SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYHOUSE:
Table of Contents
Shakespeare’s Playhouse: Performance Then & Now
Resources to introduce students to understanding Shakespeare as a playwright whose works were writen to be performed in a specific context – the theaters of early modern England. Includes a list of excellent produc�ons available to stream online for free (or under $10), so that students can see and hear the text performed.
1 Prologue: The ‘Room’ Where It Happened, Krista Apple
One-page introduction to Shakespeare’s Globe Theater and playgoing during his time. Includes a link to a virtual tour of the Globe Theater.
2 Shakespeare’s Playhouse and Audience, Julie Crawford
Deeper introduction to theater in Shakespeare’s time, including excerpts from primary sources describing (and complaining about!) the theater and its audiences.
4 List of Great/Accessible Produc�ons, Krista Apple
Excellent productions available to stream online for free (or < $10), with suggested adaptations to watch as well.
Click titles above to be taken to that section.
Prologue: The ‘Room’ Where It Happened The Globe Theater, Play-Making, and Play-Going in Shakespeare’s Time
Krista AppleAfter this introduction, consider taking a virtual tour of the Globe theater!
When working with Shakespeare, it’s important to keep in mind the context of his time period – how and why his plays were written and performed. Below is some basic information to get you started.
• Shakespeare came long before a stage curtain or the idea of a ‘fourth wall’ was invented. For Shakespeare’s actors, the audience is always there to be engaged, entertained, interacted with, and spoken to. (The ‘fourth wall’ of a theater refers to the imaginary and invisible wall that separates the actors from the audience – the ‘fourth wall’ of the room depicted on the stage or playing space that creates a sense of a closed/separate reality of time and place for the actors and story.)
• Shakespeare’s Globe Theater was a radical innovation for its time: an enclosed space dedicated to theatrical entertainment*. Many performances still happened on streets and in the courtyards of Inns & ‘public houses’.
“Theatrical entertainment” refers to humans performing stories for other humans. Plenty of enclosed spaces existed in London for other kinds of entertainment, most famously the bearbaiting rings that were right down the road from the original Globe.
• The Theaters were on the south bank of the London River, outside the city limits. Playhouses were considered dens of immorality and lewd behavior, and were outlawed in the city proper.
• Plays were performed during the day, starting around 2 pm, and wrapping up by 5 pm. (No electricity yet! – No way to light the actors after dark!)
• You didn’t go to “see” a play in Shakespeare’s day, as we would say today. You went to “hear” it.
• Only 25% of Shakespeare’s audiences could read at all.
• Shakespeare’s plays were never meant to be published. The First Folio was a compilation created after his death, from the various ‘rolls’ / ‘roles’ of script collected by previous members of his acting company.
• All the stories of Shakespeare’s plays were familiar to his audiences. They didn’t go for the plot; they went to hear how Shakespeare would tell the story, and what his characters were going to say.
• Most audience members were accustomed to listening for three hours, as this was the typical length of a Sunday church sermon. They were also very familiar with the rhetorical structure of Shakespeare’s dialogue, because that’s the structure that the church sermons (and most formal communication) used.
Created by Krista Apple, Associate Professor of Acting, and the TFANA Education Team, 2023 Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship and Performance
Shakespeare’s Playhouse and Audience
Julie CrawfordNot everyone supported Shakepeare’s theater in his lifetime. Note the following petition from complaining neighbors. (James Burbage, the father of Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s star actor and future business partner, was trying to convert the Blackfriar’s theater into a larger venue.)
“
…the said Burbage is now altering and meaneth very shortly to convert and turne the same into a common playhouse, which will grow to be a very great annoyance and trouble, not only to all the noblemen and gentlemen thereabout inhabiting, but also a generall inconvenience to all the inhabitants of the same precinct, both by reason of the great resort and gathering together of all manner of vagrant and lewd persons that, under cullor [color] of resorting to the playes, will come thither and worke all manner of mischeefe, and also to the great pestring and filling up of the same precinct, yf it should please God to send any visitation of sicknesse as heretofore hath been, for that the same precinct is already growne very populous; and besides, that the same playhouse is so neere the Church that the noyse of the drummes and trumpets will greatly disturbe and hinder both the ministers and parishioners in tyme of devine service and sermons.”
- Petition to the Privy Council from the inhabitants of Blackfriars, 1596.
There are also contemporary records of theater going. See the following record by the Swiss humanist and linguist Thomas Platter:
“On September 21st after lunch, about two o’clock, I and my party crossed the water, and there in the house with the thatched roof witnessed an excellent performance of the tragedy of this first Emperor Julius Caesar with a cast of some fifteen people; when the play was over, they danced very marvelously and gracefully together as is their wont, two dressed as men and two as women […] Daily at two in the afternoon, London has two, sometimes three plays running in different places, competing with each other, and those which play best obtain most spectators. The playhouses are so constructed that they play on a raised platform, so that everyone has a good view. There are different galleries and places, however, where the seating is better and more comfortable and therefore more expensive. For whosever cares to stand below only pays one English penny, but if he wishes to sit he enters by another door and pays another penny, while if he desires to sit in the most comfortable seats which are cushioned, where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen, then he pays yet another English penny at another door. And during the performance food and drink are carried round the audience, so that for what one cares to pay one may also have refreshment. The actors are most expensively and elaborately costumed, as it is the English usage for eminent lords or knights at their decease to bequeath and leave almost the best of their clothes to their serving men, which it is unseemly for that latter to wear, so that they offer then for sale for a small sum to the actors […] Good order is also kept in the city in the matter of prostitution, for which special commissions are set up, and when they meet with a case, they punish the man with imprisonment and a fine. The woman is taken to Bridewell, the king’s palace, situated neare the river, where the executioner scourges her naked body before the populace. And although close watch is kept on them, great swarms of these women haunt the town in the taverns and playhouses.”
- Thomas Platter, Travels in England, 1599. Trans. Clare Williams, p. 166-75.
Created by Professor Julie Crawford, Mark van Doren Professor of Humanities, Columbia University
Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship & Performance
An Appendix in Andrew Gurr’s Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge, 1987), offers a glimpse of some of those who attended early modern plays, including:
Alderson, Thomas. Sailor, of Stepney. On 16 May 1626 he was bound over for the sum of 100 marks (33 pounds) for his part in an affray [fight] at the Fortune.
Blount, Sir Christopher. Younger brother of the Earl of Devonshire, he fought in the Netherlands, and at Cadiz and in Ireland with the Earl of Essex, whose father-in-law he was. He went with other conspirators to the Globe on 7 February 1601 to see Richard II. He was executed on 18 March of that year.
Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. With her sisters she was used ‘in winter time to go sometimes to plays, or to ride in their coaches about the streets to see the concourse and recourse of people’ (The Life of William Cavendish, ed. Firth p. 285).
Chamberlain, John. Professional letter writer. He saw ‘a new play of humors’ in midsummer 1599, ‘drawne alonge to yt by the common applause’ but was not impressed (Letters, ed. McClure, I.32).
Cholmely, Sir Richard. In 1603, aged 23, he went to a play at Blackfriars, where being late he had to take a stool on the stage. When, ‘as the custom was,’ he ‘stood up to refresh himself,’ a young gallant took over his stool. Cholmley led the young man outside and challenged him. When the youngster said he had no sword Sir Richard offered to buy him one. A constable appeared, and Sir Richard had to be content with giving the gallant ‘two or three good blows.’
Frith, Marion. Cross-dresser, who attended a performance of a play about her, The Roaring Girl, at the Fortune in 1611. [You can see the frontispiece here and the RSC for a contemporary production.]
Heath, Edward. A student of the Middle Temple. His accounts show that he attended 49 plays in eighteen months through 1628-29, and bought ten playbooks.
Howe, John. A barber surgeon, who visited Paul’s Boys in 1603 to see himself portrayed as SnipperSnapper in Chapman’s The Old Joiner of Aldgate
Lewis, Prince Frederick of Wurttemberg. A visitor to London in 1610, he went to the Globe to see Othello (William B. Rye, England as Seen by Foreigners, 1865, p. 61).
Rich, Mary, Countess of Warwick, her autobiography records her staying in London in about 1640 with her sister-in-law, who enticed her ‘to spend (as she did) her time in seeing and reading plays and romances’ (Autobiography of Lady Warwick, 1848, p. 4).
Williams, Elizabeth. On 30 June 1614, Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton saying that he had tried twice to see her sister, but ‘the first time she was at a neighbours house at Cards, and the next she was gon to the new Globe to a play’ (Letters, I. 544)
List of Great/Accessible Productions
Krista Apple
MACBETH - A film version of the Tony-nominated 2010 stage production, starring Patrick Stewart and directed by Rupert Goold
TWELFTH NIGHT - Shakespeare’s Globe London 2012 production, starring Mark Rylance (filmed stage production; original practices with an all-male cast)
ROMEO & JULIET - Baz Lurman’s 1996 film, starring young Leo DiCaprio & Clare Danes
JULIUS CAESAR - 2012 film directed by Gregory Doran
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - the classic Emma Thompson / Ken Brannagh version
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING - a ‘noir thriller’ take directed by Joss Whedon
HAMLET - a film version of the 2009 Royal Shakespeare Company production, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart
Also consider these adaptations -
Ten Things I Hate About You (TAMING OF THE SHREW)
West Side Story (ROMEO AND JULIET)
She’s the Man (TWELFTH NIGHT)
Disney’s Lion King (HAMLET)
Created by Krista Apple, Associate Professor of Acting, and the TFANA Education Team, 2023 Inspired by TFANA’s 2022 NEH Institute: Teaching Shakespeare’s Plays through Scholarship and Performance