STREETS OF LONDON     

     By the late 1580s, London was teeming with nationalism, superstition, commerce and poverty, artists and guilds, new residents, and old diseases.  Victory over the Spanish Armada launched Britain’s rise to superpower status and with it came an outpouring of economic, social, and literary energy.  It was a vibrant city rich with opportunity and danger.  Merchants flourished while the heads of traitors  hung on spikes.  The Queen reigned, Catholics plotted, and Puritans railed.  Poetry flourished in the shadows of local brothels and bear-baiting arenas.   Due, in part, to the plague, London’’s death rate exceeded its birth rate.  But a burgeoning middle class attracted people from all over England with the lure of wealth without being born to it. People flocked to the city.  One of them was William Shakespeare.

     The theaters of the 1580s (along with the brothels, bear-baiting arenas, various inns, and ale-houses) were located in Shoreditch, just Northeast of the city walls, and thus just outside the city’s jurisdiction.  There were over 20 acting companies at the time, performing in the theaters and inns during the winter and spring, then traveling through the countryside in the summer when the plague made its annual, deadly-- and theater closing--visit to London.  Plays, which usually changed daily,  began around two in the afternoon, shortly after the main meal of the day.  Theaters were large, open air structures and held up to 2,000 people.  A barren stage thrust into the middle of a semi-circle shaped amphitheater, where commoners stood on the floor, at a penny per person.  For double that, people could sit in raised boxes that wrapped around the central yard.  Some even paid extra to sit on the stage itself.

Shakespeare began his career as an actor and this experience undoubtedly influenced his writing in many ways.  First, no one feels the sting of a bad line, a poorly conceived scene, or a boring plot  like those on the stage.  Audiences, fresh off a meal in which the only available beverages were alcoholic, would jump in with their own dialog, or berate an actor on the spot.  Often they responded to a bad performance by hurling fruit, nuts and stones at an underperforming performer.  It taught him, first hand, the importance of giving the audience what it wants.

Secondly, he learned to write to the strengths of other actors.  The talents of men such as Edward Allyn, Richard Burbage, and the comedian William Kemp, provided Shakespeare with a framework on which he could dress new characters.  A good actor brings more than his ego to a role. There was no method acting on the Elizabethan stage.  But the strength, control, and subtly of voice by Allyn or Burbage would help Shakespeare find his own voice. In fact, by the time he was writing “A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare had developed his own thoughts on what makes good and bad acting.

He also would have met and socialized with other actors and playwrights  They hung out in the same taverns, talked shop, exchanged ideas. And they certainly would have checked out what the competition was up to.

     What they were up to was changing the rules of the game. 

     Up to that time, most English drama consisted of Mystery Plays, Morality Plays and Chronicle Plays.  Mystery plays dramatized Bible stories or the miracles performed by saints.  Some of these plays could last up to twenty hours, presumably because some miracles take time. 

     Morality plays told tales about Good versus Evil, in which the characters are allegorical portrayals of various virtues and vices.  In the end, Good is rewarded, Evil punished, and everybody learns a valuable lesson. 

     Chronicle plays were loosely arranged episodes detailing the acts of courage and bravery by historical figures, almost always royalty and always always beneficial to the public welfare. 

     Such plays were a staple of pageants and festivals going back to the 12th Century.  But it is noteworthy that, in nature, they progress from Spiritual to Moral to Human.  At the end of the 16th Century, two plays changed the direction of drama and helped create the modern world.

     “The Spanish Tragedy’” written by Thomas Kyd, initiated the revenge tragedy, and was one of the most popular and successful dramas of the Elizabethan Era.  Exciting, suspenseful, and ironic, it broke new ground by having a tightly organized plot, notable for climaxes in the middle and end of the play. It shocked audiences with its portrayal of violence onstage and the presence of a vengeful ghost.  It also contained a play-within-a-play, a technique Shakespeare would later use in several plays.

     The second was Christopher Marlowe’s “Tamburlaine.”  Marlowe did to blank verse what Jimi Hendrix did to the electric guitar, expanding its possibilities far beyond what anyone else of the time imagined possible. His rhetoric was bombastic, elevated, and considered immoral for its time.  He thumbed his nose at the morals and values of Elizabethan England, portraying his hero as power hungry, ruthless, and beyond the reach of justice.  The play ends with  Tamburlaine shamelessly celebrating his victories, his ill-gained power, and the spoils of his conquests.

     It was a huge hit.

     Shakespeare, certainly saw it.  It impressed him greatly and probably concerned him as well.  This was what the competition was doing?   What could he possibly do to match it?  

     Shakespeare was a well-read man.  Books were highly expensive and well beyond the budget of an actor.  But he knew a successful London printer, also from Stratford, named Robert Field.   Thus, Shakespeare had access to the most popular books of the day.  One of those books was Holinsheds Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, a totally biased account of Tudor history commissioned by the Queen’s printer.  Another was Edward Hall's The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York.  These would be the sourcebooks for  Shakespeare’s history plays, the first of which is Henry VI, Part 2.

Next: Chronology