SHAKESPEARE'S THEATER

THE THEATER

• Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed by

male actors. boys also played the female parts.

• Very few pieces of scenery were used.

• From 1599 onward, the company performed in the

outdoor theater most associated with Shakespeare’s

name.

• Shakespeare had an acting company named Lord

Chamberlain’s Men and later as the King’s Men.

BUSINESS ARRANGEMENTS

• Shakespeare paid for some of the expenses of the play.

• Shakespeare and his peers didn’t want to be classified as

common players.

• “Common players are a low-status group without patrons or

masters”(Mowat).

STAGING AND PERFORMANCE

•Once a scene was over, the actors all exit from

one side, and then have one or two actors go out

on the stage for the next scene.

•Playhouses didn’t use mobile scenery, but there

were some items that were always portrayed on

screen.

•Actors work at other levels on the stage.

STAGING AND PERFORMANCE

•Actors also use ropes and winches to allow them to “descend

from, and ascend to the ‘heavens’ over the stage” (Mowat).

•Roles of women were played by boys – no women were

associated with the theatre.

•There was a myth that women were once on the stage two

hundred years earlier.

•Women returned to the stage in 1960.

LONDON PLAYHOUSES

•During Shakespeare’s time, the play performances took place in

many different locations like, in halls of universities of Cambridge

and Oxford, also at the residency of officials and lord.

•Theaters in London, were built right before Shakespeare started to

write his plays around the 1590’s.

•The Folger Shakespeare Library’s Elizabethan Theatre, was

regularly used for concerts, plays, etc.

•The theater where Lord Charmberlains Men staged their plays.

Otherwise known as The Theater, is said to have been the first of

the London Playhouse’s. it was built by James Burbage, north of

London in 1576.

LONDON PLAYHOUSES

•Other playhouses north of London included the Curtain,

the Fortune, the Globe, the Swan, and the Hope.

•Playhouses were built outside the city of London because

many officials didn’t like the performance of drama.

•Due to difficulties in renewing the lease on the land for

The Theatre in 1598, the company took apart the building

and built a new theater, the Globe, across the Bankside.

•The company performed in the outdoor theater, the

Globe, from 1599 and on.

INSIDE THE THEATER

•The public theaters of Shakespeare's time were

open-air playhouses.

•Some were polygonal or roughly circular; the

Fortune was square.

•They were said to hold two or three thousand

spectators, who must have squeezed together

tightly.

•Some paid extra to sit or stand in upper-level,

roofed galleries all the way around the theater,

surrounding an open space.

INSIDE THE THEATER

•In this central space were the stage and the yard, a roofless

area for spectators who paid less and were exposed to the

weather.

The stage itself was covered by a roof.

•After about 1608, Shakespeare's plays were also staged indoors

at a private theater in Black friars, constructed by James

Burbage in a hall of a former Dominican priory or monastic

house.

•The stage, lit by candles, was built across the narrow end of the

hall, with boxes flanking it.

WORK CITED

Mowat , Barbra , and Paul Werstine . "Shakespeare's

Theater-Folger Shakespeare Library." -Folger

Shakespeare Library. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Apr.

2013.