From Elizabethan to Restoration Drama: A Historical Overview
Unit 4: From Elizabethan to Restoration Drama
From the Middle Ages to Elizabethan England
The British Crown: The Tudors: Henry VIII, Elizabeth I and The Stuarts: James I, Charles I
The Church of England (1534)
Humanist Ideas
The Elizabethan World Picture: “The Great Chain of Being”
Tudor Drama
Passage from Medieval to Renaissance Drama: From Religious to Secular Drama
The More Circle: Intellectuals and Artists Around Thomas More
- Nicholas Udall: Ralph Roister Doister (1553). Classical Influence: Miles Gloriosus (Plautus) type; Terentian ‘New Comedy’
- George Gascoigne: Supposes (1566). Italian Influence (Ariosto), Comedy of Errors. Use of Prose.
- T. Norton & T. Sackville: Gorboduc (1562). Senecan Tragedy (Jasper Heywood). Use of Blank Verse.
Elizabethan Theater: Players and Playhouses
1576: First Permanent Playhouse: The Theatre at Shoreditch
1580s: Rose, Swan, Globe (Main Stage, Rear Stage, Upper Stage)
Private Theaters, Court
Actors: All Male Companies: Lord Chamberlain’s Men, the Queen’s Men, Lord Essex’s Men
Tension with Corporation of the City about Morality of Plays
Elizabethan Drama: The University Wits
Secular, Professional Writers
Graduates from Oxford and Cambridge. Literary Background: Classical, Mythological and Biblical Sources
John Lyly, Robert Greene, George Peele, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe
Genres: Romantic Comedy; Revenge Tragedy
Euphuism (Lyly): Elaborate Sentence Structure Based on Parallel Figures from the Ancient Rhetorics; Ornament Including Proverbs, Incidents from History and Poetry, Proverbs and Similes Drawn from Pseudoscience
Thomas Kyd and The Spanish Tragedy
The Most Successful Elizabethan Play
Written Between 1584 and 1589, Published in 1591
Senecan Tragedy + Melodrama: Revenge, Bloodshed, Characters Led by Passions
Use of Blank Verse; Exclamatory Rhetoric
Elements Later Used in Hamlet: Madness, Revenge, Play Within a Play: He is Thought to Have Written a “Hamlet” (1587). Influence in Other Plays by Shakespeare, sp. Titus Andronicus.
Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593)
Writing in Blank Verse: Unrhymed Iambic Pentameter
Worked for the Admiral’s Company
Stylized Dramatic Structure
Plays Focused on One Extraordinary Hero: Tamburlaine, Faustus, Barabas. Humanity Combining Virtue and Villainy and Lust for Power, Knowledge
Works: Tamburlaine (1587), Doctor Faustus (1588), The Jew of Malta (1589), Edward II
Jacobean Drama: Ben Jonson (1572-1637)
Dryden (An Essay on Dramatic Poesy): Shakespeare the Wit, Jonson the Poet
Classical Sources (Plautus, Terence, Juvenal) + Following Classical Rule (Unities)
Portrayal of London Life: Citizen Comedy
Satire, Irony, Misanthropy: Volpone, or the Fox (1605)
“Comedy of Humours”: Every Man in His Humour, Every Man Out of his Humour (1598)
Masques: Courtly Entertainment; Speech, Dance and Song; Collaboration with Inigo Jones
The “War of the Theatres”: Jonson, Chapman vs. Marston, Dekker (The Poetaster vs. Satiromastix)
Jacobean Tragedy
1599: Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar Starts the New Age of Tragedy Since Kyd and Marlowe: Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear (1601-1606)
Jonson: Roman Tragedies, Sejanus (1603), Catiline (1611)
John Webster: The White Devil (1610), The Duchess of Malfi (1614)
Cyril Tourneur: The Revenger’s Tragedy (1607)
Domestic Tragedy: Arden of Feversham (1591); T. Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness (1603)
Tragicomedy: Beaumont & Fletcher: The Maid’s Tragedy (1611); Revenge + Romance; Sensational Tone
The Closing of the Theaters
1642-1660: From the Civil War (1642-49) and Cromwell’s Ascent to Power (1649) Until the Restoration of Monarchy with Charles II (1660)
Puritan Hostility Toward Theater
Playhouses Like The Globe Were Demolished (1644)
Clandestine Performances (in Halls, or Inns), Actors Persecuted. ‘Drolls’: Adapted Versions of Well-Known Plays (Francis Kirkman’s The Wits, or Sport Upon Sport (1662))
Restoration Theater
Patents Given by Charles II to D’Avenant’s and Killigrew’s Companies → Monopoly
Theater as Courtly Entertainment (≠ Middle Classes)
New Playhouses:
- Smaller, Roofed, Artificial Light
- ‘Apron’ Stage, Use of Scenery (Importance of Scenography)
- Introduction of Women into Acting → Proliferation of Female Characters (She-Tragedy); Revision of Old Plays to Enlarge Female Roles
Restoration Drama
Heroic Drama
- Rhymed Couplets
- Artificial Expression of Emotion
- Conflict Between Love and Honor; Toward Pathos and Pity
- Classicism: Strictness of Form
- French Influence (Corneille, Racine)
- John Dryden, The Conquest of Granada (1670)
Dramatic Opera
Combining Dialogue and Song; Adaptation of Old Plays: Dryden & Shadwell; D’Avenant. Purcell; Handel
Restoration Comedy
Comedy of Manners
- Intellectual and Witty
- Emphasis on Social Conventions (‘Manners’)
- Use of Prose
- Dryden: Marriage à la mode (1673)
- Etherege: She wou’d if she cou’d (1668)
- Congreve: The Way of the World (1700)
Comedy of Humours: After Jonson’s Fashion. Grotesque Humor, Tendency to Farce (Shadwell, Lacy, Howard)
Comedy of Intrigue: Aphra Behn’s The Rover (1677)
Farce: Following Italian commedia dell’arte