of utilizing one of the tiring-house boxes over the phase as a music-room.

The play was conventional. non realistic: poesy was the most obvious convention. others included asides. monologues. male childs playing the functions of adult females. conflicts ( with merely a few participants ) . the daylight convention ( many scenes are set at dark. though the dramas took topographic point in mid-afternoon under the sky ) . a convention of clip ( the clock and calendar are used merely at the dramatist’s discretion ) . the convention of “eavesdropping” ( many characters overhear others. which the audience is secluded to but the overheard characters are non ) . and motion from topographic point to topographic point as suggested by the book and the audience’s imaginativeness.

Exits were strong. and when everyone departed the phase. a alteration of scene was indicated. There was comparatively small scenery. Scenery was largely implicative ; for illustration. one or two trees standing in for a whole wood. The elaborate costumes—for which companies paid a great trade of money—supplied the colour and pageantry. Minimal scenery and limited costume alterations made the passages between scenes lightning-fast and kept the narrative traveling.

There was frequently dancing before and after the play—at times. during. like the peasants’ dance in Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale. Jigs were frequently given at the terminal of public presentations. a usage preserved still today at Shakespeare’s Globe. The gigue at the theater were non ever mere dances. they were sometimes comprised of vocals and bawdy knockabout travesties filled with commentaries on current events. Possibly the most celebrated gigue was the 1 performed by Will Kemp. the buffoon in Shakespeare’s company. over a nine twenty-four hours period in 1599. on the route from London to Norwich. It was published in 1600 as Kemps nine twenty-four hourss wonder. After 1600. the bawdry gigue fell into derision and disdain and were merely performed at theaters such as the Red Bull. which catered to an audience appreciative of the lowest wit and most violent action.

The buffoons were the great stars of the Elizabethan phase prior to the rise of the celebrated tragedians of the late 1580s. such as Edward ( Ned ) Alleyn and Richard Burbage. Every company had a top buffoon along with the tragedian?hakespeare? company was no exclusion: Richard Tarleton was the buffoon until his decease in 1588. Will Kemp was the buffoon until forced out of the company in 1599. to be replaced by another celebrated buffoon. Robin Armin. The buffoons non merely performed the aforesaid gigue. but besides played many of the great amusing characters ; Kemp most likely played Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. Armin the parts of Feste in Twelfth Night and the Fool in King Lear.

From modern-day paperss. we know there were over a 1000 histrions in England between 1580-1642* . Most were hapless. “starving actors” . but a few twelve were able to do names for themselves and go stockholders in their several companies. and do a good life. The repertory system was demanding esides playing six yearss a hebdomad. a company would be in continual dry run in order to add new dramas and to review old 1s in their agenda. A participant would likely larn a new function every hebdomad. with 30 to forty functions in his caput. No minor effort. particularly sing that an histrion would merely acquire his lines and cues ( in a rolled up parchment. his “roll” . from which we get the word “role” ) . non a whole book! Over a period of three old ages. a tragedian such as Edward Alleyn. lead participant for the Admiral’s Men. would larn non merely 50 new parts but besides retain twenty or more old functions.

Cite this page

English Renaissance Drama. (2017, Aug 20). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/paper-on-english-renaissance-drama-essay/

"English Renaissance Drama." PaperAp.com , 20 Aug 2017, https://paperap.com/paper-on-english-renaissance-drama-essay/

PaperAp.com. (2017). English Renaissance Drama . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/paper-on-english-renaissance-drama-essay/ [Accessed: 7 Apr. 2024]

"English Renaissance Drama." PaperAp.com, Aug 20, 2017. Accessed April 7, 2024. https://paperap.com/paper-on-english-renaissance-drama-essay/

"English Renaissance Drama," PaperAp.com , 20-Aug-2017. [Online]. Available: https://paperap.com/paper-on-english-renaissance-drama-essay/. [Accessed: 7-Apr-2024]

PaperAp.com. (2017). English Renaissance Drama . [Online]. Available at: https://paperap.com/paper-on-english-renaissance-drama-essay/ [Accessed: 7-Apr-2024]

• Renaissance Was Golden Age for Drama and Poetry Pages: 4 (918 words)
• Abeka English Literature Quiz 15 Review (drama - medieval romance) Pages: 3 (859 words)
• English 11: Drama & Writing / Our Town Pages: 22 (6349 words)
• English Renaissance/Jacobean Period/Caroline Period (Development) Pages: 6 (1571 words)
• Technical English and General English Pages: 11 (3183 words)
• Old English And Middle English Literature Pages: 3 (618 words)
• Why I Dislike English: A Letter To My English Professor Pages: 5 (1281 words)
• Perrine's Literature Structures, Sound, & Sense 11th Ed. (Drama) Pages: 1 (242 words)
• Literary Term Quiz - Drama Pages: 2 (470 words)
• Crime Drama TV Show Comparison Sherlock And Elementary Pages: 4 (912 words)

The Renaissance Theatre Development Essay

Protestant reformation and english renaissance theatre, impacts of reformist ideas on italian theatre, neoclassicism in france, commedia dell’arte and moliere.

Renaissance theatre developed in Italy and spread to all the other parts of Europe at a very fast rate between the1500s and 1700s.

The most important influence of the Protestant Reformation on English Renaissance Drama was the rejection of pastoral features of medieval drama. Rejecting them succeeded because of scholars who influenced people with humanist ideologies.

Theatre eliminated all its religious aspects and adopted secular nature. Playwrights reverted to classical theatre ideologies. Plays adopted the classical structure that had acts and scenes. It also borrowed other elements of classical drama like; spectacle, music, and dance.

Italians developed the proscenium theatre design 1500s. This theatre had a raised stage where actors performed, and the audience sat behind them. There were two entrances on either side of the scenery. The architectural development in Italy at that time was a major influence in the development of this theatre. Theatres were attended by all people regardless of status and class.

Reformists renewed people’s interests in classical drama by rejecting the religion-oriented drama of the medieval era. Playwrights, therefore, wrote plays that resembled classical drama. The new drama put much emphasis on verisimilitude; it advocated for realism. Playwrights removed unrealistic elements of classical drama from their plays. They, for example, reduced the time for performing one play from several days to some minutes. They believed that this would enhance credibility.

It took time for French audiences to embrace neoclassic ideas. The reluctance to accept neoclassic drama in France was because of the deep-rooted commedia farce. Theatre in France has its roots in the period of Louis XIII who instructed Cardinal Richelieu to construct a theatre that resembled the Italian theatre. In the mid-1600s, plays from Pierre Corneille and Jean Batiste Racine influenced the development of renaissance ideologies in the French Theatre.

Neoclassic principles involved; faith in human capabilities, as opposed to belief in religion. Playwrights in the neoclassic era eliminated the influence of religion on theatre and developed secular plays. They recreated classical drama by coming up with the drama that had classical features.

Their drama emphasized verisimilitude, purity of drama, a five-act plot, and the purpose of drama. These principles were accepted due to support from the French Academies, the Monarch, and the church; they argued that this drama helped nurture a French moral society.

Major neoclassic playwrights in France were Jean Batiste Moliere, Jean Racine, and Pierre Corneille. In England, playwrights included Lord Robert Chamberlain, Thomas Lupton, Sir William Berkeley, William Shakespeare, and Walter Raleigh while in Italy; Niccolo Machiavelli was the most notable playwright.

Commedia dell’arte was a branch of drama that became very prominent towards the end of the 1550s. It started in Italy and slowly spread throughout Europe. It had storylines whose characters improvised lines on stage; there was no written plot.

Messages in these plays were, therefore, not as important as the comic elements in them. Other features of this genre were; the use of lazzi and stock characters. Lazzi was the element of this drama that could make people laugh. The stock characters included; Arlecchino, Pedrolino, Harlequin, Pulcinella, and Brighella.

Moliere acquired commedia dell’arte skills from Fiorillo and wrote a play, Sgnarelle, ou Le Cocu imaginaire in tribute to this genre and Fiorillo. He wrote plays with stock characters similar to those in Commedia dell’artes. Most of these characters were foolish and from a low social class, while others were young lovers.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2020, March 16). The Renaissance Theatre Development. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-renaissance-theatre-development/

"The Renaissance Theatre Development." IvyPanda , 16 Mar. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/the-renaissance-theatre-development/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'The Renaissance Theatre Development'. 16 March.

IvyPanda . 2020. "The Renaissance Theatre Development." March 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-renaissance-theatre-development/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Renaissance Theatre Development." March 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-renaissance-theatre-development/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Renaissance Theatre Development." March 16, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-renaissance-theatre-development/.

• Political Implications of Commedia Dell’Arte
• Romantic and Neo-classic Art
• Jean Racine: Playwright and King's Historiographer
• Rules in Moliere’s “Tartuffe” and Racine’s “Phaedra”
• Dante's Divine Comedy and the Renaissance
• The verisimilitude or Reality of Social Mobility
• Contextual Class Factors on the Example of the United School District Racine
• Neoclassical Theater: "The Bourgeois Gentleman" by Moliere
• Feminist Critique of Jean Racine's "Phedre"
• "Phaedra" by Jean Racine: Tragedy' Causes
• Drama: “Desire under the Elms” by Eugene O’Neill
• Theatre Appreciation: Play 'Hundred Days' by Kate Ryan
• The Play “The History Boys” by Alan Bennet
• The Train Driver by Athol Fugard
• A Review of Toronto Production of Les Miserables

Home — Essay Samples — Literature — As You Like It — The Role Cross-dressing Played During The Renaissance Period in as You Like It

The Role Cross-dressing Played During The Renaissance Period in as You Like It

• Categories: As You Like It

About this sample

Words: 2108 |

Pages: 4.5 |

11 min read

Published: Jun 29, 2018

Words: 2108 | Pages: 4.5 | 11 min read

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

• 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
• Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

Prof. Kifaru

Verified writer

• Expert in: Literature

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

2.5 pages / 1106 words

3.5 pages / 1480 words

2.5 pages / 1236 words

3 pages / 1346 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

In the pastoral setting of the Forest of Arden in William Shakespeare's As You Like It, the characters are physically removed from society, and thus from the political, economic, and sexual rules that govern social life. If [...]

In the epilogue of As You Like It, Rosalind discusses the nature of real and performed gender identity in a final bid to resolve the gender confusion extant throughout the play. The events leading up to the epilogue make such [...]

Present day conceptions of gender would appear to be different to what they were in Shakespeares day. Clear cut divisions of male, female and neuter are apparent. One would need to look back to the time of Shakespeare to try and [...]

In both Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar named Desire and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel, there is extensive concern for how masculinity and femininity are portrayed. Both texts present archetypical interpretations of gender as [...]

The American Dream varies for individuals, but for most it includes providing a stable home for their children and ensuring future generations will have more opportunities to become successful. In the play, A Raisin in the Sun [...]

Throughout scenes 1 and 2 of A Streetcar Named Desire, playwright Tennessee Williams presents Stanley as extremely powerful and authoritative through the use of dialogue as well as stage directions. The audience immediately [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

• Instructions Followed To The Letter
• Deadlines Met At Every Stage
• Unique And Plagiarism Free

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Race/Related

Harlem Was No Longer the Same After This Dinner Party

Harlem was synonymous with the arts. But what I didn’t know was how that had come to be.

By Veronica Chambers

This article is also a weekly newsletter. Sign up for Race/Related here .

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, Harlem always seemed like a magical place. I learned about the Studio Museum in Harlem and artists like Alma Thomas and Romare Bearden. Langston Hughes’s poems were featured on posters in my local library, and everybody knew Duke Ellington because of his signature tune, “Take the A Train,” written by Billy Strayhorn. There were the Apollo Theater, where Ella Fitzgerald first sang, and dance troupes like the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem. Harlem was synonymous with the arts. But what I didn’t know was how that had come to be.

My senior thesis in college was on the dinner party that launched the Harlem Renaissance. It was amazing to me that a group of creative giants had prioritized art to serve as a case study in marrying talent to opportunity. The people I knew often said that art could make a difference, but the Harlem Renaissance showed me it was truly possible. In the early 1920s, Black Americans were excluded from many of the fields in which other Americans were building bases of power and generational wealth: from the unions to Wall Street and Congress. But as the historian David Levering Lewis noted, “no exclusionary rules had been laid down regarding a place in the arts. Here was a small crack in the wall of racism, a fissure that was worth trying to widen.”

So on March 21, 1924, two Black academics, Alain Locke and Charles S. Johnson, invited more than 100 guests to the Civic Club in Manhattan with a grand plan to give young Black artists a shot at the kinds of opportunities they’d rarely had before: book deals with major publishing houses, their artwork on display in museums, their songs on radio and Broadway rotation. The party was, as we wrote about it recently in the Times , a major success. In the decade afterward, more than 40 major works by Black Americans were published. Levering Lewis wrote in When Harlem was in Vogue that no more than five Black American writers published significant books between 1908 and 1923.

What we know now, and what we’ll keep exploring in this series about the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance , is how that kind of creativity and hope can take on an astonishing velocity. From the inimitable voice of the writer Zora Neale Hurston and the painted murals of Aaron Douglas to the song stylings of Louis Armstrong, Harlem was forever changed after the Civic Club dinner. Wallace Thurman, a poet who lived in Harlem during the Renaissance, noted that the neighborhood had become “almost a Negro Greenwich Village. Every other person you meet is writing a novel, a poem or a drama.”

It’s not too hard to draw a line between the work that was begun then to the work that exists now: the poetry of Mahogany L. Browne and Kwame Alexander, the Black superheroes imagined by Eve L. Ewing and Malcolm Spellman, or the novels by Colson Whitehead, Edwidge Danticat and James McBride. The Harlem Renaissance reshaped the landscape of American culture, and for Black artists around the globe the aperture of what was possible widened.

Invite your friends. Invite someone to subscribe to the Race/Related newsletter. Or email your thoughts and suggestions to [email protected] .

Veronica Chambers is the editor of Narrative Projects, a team dedicated to starting up multi-layered series and packages at The Times. More about Veronica Chambers

A New Light on the Harlem Renaissance

A century after it burst on the scene in new york city, the first african american modernist movement continues to have an impact in the american cultural imagination..

The Dinner Party:  When Charles Johnson and Alain Locke thought that a celebration for Jessie Fauset’s book “There Is Confusion” could serve a larger purpose, the Harlem Renaissance was born .

A Period of Survival:  During the Harlem Renaissance, some Black people hosted rent parties , celebrations with an undercurrent of desperation in the face of racism and discrimination.

An Ambitious Show:  A new MoMA exhibition, “The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism,” aims to shift our view  of the time when Harlem flourished as a creative capital. It gets it right, our critic writes .

An Enduring Legacy: We asked six artists to share their thoughts on the contributions  that the Harlem Renaissance artists made to history

Crafting a New Life: At the dawn of the Harlem Renaissance, Augusta Savage fought racism to earn acclaim as a sculptor. The path she forged is also her legacy .

Jump to navigation

Close Reading in the Digital World

UCL Graduate Conference 2024

If Franco Moretti is right to suggest in his seminal essay, ‘Conjectures on World Literature’ (2000), that literary scholars will be forced to revisit the scale of their research in the digital age, then close reading has to give way, as he argues, to ‘distant’ reading; that is to say, the study of literature will shift its emphasis onto the collection and analysis of data. Whether from digital archives and databases or to software for textual analysis, the digital humanities have provided the tools to implement quantitative analysis in literary studies – a crucial step in processing the sheer quantity of readily available digitised texts. Yet distant reading has not been accepted without reservations about its limitations.

Rather than being left aside as the remainder of an outdated form of scholarship, close reading remains a crucial tool towards understanding literature in the digital age. In fields other than literary criticism, close reading has proved essential for the analysis of digital texts, from what Jim Bizzocchi and Theresa J. Tanenbaum propose in 2011 about video games to the analysis of social media interactions, as Aimée Morrison puts forward in her 2021 study. In 2017, with words that appear to prophesy recent developments in the field of artificial intelligence and its yet underexplored effects on literary studies, Barbara Herrnstein Smith advances the notion that it is the very digital nature of our age that calls for closer attention to texts: ‘in the century upon us, where channels of communication are not only increasingly computerized but also increasingly corporatized and where texts of all kinds are turned to manipulative ends with digitally multiplied effectiveness, the ability and disposition to read texts attentively, one by one [...] is likely to be an advantage.’

In the spirit of the increasing convergence between close and distant reading, we welcome scholars of all disciplines, from the arts and humanities to the applied sciences, to present papers that delve into explorations of literature through digital methods, or the digital world through literary methods, or indeed any other permutation and variation between the two.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

- Literature and the digital humanities, including approaches, tools, and projects;

- The digital humanities and the pedagogy of literature;

- Natural Language Processing applied to literature;

- History of the book and digitisation;

- Participatory story-telling;

- Linguistics and literary stylistics;

- Representations of the digital in literature;

- Speculative fiction;

- Video game studies;

- Internet studies.

The conference will be held on the UCL main campus on Monday June 10th 2024.

Please send 250-word proposals for 20-minute papers to [email protected] by Wednesday May 4th 2024 along with a brief biographical note.

John N. Williams