Shakespeare's Theater

As physical structures, the London theaters in which Shakespeare's plays were performed reflect the development of English drama dur­ing the course of the sixteenth century. Early in the century, compa­nies of actors traveled about the country performing their plays wherever they could hope to find an audience. Some companies were maintained by individual noblemen for their private entertain­ment, but even these groups were allowed to "tour" when their ser­vices were not immediately required by their masters. Since there were as yet no public theaters, touring actors would set up a plat­form in an enclosed innyard. Spectators could then watch the plays either from the windows of the inn or from the ground.

The Elizabethan audiences at plays held on these temporary innyard stages were frequently rowdy. All sorts of shady activities went on among the crowds, particularly in London. So in 1574 the Common Council of London required that all places where plays were held be licensed. It was probably to evade the restrictions of this new law, and also to establish a more satisfactory place for putting on plays, that a company known as the Earl of Leicester's Men, led by the great actor Richard Burbage, built the first theater in London in 1576, just outside the city walls. The structure was called, simply, "the Theater." It was made of wood, and it probably resembled the arrangements of the innyards where plays were previously per­formed. It would have been open to the sky, except for roofed galler­ies on three sides, and there would have been a large platform jutting out into the middle of the enclosure. All performances were held during the day—there was no artificial lighting. The Theater must have been a great success, because other similar structures were soon put up nearby and across the Thames in Southwark, an area of London notorious for its bull-baiting and bear-baiting pits. In 1599 the famous Globe Theater, where most of Shakespeare's plays were performed, was erected in this area.

What we know about the Globe and other Elizabethan theaters comes from surviving drawings and construction contracts, and from stage directions in the plays themselves. There was, as we have said, an open enclosure where the "groundlings" could stand for a penny, surrounded by roofed galleries on all sides. The stage, a raised platform projecting into the enclosure, would have been at least par­tially covered with a roof supported by two pillars at the front. Two doors on either side of the stage led back to a dressing room. Below the stage was an area used by musicians and sound-effects men, and occasionally by actors playing the parts of ghosts or spirits who would ascend or descend by means of trap doors. Directly behind the main stage was a recessed inner stage, called the "inner below," either closed off by a curtain or opened up for the presentation of scenes where an indoor or enclosed atmosphere was required. Above the main stage was an area known as the "upper stage" or the "inner above," provided by the continuation of the roofed gallery above the stage. Sometimes spectators occupied this area, but more often than lot it was used as part of the stage —as Juliet's bedroom, perhaps, or is the wall of Macbeth's castle. A balcony probably extended out for a few feet from this "upper stage."

The dimensions of Elizabethan theaters were not large. It has been estimated that the outside diameter of the Globe was 86 feet; its height about 33 feet; its open yard about 56 feet across. The Fortune, a square theater modeled on the Globe, was to have been 80 feet out­side and 55 feet inside, with a stage 43 feet broad, Yet these modest-sized theaters could accommodate relatively large audiences: probably about eight hundred standing in the yard, and as many as fifteen hundred seated in the roofed galleries.

There was no curtain across the front of the main stage. Scenes began or ended when actors came on or left the stage. Although cos­tumes were often rich and elaborate, by modern standards sets were simple and rudimentary, as were atmospheric effects. "Scenery" as we know it today was hardly used at all. One of the pillars support­ing the roof of the stage might serve as a tree, or even as the wall of a building. Much that is accomplished in the modern theater through the technology of stagecraft depended in the Elizabethan theater al­most entirely on language.

Elizabethan audiences were much more accustomed than we are to using their imaginations to fill out what the playwright could only suggest verbally. And here we must keep in mind the intimacy of the theater in Shakespeare's day, with its modest dimensions and its absence of a main curtain controlling the access of the audience to the stage. Elizabethan audiences were much closer, physically and imaginatively, to the immediate details of the performance. Eliza­bethan actors, on the other hand, would have been more closely in touch with the immediate reactions of their audience. This in­timacy between actors and audience made possible subtle effects of voice and gesture. It also meant that the audience's disapproval would have been very palpably communicated—whether in the form of a crude snarl from a "groundling" who might just as soon have gone to the bear-baiting, or in the form of a more mannerly sneer from a clever young gallant seated in the gallery.

Although it may seem primitive and quaint to us today, the Eliza­bethan theater provided a lively, flexible, intimate environment for the splendid drama written during this period. It is always useful to remember the basic features of Shakespeare's theater when reading his plays.