ELIZABETHAN THEATRES

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 17 January 1935, Page 5

ELIZABETHAN THEATRES

SHAKESPEARE’S ART PLAYS SPECIALLY DESIGNED The. Elizabethan theatre in which Shakespeare’s plays were produced was open to the skies and within it the stage jutted out into the ampitheatre, said Professor W. A. Sewell in his address to the New Plymouth Summer School yesterday. The stage appeared to the audience not flat as to-day but in three dimensions. At the back were hanging curtains behind which was an alcove .which was very important in Shakespeare’s plays. Above the alcove an inner balcony which was extraordinarily useful for the purpose of producing such plays as Romeo and Juliet and Marlowe’s Jew of Malta. Above the theatre a flag was flowu whenever a performance was being held. At 'the top of the theatre was a tower which was a survival of the heaven of the miracle and mystery plays. The composition was also interesting; at the bottom-were the groundlings and above them galleries stretched right round. There were seats also on the stage and often the people sitting on the stage got in the way of the actors. Comments were passed on the appearance of the actors and the play was often interfered with. Thomas Dekker mentions that the audience spent their time in eating nuts and applauding the performance before it had begun. Shakespeare’s plays were wholly designed for that particular theatre; elsewhere, they lost their force and power and the proper genius of Shakespeare would never be known. Shakespeare was not in any sense of the word a realist and most of Shakespearean criticism was damaged because he was regarded as suffi. An attempt was made to build up criticism from the play as read, not as produced, and the characters were regarded as human beings. Professor Sewell illustrated the fallacy in this viewpoint by referring to Ofhello. Othello was not a human being, he said, but a .creation of the theatre divorced from real life, born in the theatre in words. In the theatre time was something special. In the Elizabethan theatre time was not the measure by the clock, but by the pulse of the play. Time became something different in the theatre; it passed according to the way in which it was filled. The hours and days must not be measured accurately, but the audience must be given tfie impression that time is passing. Shakespeare filled the unforgiving minute with poetry, humanity, passion, emotion. He could pack the minute with hours of passion and the hours with years. There was a technical point about the Elizabethan theatre in this respect. Shakespeare could fill the time much more easily than in the modern theatre. There was little scenery and the characters could move on and off the stage with greater rapidity, giving a rapid succession of shots, in the cinematic sense of the word. Besides, there was no interval in the playing of Shakespeare s plays. He filled up the unfortunate minute and gave the impression of the consecutive passing of time.