Elizabethan Theatre I: Background, Early Tudor Drama, the University Wits

Elizabethan England: one of the most important areas/eras in the history of theatre, and not just for Shakespeare, though he looms large over the period, and beyond. Let’s begin with a bit o’ British history, but this time with a twist! We can read much of the history of England up to the reign of Queen Elizabeth through plays, because Shakespeare practically invented the genre known as the history play. Of course we must take this kind of history with a grain of salt...in fact with more than a grain. Just as this course is history according to Dr Jack, what follows is history according to SHAKESPEARE, colored by his audience, the politics of his day and by his interest in theatrical effect often at the expense of historical fact. Before we jump in, I should point out that while I proceed chronologically, Shakespeare did not. For example, his three plays about Henry VI preceded his two about Henry IV.

        

While Shakespeare reached into legendary Britain in some plays, most notably Macbeth and King Lear, he ignored many early historical monarchs, among them monarchs with theatrical names such as Aethelred the Unready, Harold Harefoot, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, and Richard the Lionheart, but began with a play about the Lionheart’s considerably less leonine

 brother King John, who ruled between 1199 and 1216.  John’s reign was noted for the Magna Carta, which legally strengthened the rights of nobles and weakened the power of the king. Richard spent most of his time in office away on crusades, leaving the country to governed by John, the Sheriff of Nottingham, and their ilk – thank the gods for Robin Hood! John is shown as weak and opportunist in Shakespeare’s play, the real hero of which is a fellow called the Bastard.  Interestingly, John and Richard were sons of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry was another king that Shakespeare ignored, but who certainly prompted plays, including The Lion in Winter, Beckett, and Murder in the Cathedral.

        

More than 150 years of English history (during which the Bard ignored John’s son Henry III and Edward I, known as the “hammer of the Scots”) passed before Shakespeare’s next historical subject:

Richard II, a king who ruled from 1377 to 1399.  If you think things might have improved during those years, you’d be mistaken.  Forty years before Richard II began his reign, France and England had entered a conflict primarily about land, and fought each other on and off for 100 years, a conflict aptly named the 100 Years War. 

Richard was another weak ruler.  Shakespeare depicts him as a

 party boy and not overly sharp on the throne.  In fact his throne was taken away from him by Henry Bolingbroke.  In the play Richard makes some great if self-pitying speeches and is killed, and Henry B becomes Henry IV of England.  He ruled for 14 years and when he died in 1413 his wastrel son, also 

named Henry, took the throne, becoming Henry V.  The fifth Henry was Shakespeare’s favorite, and the subject of perhaps the most playable of Shakespeare’s histories, Henry V.  From the reigns of Richard II through Henry V Shakespeare fashioned a tetrology (4 plays that work together): Richard II, Henry IV parts I and II, and Henry V.  Hal, later Henry V, figures prominently in the last three, but the character of Sir John Falstaff, the Prince’s drinking buddy and corruptor, may be the most popular character of this set of dramas. 

In the Henry IV plays the focus is on Prince
Hal and Falstaff

Henry V was thought by Shakespeare and many others to be one of England’s greatest kings, for his success against all odds in France

 and for his politically wise marriage to a French princess. But he died young.  His infant son was crowned Henry VI, but for nearly 20 years England was ruled by strong dukes who formed factions and who were constantly (and often literally) at each others’ throats.  During this time the ongoing war with France went to hell, thanks partially to Joan of Arc (plays about 

her were written by Shaw, Anouilh and Brecht, among others) who appeared in the Henry VI plays in her least pleasant incarnation. In 1453 British troops left French soil, thus finally ending the 100 Years War. At that same, alas, time the nobles of England aligned themselves with one of two factions, the house of Lancaster, known by the red roses they sported, or the house of York, whose proponents sported white roses, and Civil War ensued.  Henry VI, who also proved a weak and unwilling king, was killed in 1461 and Edward of York

took the throne.  Though the York faction now had the throne, the Lancastrians kept up the war.  Edward died and his younger brother Richard grabbed the crown in 1483, becoming Richard III, England’s most reviled English King, according to Shakespeare.  According to the Bard Richard perpetrated all sorts of horrors until he was killed in 

battle two years later by Henry, Earl of Richmond.  The tales of Henry VI thru Richard III Shakespeare chronicled in another tetralogy, Henry VI parts I, II, and III; and Richard III. 

Richmond became Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, and reigned somewhat greedily but peacefully until 1509, and was succeeded by his son Henry, subject of Shakespeare’s last history

play, and one of the last plays he wrote:  Henry VIII. Other authors wrote plays about this king as well (Anne of the Thousand Days, A Man for All Seasons, and even the short-lived musical, Rex -- oi!).  Henry VIII strengthened and unified the country, married several different women, and when challenged on this by

 the Catholic Church, separated from it in 1534 and formed his own: the Church of England.  When Henry died two of his children had very brief, very shaky reigns, and then his daughter by Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth, came to the throne in 1558, and ruled for 45 years.  While Shakespeare wrote no play about her he penned a lengthy tribute, spoken by Cranmer as he envisions her life from cradle to grave in the last scene (Act V scene 5) of Henry VIII. Here are a few lines from the beginning of the peroration:

“This royal infant — heaven still move about her —

Though in her cradle, yet now promises

Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings,

Which time shall bring to ripeness: she shall be -

But few now living can behold that goodness —

A pattern to all princes living with her,

And all that shall succeed…”

During the reign of Elizabeth I (several plays about her too, 

though sometimes named for her rival, Mary Queen of Scots – 

Schiller’s Maria Stuart, Max Anderson’s Elizabeth the Queen, for 

example), the tiny isle of England seemed to many to have entered into a golden age. The central government became VERY strong, the Church of England became THE Church of England, the tiny English fleet defeated the mighty Spanish armada in 1588 and became the greatest sea power in the world.  The Renaissance had come to England – a bold, active Renaissance, the moves against the almighty Church, the move against the mighty armada – when the British read that “man is the measure of all things” the female Queen Elizabeth made it abundantly clear.

        

Artistically there is no better expression of this spirit than in its drama.  Shakespeare actually gives Hamlet the “man is the measure of all things” speech:

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, how moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!  the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!

But as we know Shakespeare can do (and it’s a fine theatrical trick), he pulls the rug out at the end:

And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? (Hamlet IIii)

Enough of monarchs, now let’s take a look at the drama of the era.  Remember what was happening all over Europe at the end of the medieval era? Religious plays were banned. It was also happening in England.  Queen Elizabeth banned religious drama in 1559, but because of the civil unrest caused by the unpleasantness with Mary, Queen of Scots, the ban wasn’t strictly enforced until the 1570s, when Elizabeth was more firmly in power.  One way the ban was enforced was to closely supervise the actors. By 1572 only licensed troupes sponsored by nobles were allowed to perform any kind of drama. By 1574 a Master of Revels was appointed to become licenser of all plays and acting troupes.  So before any company of players could perform this official had to see a form signed by a lord that agreed to sponsor the troupe; and before any play could be enacted he had to read it and allow it (by licensing it) to be performed.  The bad news here was that theatre was firmly controlled and in cases censored by the crown.  The good news was that as long as you acted in an approved, sponsored troupe you could no longer be accused of being vagabonds – for the first time, and to crack down on religious drama, the crown gave the professional player legitimacy!

   

Writers of plays in the Tudor era borrowed from the English medieval tradition and also from Italian Renaissance and classical plays.  In fact they mixed medieval farce with Roman comedy in plays such as Ralph Roister-Doister (1553-54) by Nicholas Udall, and by Gammer Gurton’s Needle (1550-53) by a man we know only as Mr. S. Here’s a plot summary of both plays, Roister-Doister first.  Note that the play features a boastful knight out of Plautus, and another ancient Roman character, a parasite, as well as lots of medieval types:

Roister-Doister, a boastful coward, is in love with Dame Custance.  Through his parasite Matthew Merrygreeke, he woos her unsuccessfully, for she is faithful to Gawyn Goodluck who is away on a long voyage.  When Roister-Doister persists in his wooing, he and his servant are beaten by Dame Custance in a rough-and-tumble fight.  Gawyn Goodluck returns, and his servant tells him that Roister-Doister has been giving gifts to his Dame.  Gawyn investigates and learns how Dame Custance has beaten Roister-Doister...then the couple receives the humiliated braggart as a friend once more.

Gammer Gurton’s Needle, features less classical comedy, but does divide the action into the neoclassic 5 acts: 

Gammer Gurton has lost her needle.  Diccon, the fool, accuses Dame Chat of having taken it. He tells Dame Chat that Gammer Gurton suspects her of stealing her cock. This results in a slapstick fight between Gammer and Dame Chat. By similar trickery, Dame Chat gives the village priest a beating in the dark, believing him to be Hodge, Gammer Gurton’s servant, who is stealing hens.  A trial takes place and it is discovered that it’s the priest whose skull has been broken, and not Hodge...and the needle is discovered sticking in Hodge’s breeches!

(Donald Clive Stuart, The Development of Dramatic Art)

Both these writers were schoolmasters, their actors young male (of course) students.  Other school plays include Cambises (1561) written by Thomas Preston. It’s as much a morality play as a classical tragedy.  Here’s the title page...first, it goes on forever; second, it should remind you of something else: 

“A Lamentable Tragedy mixed full of pleasant mirth containing the life of Cambises, King of Persia from the beginning of his kingdom unto his Death, his one good deede of execution, after that, many wicked deeds and tyrannous murders committed by and through him, and last of all, his odious death by God’s Justice appointed, Done in such order as followeth.” “Tragedy mixed with mirth? A Midsummer Night’s Dream! 

   

Gorboduc (1561), by Sackville and Norton, was an attempt at Senecan tragedy mixed with a bit of the morality play thrown in.  Interestingly, in Gorboduc, the neoclassical unities are disregarded, something that will become a trend in Elizabethan drama.

        

Only a short time later, clever young college students, schooled in the Renaissance but well aware of their English roots, began writing plays as well. These men were known as the University Wits, and some of their plays were produced in the new public theatres that began to spring up at this time (but more of those later).  Among the most important of the University Wits were Robert Greene, whose play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1589) mixed supernatural and natural elements, high classes and low, comic passages with serious – in other words he breaks just about all the neoclassic rules – and he writes in a form called blank verse: unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter.  John Lyly wrote pastoral-based fantasies in which love is featured, and in which magic can and frequently does occur; an example is Endymion (1588).

        

Thomas Kyd is probably the most important of the wits, because of 

his Senecan revenge play, The Spanish Tragedy (1587).  The story is quite complicated, but it deals with the death of Horatio and the revenge of this by his father, Hieronimo.  Kyd placed all important events, including explicit violence, ON the stage.  For example after a tender love scene between Horatio and Bel-Imperia, Horatio is brutally murdered by her brother, on stage and in her presence.  The action of the play is not limited by unities of time or place, and uses familiar Senecan devices, such as long soliloquies and ghosts, to tell the story. This play is thought to have been a major influence on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but read the two plays and you’ll see a world of difference in sophistication of plot, character and language.

   

While the wits were writing their plays, and enjoying some of the early successes of the public, professional theatre, two boys, both born in 1564, were preparing in different ways for their theatrical careers -- they are Marlowe and Shakespeare.

But we'll deal with them next time!