6.6–Spotlight on Shakespeare and Elizabethan Drama

Biography of William Shakespeare

Despite his legacy as one of the most influential (if not the most influential) writers in English, we know little about William Shakespeare as a person. Nevertheless, the key events of Shakespeare’s life, including his baptism, marriage, his positions as playwright, actor, and shareholder for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and death are well documented. Born in April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon (the record at Holy Trinity Church in that same town indicates his baptism on April 26, 1564), William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare and Mary (Arden) Shakespeare. The Shakespeares were an established middle-class family at Stratford who were later elevated to the gentry in 1601. As a boy, Shakespeare received a rigorous humanist education at a local grammar school. Renaissance humanism (different from modern secular humanism) emphasized engaging with personal learning and the preparation not for religious life but for civil life in government. In grammar school, Shakespeare and his male contemporaries read and wrote in Latin from a series of curated examples that were meant to be the best of different genres. In their own compositions and rhetorical competitions, students were encouraged to draw from these prior models and remix them into their own creations.

In 1582, 18-year-old William married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The couple had three children—Susanna in 1583 and twins, Hamnet and Judith in 1585. Given the closeness of dates between their wedding and the birth of their first child, many speculate that Anne had been pregnant at the time of their marriage. Anne and their children remained in Stratford while Shakespeare moved to London for his career in acting. He would split his time between both locations throughout his life.

As a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s men, Shakespeare held several roles, including actor, playwright, and—by far the most lucrative—shareholder. Though sponsored by the Lord Chamberlain, the company itself was owned by eight different actors who not only performed in the plays themselves but also shared the profits and debts. The success of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (who later became the King’s Men once King James himself took over patronage) led to Shakespeare buying a coat of arms for his father, thus literally purchasing a noble title for his family.

Shakespeare died at age 52 on April 23, 1616, with some speculating that he died on his birthday. After his death, two members of Shakespeare’s company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, produced a large collection of several of Shakespeare’s plays, many of which had not been in print prior to that time. This collection was first printed in 1623 and would appear in three more editions through the century, each time adding more and more plays (many of which not actually written by Shakespeare). The first edition, or the First Folio, remains a key source for performers and scholars.

Historical Context

Shakespeare, along with several other writers, comprise what is commonly referred to as “the English Renaissance.” This period, ranging roughly the mid 1500s to mid 1600s, occurred as part of a larger European Renaissance that originated in Italy. “Renaissance,” literally meaning “rebirth,” was intended as a revival of classical learning from classical Greek and Roman periods. Medievalists understandably take some umbrage with this term as it implies that the periods immediately preceding this one were somehow dead or in need of being revived. You may also frequently see this period labeled as “early modern” or even Elizabethan or Jacobean (adjectival terms for Elizabeth and James, two of the dominant monarchs from this period). In terms of literary history, this period comprises the entire reign of the Tudor monarchs through the execution of Charles I, or 1485 to 1623.

During this century and a half, England and its monarchs were seeking legitimacy as a continental power. The ascension of the first Tudor monarch Henry VII (Henry VIII’s father and Elizabeth I’s grandfather) was fraught with turmoil as his claim to the throne was more tenuous than other contenders. The shadow of whether the Tudors were “legitimate” monarchs plagued the rest of the family, with Henry VIII’s desperation in producing a male heir famously leading to multiple divorces and executions of his wives and Parliament insisting upon Elizabeth I marrying. As part of a push for legitimacy as a European power was the establishment of military power, a national identity through the arts and education, and exploration and conquering of non-European locales.

Elizabethan Dramatic Conventions

As with any major dramatic genre, there are several conventions that Renaissance playwrights accommodate for in their works. In this section, we will address specifically commercial or popular theater as opposed to other performances such as courtly masques, royal entertainments, and scholastic performances at Oxford or the Inns of Court. “Commercial” theater refers to performances designed for public consumption and with the economic aim of generating revenue.

Performance Spaces

The commercial plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries were performed in one of two spaces. The first space was a circular or octagonal outdoor theater that featured a thrust stage with a trapdoor, a two-story backstage with a roof and spaces for entering and exiting, and standing audience space on the ground in front of the thrust stage and seated space around the perimeter of the entire structure. Theaters that utilized this format include (famously) the Globe, though that was a later iteration of this structure. The Globe and theaters like it were popular spaces, located outside London proper, and close to other spaces that were popular for sex work and other entertainments such as bear baiting. As these theaters were outdoor, performances occurred during the afternoon under natural light and various kinds of weather. Audiences themselves ranged across social strata from laborers to nobility. Less expensive admission to the space in front of the stage could cost as little as “a penny, probably the equivalent of five to ten dollars in today’s money.”^[1] As they stood on the ground, these audience members were (affectionately or otherwise) called groundlings. The groundlings were a particularly interactive audience, who interacted with the performers in ways that modern audiences would find shocking.

When reading a play designed for an outdoor stage and potentially rambunctious audience, you may notice dialogue that is intended to more clearly establish the mood and location of a particular scene. Shakespeare’s Henry V famously opens with a Chorus fully acknowledging that the stage is not equivalent to the “real thing” and that certain artistic liberties need to be taken for the audience’s enjoyment. They then ask the audience to use their imaginations to create the scenery, clothe the characters in their proper attire, and accept that the performance will be playing fast and loose with when historical events happened:

Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confined two mighty monarchies,
Whose high uprearèd and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance.
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth,
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’ accomplishment of many years=
Into an hourglass.^[2]

The other space where commercial early modern English theater was performed was in indoor theaters, many of which were former monasteries. These spaces were especially popular for performances by companies that featured all-child actors. Unlike the open-air theaters, indoor theaters were illuminated by candlelight (with wax sometimes dripping on attendees!) and featured performances during evening hours. Depending on how much they paid, attendees could sit on benches in front of the stage or even on the sides of the stage itself. Several authors took advantage of this particular setting. Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle (first performed at the Blackfriars Theater in 1607), offers an almost postmodern twist where a husband and wife sitting on stage in the audience join the play and shape it from a “serious” romance to a comedy that stars their apprentice as the hero.

Acting Companies

By the early 1580s, professional acting companies sponsored by a noble or royal patron were the dominant play actors in commercial theater. Acting companies were primarily composed of either adult men (with a handful of boy actors to play women’s roles) or entirely boys and young men. The name of an acting company indicates both the patron and the makeup of the group. Shakespeare’s acting company, originally the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later, upon the ascension of Elizabeth’s successor James I, the King’s Men) was an adult male company first under the patronage of two Lord Chamberlains (Henry Carey and later his son, George Carey), and then under the patronage of King James himself. Likewise, names of children’s companies (The Children of the Revels or Pauls Boys) indicate that those companies consisted of child actors associated with the Master of the Revels and Saint Paul’s Cathedral, respectively.

Different from community theaters or college productions, early modern English theatrical companies performed what is known as repertory theater. Repertory means that companies (rather than authors) owned several plays in their repertoire that could be performed at nearly any given time. Plays that were well received were performed several times whereas less popular plays were quickly dropped. Because of the nature of the repertory theater during this time period, rehearsals themselves were comparatively minimal. This stands in contrast to court performances that were only intended to be produced once. (Ben Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphos’d (1623), an exception to this rule, was performed three times at different locations.)

Acting Conventions

One of the major effects of acting companies was that playwrights ended up writing with particular actors and their strengths in mind. Different actors were often “typecast” for different types of roles. This is especially apparent in Shakespeare’s drama if we look at both the women and comic fool (or clown) roles. As women actors were not permitted on the commercial London stages, female roles were assigned to younger male actors. The number of concurrent female roles therefore was limited to who was associated with the company. In the case of comic actors, Shakespeare’s company had two standouts: Will Kemp (who left the company in 1599) and Robert Armin (who joined after Kemp’s departure.) Kemp was known for his physical comedy and lively performances whereas Armin’s comedy was more wit-driven and often more melancholy. The shift from one performance style to another can readily be seen how Shakespeare writes his fools once the actors changed. Feste, the jester in Twelfth Night, is assumed to be written for Armin’s particular comedic talents, whereas Falstaff from the Henry IV plays and The Merry Wives of Windsor was a vehicle for Kemp.

Actors themselves did not possess full copies of scripts like actors do today. Instead, they had sides, or papers that contained their lines and cues. This is due to the expense of paper and the lengthy process of manually copying multiple documents for actors. You can use this knowledge as a reader to help inform what possible choices could be made in a scene. Rather than looking at italicized stage directions, you can look at the dialogue itself for cues as to how another actor should be reacting.

Other common conventions of the early modern stage include how actors interacted with the audience. These conventions include the use of two similar techniques: dramatic monologues and soliloquies. Common to other dramatic genres (and even featured as individual poems in their own right), a dramatic monologue is an extended passage where a character gives a speech without interruption from other characters on stage. In contrast, a soliloquy is an extended dramatic passage where a character gives a speech alone on stage. The difference between the two therefore is not their length nor even their content or form; rather, the difference is in who is listening. When a character delivers a dramatic monologue on stage, they are presenting themselves in-universe to other characters. However, when they are giving a soliloquy, the audience is meant to interpret that speech as an expression of a character’s inner thoughts and feelings. While many plays will make it obvious whether a passage is meant to be a soliloquy or dramatic monologue, there are plenty of counterexamples (such as Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” speech—is he being overheard by Polonius and Claudius who may or may not have exited?) that complicate this distinction and invite the interpreter to consider what is “true,” insofar as a character is concerned.

Costumes and Props

Clothing was a particularly fraught item during the English Renaissance due to a few major social factors: a rising middle class, the attempts of a ruling class to control access to certain spaces, and the fraught nature of succession wherein the English throne was not always neatly passed from father to son. In The Book of the Courtier, a popular Italian text by Baldassare Castiglione (translated into English by Thomas Hoby and published in 1561), Castiglione explains how the successful member of court should act. Offering advice to both men and women, one of the major facets that Castiglione emphasizes is the idea of sprezzatura, a paradoxical elegance that implies that everything the courtier does is natural, rather than the result of careful planning, spending, and study. Part of cultivating sprezzatura is paying attention to one’s clothing and outward appearance. If one looks the part, Castiglione asserts, one gains further and further access into the privacy of a noble or royal household, and thus can gain personal power and influence.

This sprezzatura and emphasis on dress as a type of performance in and of itself carries into both the drama of the period and a series of laws meant to govern what kinds of clothing could be worn by whom. Laws that governed clothing, or sumptuary laws, during Elizabeth I’s reign limited what colors and clothing types could be worn. Purple, for example, was limited only to royalty, and other fabrics were allotted to differing levels of nobility.

As it was handmade, clothing during this period was constantly remade and in larger circulation, taking on several lives as different items owned by different people. Individuals with access to more finery would gift clothing to subordinates and clothing in turn could be pawned or sold for other money or goods. These passing around of clothing enabled early modern acting companies to acquire costumes for use (and reuse) across several performances.

Similar to costumes, props (often articles of clothing themselves like Desdemona’s handkerchief from Othello or Hieronomo’s cloak from Thomas Kid’s The Spanish Tragedy reappear in other plays. These reappearances are largely due to economic reasons rather than intentionally symbolic ones. However, a recognizable item from one play may readily carry prior meanings, especially to an acting company or a particularly frequent audience.

Verse and Scansion

Similar to his predecessors and contemporaries, Shakespeare’s plays are predominantly written in verse. Most lines follow a particular poetic meter that roughly mimics early modern English speech patterns. In this case, Shakespeare uses blank verse or unrhymed lines of iambic pentameter that are used to imitate English speech, with an occasional rhyming couplet at the end of a scene or monologue to illustrate closure.

But what exactly is “iambic pentameter” for that matter? And why should we care?

In English poetics, each poetic line is made up of patterns of syllables called feet (singular: foot). Typically, these patterns are disyllabic (or two-syllable) combinations of either stressed or unstressed sounds; however, other languages may have different rules for what counts as a foot. (Classical Latin, for example, relies on long and short vowel sounds to determine feet as opposed to stress patterns. Their stress patterns can be disyllabic or trisyllabic, depending on the poetry.) When determining the meter of a poem, readers will examine both the total number of feet, the dominant stress pattern, and any variations to the dominant stress pattern.

By far the most common stress pattern in early modern English poetry is the two-syllable iamb. An iamb consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. In the example below from Shakespeare’s Othello, the stressed syllables are in bold. Slashes indicate the separation of each foot.

I’ll see / before / I doubt; / when I /doubt, prove;

And on / the proof, / there is / no more / but this:

Away / at once / with love / or jea / lousy. (3.3.221–223)

As the example above shows, poetic feet are measures of sound rather than measures of meaning. Notice in the final line, “jealousy,” a three-syllable word, appears in the fourth and fifth foot in the line.

Other common stress patterns in English poetry include the trochee and the spondee. A trochee (adjective trochaic) is the opposite of an iamb, consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable. A spondee (adjective spondaic) consists of two stressed syllables. In drama that uses blank verse, you will most commonly see these two stress patterns at the beginning of a speech or scene.

Table 6.2. Common stress patterns in early modern English drama.^[3][4][5]

Knowing how to scan a poetic line will open up additional options for literary analysis, including clues as to how the lines were intended to be performed.

Scansion is more of an art than science, meaning that there will be places where the correct stress pattern may not be immediately clear. In some instances, the emphasis will not matter much; in others, the emphasis may be incredibly significant. Let’s take a look at the four opening lines of Richard III, where the soon-to-be King Richard reflects on the events on the usurpation of the previous King Henry VI by Richard’s brother:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this son of York,

And all the clouds that loured upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.^[6]

The majority of the lines easily fall into the iambic stress pattern; indeed, the stresses in lines 2 and 3 correspond to internal assonance (glor/lour; cloud/house), further suggesting that this pattern is intentional. However, the very first foot containing the words “Now is” is less obvious. If following the normal Shakespearean pattern, the emphasis would fall on “is,” making the actor state, “Now IS the winter of our discontent.” However, if you try saying the lines yourself, your emphasis is likely to fall on the “now” as it contains a stronger vowel sound. This choice would make this first foot a trochee.