Theatre in English Renaissance Literature
Between bear baiting and a little gambling, the average Joe Renaissance could take a midday break to enjoy a show in one of the new open theatres. While there, Joe Ren could also hob-nob with the upper crust since the theatre was one of the few places where people of all classes mingled. Well, sort of.
Titled peeps got the balconies and the peanut gallery was comprised of groundlings who were, um, standing on the ground (as in today's mosh pits). And these "little people" would stand around eating—you guessed it—peanuts.
They also bought oranges and other handy snacks that could easily be made into impromptu projectiles when they didn't like how a play was going. It took some serious courage to get up on the stage back in those days, Shmoopers.
To appease the varied tastes of their diverse audiences, playwrights mixed things up by manipulating the traditional genres of tragedy and comedy. These genre-bending works lead to the birth of the tragicomedy.
Popular playwrights of the Renaissance also embraced "low" art. They so loved to sprinkle quotidian cultural references throughout their more serious endeavors—kind of like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Shakespeare and Co. produced a lot of mash-ups in their day. Before YouTube was even a glimmer in anyone's eye, these guys freely blended tales from classical mythology, the Bible, and British history.
Turns out that trio was a tasty-frap of awesome. Why? Well, the majority of playgoers in that era—appropriately dubbed "playboys," because they were boys and they went to plays—were young college students.
These playboys mostly studied law (don't they all?) and grew up on good ole Ovidian myths. Oh, and by the way, these aspiring lawyers loved them some word play. Which may account, at least in part, for why English drama put such a high premium on puns, allusions, figurative language, and all-around smart-aleckry.
Chew on This
Want more theatre? Take a gander at one of our favorite plays-within-a-play: the tale of Pyramis and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night's Dream. What do you think this tragedy is doing within the broader comedic play?
There's a lot of acting going on in Othello, but it's really more about charades than theatre. What role does deception play in theatre, do you think? How is it that no one can see through Iago's act? Do the characters using any logical reasoning, much less scientific reasoning, to see through his lies?