The Development of Drama in England

During the Renaissance art and literature developed. People liked to sing and act. Drama became a very popular genre of literature. The Renaissance dramas differed greatly from the first plays written in the Middle Ages. As in Greece drama in England was in the beginning a religious thing. The clergymen began playing some parts of Christ’s life in the church. The oldest plays in England were the “Mysteries” and “Miracles” which were performed on religious holidays.These were stories about saints and had many choral elementsin them.

Gradually ceremonies developed into performances. They passed from the church to the street. At the end of the 14^th century the “Mysteries” gave way to the “Morality” plays. The plays were meant to teach people a moral lesson. The characters in them were abstract vices and virtues.

Between the acts of the morality and miracle plays there were introduced short plays called “interludes” light compositions intended to make people laugh. They were performed in the houses of the more intelligent people.

Longer plays in which shepherds and shepherdesses took part were called “Masques” [ma:sks]. These dramatic performances with music were very pleasing and were played till the end of the 17th century.

Soon the plays became more complicated. Professional actors travelled from town to town performing in innyards.

The first playhouse in London was built in 1576. It was called “The Theatre”. A more famous theatre was “The

Globe”, built in 1599. It was like the old innyard open to the sky. Galleries and boxes were placed round the yard. The stage was in the middle of it. There was no scenery. The place of action was written on a placard, a palace, London. There was no curtain, either. The actors stood in the middle of the audience on the stage. Women’s parts were acted by boys or men.

Drama from its very beginning was divided into comedy and tragedy. The first English tragedies and comedies were performed in London in about 1550.

between the quiet poles shall be at my command”. The devil serves him twenty-four years. When Faustus sees the beautiful Helen he wants to get his soul back. It is too late.

Marlowe's plays taught people to understand a tragedy which was not performed just to show horror and crime on the stage, but to reveal the suffering of man. Marlowe introduced blank verse in his tragedies and pointed out the way to William Shakespeare, the greatest of the Renaissance humanists. In imagination, richness of expression, originality

and general poetic and dramatic power he is inferior to Shakespeare alone in the 16th century.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

The great poet and dramatist William Shakespeare was a genius formed by

the epoch of the Renaissance. He is often called by his people

“Our National Bard”, “The Immortal Poet of Nature” (When the English people called Shakespeare “the poet of Nature” they meant “the poet of realism”, but they didn’t know such a word then) and ‘the Great Unknown”. Indeed very little can be told about his life with certainty, as no biography of Shakespeare was published during his lifetime nor for 93 years after his death.

Yet, patient research by certain scholars has uncovered the biography, but not fully. William Shakespeare was born at Stratford-on-Avon on the 23rd of April, 1564. His father, John Shakespeare, was a farmer’s son, who came to Stratford in 1551 and became a prosperous tradesman. John Shakespeare was elected alderman and later by the time his eldest children

were born he acted as bailiff which meant he had to keep order in the town according to the local laws. John Shakespeare was illiterate; he marked his name by a cross because he was unable to write it.

His mother, Mary Arden was a farmer’s daughter. John and Mary had eight children, four girls and four boys, but their two eldest daughters died at an early age. The third child was William. William was a boy of a free and open nature, much like his mother who was a woman of a lively disposition. Of Shakespeare’s education we know little, except that for a few years he attended the local grammar school where he learned some Latin, Greek, arithmetic and a few other subjects. His real teachers, meanwhile, were the men and women around him. Stratford was a charming little town in the very centre of England. Near at hand was the Forest of Arden, the old castles of Warwick and Kenilworth, and the old Roman camps and military roads. The beauty of the place must have influenced powerfully the poetэs imagination.

When Shakespeare was about fourteen years old, his father lost his property and fell into debt and so the boy had to leave school and help his family. On leaving school, William Shakespeare began to learn foreign languages. His father had an Italian in his house who was quite a good scholar. This Italian taught William the Italian language, brushed up his Latin and studied the poetry of many Latin, Greek and Italian authors with him. William was still a boy when his first poems appeared. Writing poems was very common in Shakespeare’s days. It was called sonnetising. His future wife Anne Hathaway also expressed her feeling for William in verse. Anne and William met by the river Avon, and she calls him “Sweet Swan of Avon”. In his nineteenth year William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a well-to-do farmer. They had three children -

Susanna, and the twins, Judith and Hamnet. A few years later after his marriage, about the year 1587, Shakespeare left his native town for London.

At this time the drama was gaining rapidly in popularity through the work of the “University Wits”. Shakespeare soon turned to the stage and became first an actor, and then a “play patcher”, because he altered and improved the existing dramas. Thus he gained a practical knowledge of the art of play writing. Soon he began to write plays of his own, first comedies and then historical plays. New plays by William Shakespeare appeared almost every year between 1590 and 1613, in some years one play, more often two.

In 1593 and 1594 he published two long poems – Venus and Adonis and Lucrece. Both poems were dedicated to the young Earl of Southampton, a great admirer of Shakespeare’s plays. Until Shakespeare printed his poems the public had no idea he was a poet. He was known as an actor and a writer of plays. At that time playwrights wrote for a definite theatrical company, and the theatre became the owner of the play.

Shakespeare’s plays were very popular. Actors and writers respected him and admired his genius. As his popularity with the people grew, the aristocracy too became interested in his work. When Queen Elizabeth wanted to see a play, she usually ordered a performance at court.

In 1594 Shakespeare became a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s company of actors. He wrote plays for the company and acted in them. His early plays were performed in the playhouses known as The Theatre and The Curtain. When the company built the “Globe” theatre most of his greatest plays were performed there. By that time Shakespeare was acknowledged to be the greatest of English dramatists. His career as a dramatist lasted for nearly twenty-one years. His financial position also improved.

He was a shareholder of the Globe theatre and he purchased property in Stratford and in London. But the years which brought prosperity also brought sorrows. He lost his only son, his brother and parents.

In spite of prosperity he must have felt lonely among the people surrounding him. In 1612 he returned to Stratford-on-Avon for good. The last years of his life Shakespeare spent in Stratford. He died on the 23rd of April 1616. He is buried in his native town Stratford-on-Avon. In 1616 a month before his death he wrote his will.

On his tomb there are four lines which are said to have been written by William Shakespeare:

Good friend, for Jesus’ sale forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here;

Blessed be he that spares these stones,

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

These lines prevented the removal of his remains to Westminster Abbey; only a monument was erected to his memory in Poets’ Corner.

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