The public theatres were three stories high and built around an open space at the centre. Panorama of the interior of the Globe Theatre, LondonĪrchaeological excavations on the foundations of the Rose and the Globe in the late 20th century showed that all the London theatres had individual differences, but their common function necessitated a similar general plan. The Theatre was rapidly followed by the nearby Curtain Theatre (1577), the Rose (1587), the Swan (1595), the Globe (1599), the Fortune (1600), and the Red Bull (1604). The Theatre was constructed in Shoreditch in 1576 by James Burbage with his brother-in-law John Brayne (the owner of the unsuccessful Red Lion playhouse of 1567) and the Newington Butts playhouse was set up, probably by Jerome Savage, some time between 15. This prompted the construction of permanent playhouses outside the jurisdiction of London, in the liberties of Halliwell/Holywell in Shoreditch and later the Clink, and at Newington Butts near the established entertainment district of St. Their construction was prompted when the Mayor and Corporation of London first banned plays in 1572 as a measure against the plague, and then formally expelled all players from the city in 1575. Once they were in operation, drama could become a fixed and permanent, rather than transitory, phenomenon. The establishment of large and profitable public theatres was an essential enabling factor in the success of English Renaissance drama. The first successful theatres, such as The Theatre, opened in 1576. The first permanent English theatre, the Red Lion, opened in 1567 but it was a short-lived failure.
Main article: Masque Establishment of playhouses Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night were also performed here, although written for commercial theater. An example of a famous masque put on by the Inns was James Shirley's The Triumph of Peace. Plays written and performed in the Inns of Court include Gorboduc, Gismund of Salerne, and The Misfortunes of Arthur. Other activities included participation in moot court, disputation, and masques. Like the university, the Inns of Court elected their own Lord of Misrule. Notable literary figures and playwrights who resided in the Inns of Court include John Donne, Francis Beaumont, John Marston, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Campion, Abraham Fraunce, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Thomas More, Sir Francis Bacon, and George Gascoigne. The Inns of Court were communities of working lawyers and university alumni. Upon graduation, many university students, especially those going into law, would reside and participate in the Inns of Court. Records show that in addition to this weekly performance, students would perform plays on holidays, and in both Latin and English. Students would typically analyse Latin and Greek texts, write their own compositions, memorise them, and then perform them in front of their instructor and their peers. Though rhetorical instruction was intended as preparation for careers in civil service such as law, the rhetorical canons of memory ( memoria) and delivery ( pronuntiatio), gesture and voice, as well as exercises from the progymnasmata, such as the prosopopoeia, taught theatrical skills. The English grammar schools, like those on the continent, placed special emphasis on the trivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Sites of dramatic performance Grammar schools By the later part of the reign of Charles I, few new plays were being written for the public theatres, which sustained themselves on the accumulated works of the previous decades. With the development of the private theatres, drama became more oriented towards the tastes and values of an upper-class audience. Under Elizabeth, the drama was a unified expression as far as social class was concerned: the Court watched the same plays the commoners saw in the public playhouses. English Renaissance theatre may be said to encompass Elizabethan theatre from 1562 to 1603, Jacobean theatre from 1603 to 1625, and Caroline theatre from 1625 to 1642.Īlong with the economics of the profession, the character of the drama changed towards the end of the period. The phrase Elizabethan theatre is sometimes improperly used to mean English Renaissance theatre, although in a strict sense "Elizabethan" only refers to the period of Queen Elizabeth's reign (1558–1603).
The term English Renaissance theatre encompasses the period between 1562-following a performance of Gorboduc, the first English play using blank verse, at the Inner Temple during the Christmas season of 1561-and the ban on theatrical plays enacted by the English Parliament in 1642.
16 Timeline of English Renaissance playing companies.11 The end of English Renaissance theatre.8.1 Timeline of English Renaissance playwrights.