English drama from Renaissance to the end of the 18th century

Elizabethan theatre (1558-1603)

Renaissance English drama during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I became a part of public life and was booming because the Queen supported it. It was a time of professional playwrights, comedies and tragedies. Plays were full of passion, humour, songs, poetry and lyrics written in blank verse expressed the poet´s heart rather than mind.

Inn-yards theatres was an early form of Elizabethan commercial theatre, performances were held in yards of private London inns. It was not expensive with audience capacity up to 500 and named after the inn. Amphitheatres were a public structure like the Coliseum with a capacity between 1500 and 3000 people. The first English theatre opened was The Red Lion but it was The Globe Theatre built in 1599 near Thames that became the most famous because it held Shakespeare's company, Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

THOMAS KYD introduced the motive of revenge into English tradition and built his plays on Senecan tragedy. His The Spanish Tragedy was the first revenge tragedy with many dead people and much blood where a protagonist seeks justice for the loss of his son in an unjust world so he can achieve it only by taking the law into his own hands. This has a massive influence on Hamlet. However, Kid focused mainly on the act of revenge and was very violent, whereas Hamlet's revenge serves only as an instrument to exploration of human psychology. Kyd was tortured to death into giving the name of his roommate Christopher Marlowe.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE was the foremost Elizabethan tragedian. He was deeply humanistic and created very individualised rebellious characters. He used impressive dramatic language, blank verse and stands out among Shakespeare's forerunners.

He died very young, in his 20s he was stabbed in a pub brawl. After pointing out what he considered to be inconsistencies in the Bible, Marlowe fell under suspicion of heresy. His roommate, Thomas Kyd, was tortured into giving evidence against him, but before Marlowe could be brought before the Privy Council he had gone to the tavern where the stabbing happened. There are conspiracy theories that Marlowe is actually Shakespeare! There is nothing much in chronicles about the incident so some people claim that he faked his own death to continue writing under new name. Well, it is true that Shakespeare first appeared in chronicles almost immediately after Marlowe died.

His greatest play is Doctor Faustus, a story of a man who has mastered all arts and science. As he finds nothing further in the world to study, he turns to the supernatural. Marlowe was after Goethe another author interested in this myth. He depicted Faustus as rebellious individual struggling against his own demons.

The Jew of Malta is a satirical play about three different religions - Christianity, Islam and Judaism. However, representatives of these religious are all equality corrupt so the audience cannot choose since they are all immoral.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616, Stratford Upon Avon)

Shakespeare was born in Stratford which was a middle of nowhere in his time. This makes him the only one among renaissance authors who came from very poor background. That is why it is so surprising how well educated he was. First records of him date to the time he came as a young actor to London and later on became the shareholder of Globe Theatre. Since there are only few records about his physical appearance and beliefs, it is being considered that his name was a literary pseudonym used by someone else, either Francis Bacon (a truly Renaissance man), Christopher Marlowe or Shakespeare was actually a woman who could not public her works as a female.

Nevertheless, he is regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, often called England´s national poet. He wrote 38 plays. Since he lived in two historical eras, the Renaissance Elizabethan era and the Jacobean era which was the age of reason, rather than love and lyrics, these two eras are clashing in his plays. Why is he considered to be such a great writer? First of all, his themes are very topical even today, his plays democratically feature all classes so all social classes of audience can relate to the plays, the plays also contains a lot of information about politics, culture, history and psychology, he used dramatic irony, blank verse and showed great sensitivity to conflicts of both genders which was way beyond his time. His plays have dynamic structure and were experimental of his time and not everybody of his contemporaries agreed to his kind of playwriting.

Tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth

Comedies: The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, A Midsummer Night´s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew.

History plays were less popular because the audience has to know historical circumstances but they still point to universal human conflicts: Richard III, King John, Henry IV, Julius Caesar.

Tragicomedies: The Tempest is fairy-tale like.

Jacobean drama

Drama written during the reign of King James I reacted to social changes more than poetry or prose did. It is critical and satirical with distinctly courtly character with rich costumes and decorations = masque theatre.

BEN JONSON was a critic of Shakespeare and his contemporary but he lived longer. He was very popular in his time, even more popular than Shakespeare because he met demands and fashion of audience. He was connected to aristocracy and exposed follies of a new upper class. Jonson was satirical about the rise of this new rich class and sided with the old traditional nobles.

He was writing comedy of humours which features characters with one-sided traits. In Every Man in His Humour and Every Man Out of His Humour each character is pictured as a single trait such as jealousy. In Volpone, the characters are represented as animals so their behaviour is wilder.

JOHN WEBSTER's plays were morbid, cruel and sadistic. The White Devil is about a beautiful and spirited woman who falls under the spell of the Duke. At first, they are able to conceal their love affair, but when they feel threatened they murder the suspicious husband. Even so, that woman is no cheap murderess. Webster creates a complex character who is simply not willing to abide those who stand in the way of her passion.

Restoration drama

During the Republic 1642-1660 playhouses were closed by the Puritans they thought it was a centre of sin and objected dressing up on the stage during the masque dramas. The period after Oliver Cromwell's rule was over is called Restoration. Stuart dynasty with return of exiled Charles II restored theatres as prime form of entertainment. However, his theatre was of much lower quality than in Renaissance. The audience was upper-class only and plays reflected their carefree and immoral lifestyle.

The main genre, though it already began in the Renaissance, was comedy of manners which was satirical and took hypocritical behaviour of the upper-class under close scrutiny. It remained influential until the late 17th century. Its characters are corrupt in private but in public pretend to act morally. It contained puns on sexual undertones. Restoration tragedies were of little importance and usually showed pathetic sentiments.

JOHN DRYDEN is the first great name of this theatrical period, a leading intellectual of restoration tragedy drama but he is hard to read. He used elevated languages, insisted on the three unities and rhyme in drama so he did not remain popular for too long, although he is brilliant in all his dramatic forms.  All for Love is an adaptation of the story of Antony and Cleopatra.

WILLIAM CONGREVE was a master of comedy of manners. The Way of the World failed with the audience at his time but now it is considered his most elegant work. It succeeded better not as a play but as a written text.

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY in The Country Wife presents a greedy man who spreads information about his impotence to get close to unguarded wives. Because it was too vulgar and immoral, it was censored.

Augustan drama

Drama of the 18^th century during the reign of George I. Playful Restoration comedies were replaced by political satires. The theatre was newly run by managers who knew that for success they need to attract the largest public. To please the taste of the audience, they staged mainly comedies of low quality, farces and time and place specific satires. Since they often parodied establishment, plays were censored. Opera began to be popular, idolising foreign music, especially Italian opera for the higher class.

JOHN GAY invented the new genre; a ballad opera which combines prose with popular ballade tunes. The Beggar´s Opera was very popular, accompanied with music Gay collected from various sources and became a record-breaking success as a complete departure from Italian opera popular at that time. It focused on thieves, whores and jailers but it was forces to end optimistically because the audience expected a happy ending.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH was an Irish playwright. She Stoops to Conquer criticizes cult of money. It is a sentimental comedy that makes fun of traditional sentimental comedies and shows how to make fun of something while employing the same principles.

RICHARD SHERIDAN was an Irish playwright, a leader playwright of his time who perfected comedy of manners. The best comedy of manners ever written is definitely his The School for Scandal, a satirical comedy aimed at hypocrisy of the upper-class with its scandals and false morality.

In The Rivals a young woman is influenced by sentimental novels and does not want to get married without having been kidnapped before but her husband-to be is a realist and hate her follies. Sheridan is especially notable for inventing a character of Mrs Malaprop who became very popular among audience. Every time she wanted to use a sophisticated word she did not really understand, she ended up misusing. Her name was even used for naming this linguistic phenomenon of misusing sophisticated words = malapropism. Her character was not that original, Shakespeare used it as well in Much Ado About Nothing but Sheridan popularised it.