It is hard to define what exactly makes Elizabethan theatre (and to a lesser extent the Jacobean and Caroline Theatre that followed) one of the most enduring ages of theatre. it is even more difficult to define why Shakespeare is considered one of the greatest and most revived and translated playwrights. It is not because Shakespeare is the most prolific playwright although he did write about 47 plays (Spaniard Lope de Vega is believed to have written 1500 plays and about 400 have survived although many of these were short 40 to 90 minute plays).
Some of the most common reasons given for Shakespeare being considered the greatest playwright that ever lived are:
Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet. He was probably very busy writing plays since sources such as those of company and theatre managers suggest that companies had as many as 30 plays in their repertoire in a season so 10 news plays probably came into a company's repertoire each year and a playwright like Shakespeare would be expected to write 2-5 plays for the season which started in June.
- Meter - a recognizable rhythm in a line of verse consisting of a pattern of regularly recurring stressed and unstressed syllables.
- Foot/feet - a metric "foot" refers to the combination of a strong stress and the associated weak stress (or stresses) that make up the recurrent metric unit of a line of verse.
- Iamb - a particular type of metric ‘foot’ which had two syllables consisting of two syllables, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable ("da DUM")
- Troche - the opposite of a Iamb. A stressed syllable followed by a unstressed syllable ("DUM da")
- Dactyl - a three syllable pattern were a stressed syllable is followed to unstressed syllables ("DUM da da")
- Anapest - a three syllable pattern were two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed syllable ("da da DUM")
- Spondee - a two syllable pattern made up of two long stressed syllables ("DUM DUM")
- Pyrrhic - a two syllable pattern made up of two unstressed syllables ("da da")
- The common types of metrical feet are monometer (one foot or set of syllable), dimeter (two feet or sets of syllables), trimeter (three feet or sets of syllables), tetrameter (four feet or sets of syllables), pentameter (five feet or sets of syllables), hexameter (six feet or sets of syllables), heptameter (seven feet or sets of syllables) and octameter (eight feet or sets of syllables).
- Iambic pentameter: A ten-syllable line consisting of five stressed beats (penta) in a iambic footing. It seems like a natural way of speaking in terms of rhythm, breath and beat. E.g. “In sooth I know not why I am so sad.” da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM. Another example of this is from 'Macbeth' in Act Two when Lady Macbeth says to Macbeth "...And wash this filthy witness from your hand."
- The Witches in 'Macbeth' speak in many ways but the dominant one is a trochaic tetrameter (DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da). It comes across as unnatural, sing-song like in its rhythm and chant-like marking them outside normal life. "Double Double toil and trouble..."
Prose is ordinary speech with no regular pattern of accentual rhythm. Prose is the ordinary, everyday language that people speak in. Usually it is reserved for people of lower or working classes. It does not contain any of the metrical structure of poetry. Lines of text do not all have the same number of syllables nor is there any discernible pattern of stresses. If you are unsure if a passage is in prose or in blank verse, look for the following visual clue: a long passage in prose is typically printed in your text like an ordinary paragraph with right and left justification.
Rhymed Verse
Verse has a relative regularity of poetic rhythm. Normal rhymed verse has poetic rhythm and rhyme. Blank verse is un-rhymed verse containing metre which is normally in iambic pentameter beat structure. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of line and sense of character and dramatic tension is lost. Rhymed Verse in Shakespeare's plays is often in rhymed couplets, i.e. two successive lines of verse of which the final words rhyme with another. The rhyme pattern of verse in rhyming couplets is conventionally represented aa bb cc etc., with the letters a, b, and c referring to the rhyming sound of the final word in a line.
Blank Verse
Blank Verse is un-rhymed iambic pentameter. It is like Prose but has a recognizable metre usually an iambic pentameter or lines using a troche. It is employed in a wide range of situations because it comes close to the natural speaking rhythms of English but raises it above the ordinary without sounding artificial (unlike the "singsong" effect produced by dialogue in rhyme). In the play 'Othello' an example of Blank Verse in perfect iambic pentameter is:
"The native act and figure of my heart..."
At the end of Act 1, Iago uses prose to manipulate Rodrigo from trying to kill himself to using his money to win Desdemona from Othello and Cassio. Here prose shows Iago and frank and down-to earth yet Iago's seamless transition to verse to talk to the audience shows his real objectives.
For I mine own gain’d knowledge should profane,
If I would time expend with such a snipe.
But for my sport and profit. I hate the Moor:
The better shall my purpose work on him.
Cassio’s a proper man: let me see now:
To get his place and to plume up my will
In double knavery — How, how? Let’s see: —
The Moor is of a free and open nature,
That thinks men honest that but seem to be so,
And will as tenderly be led by the nose
As asses are.
I have’t. It is engender’d. Hell and night
Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.
They do suggest at first with heavenly shows,
As I do now: for whiles this honest fool
Plies Desdemona to repair his fortunes
And she for him pleads strongly to the Moor,
I’ll pour this pestilence into his ear,
That she repeals him for her body’s lust;
And by how much she strives to do him good,
She shall undo her credit with the Moor.
So will I turn her virtue into pitch,
And out of her own goodness make the net
That shall enmesh them all.
— 2.3.351–62
Here is a scene where Desdemona and Emilia switch from verse to prose:
EMILIA
'Tis neither here nor there.DESDEMONA
I have heard it said so. O, these men, these men!EMILIA
Dost thou in conscience think,--tell me, Emilia,--
That there be women do abuse their husbands
In such gross kind?
There be some such, no question.DESDEMONA
Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?EMILIA
Why, would not you?DESDEMONA
No, by this heavenly light!EMILIA
Nor I neither by this heavenly light;DESDEMONA
I might do't as well i' the dark.
Wouldst thou do such a deed for all the world?EMILIA
The world's a huge thing: it is a great price.DESDEMONA
For a small vice.
In troth, I think thou wouldst not.EMILIA
In troth, I think I should; and undo't when I hadDESDEMONA
done. Marry, I would not do such a thing for a
joint-ring, nor for measures of lawn, nor for
gowns, petticoats, nor caps, nor any petty
exhibition; but for the whole world,--why, who would
not make her husband a cuckold to make him a
monarch? I should venture purgatory for't.
Beshrew me, if I would do such a wrongEMILIA
For the whole world.
Why the wrong is but a wrong i' the world: andDESDEMONA
having the world for your labour, tis a wrong in your
own world, and you might quickly make it right.
I do not think there is any such woman.EMILIA
Yes, a dozen; and as many to the vantage as wouldDESDEMONA
store the world they played for.
But I do think it is their husbands' faults
If wives do fall: say that they slack their duties,
And pour our treasures into foreign laps,
Or else break out in peevish jealousies,
Throwing restraint upon us; or say they strike us,
Or scant our former having in despite;
Why, we have galls, and though we have some grace,
Yet have we some revenge. Let husbands know
Their wives have sense like them: they see and smell
And have their palates both for sweet and sour,
As husbands have. What is it that they do
When they change us for others? Is it sport?
I think it is: and doth affection breed it?
I think it doth: is't frailty that thus errs?
It is so too: and have not we affections,
Desires for sport, and frailty, as men have?
Then let them use us well: else let them know,
The ills we do, their ills instruct us so.
Good night, good night: heaven me such uses send,
Not to pick bad from bad, but by bad mend!
Exeunt
During Elizabethan times and then in Jacobean times, the profession of dramatist was challenging and far from lucrative. Entries in the businessman/producer Philip Henslowe’s diary show that in the years around 1600 Henslowe paid as little as £6 or £7 per play. This was probably at the low end of the range, though even the best writers could not demand too much more. A playwright, working alone, could generally produce two plays a year at most; in the 1630’s Richard Brome signed a contract to supply three plays a year, but found himself unable to meet the workload. Shakespeare produced fewer than 40 solo plays in a career that spanned more than two decades; he was financially successful because he was an actor and, most importantly, a shareholder in the company for which he acted and in the theatres they used.
Many other playwrights wrote a considerable number of plays during the Jacobean period. Francis Beaumont wrote some 15 plays from 1605 to 1615 including The Knight of the Burning Pestle and Love's Pilgrimage. It is interesting to note that a female playwright was also writing during this period. Elizabeth Cary probably wrote a number of plays but her play The Tragedy of Mariam (probably written somewhere from 1603-1606) is the only play which survives.
Female Playwrights in Elizabethan and Jacobean Times
Joan Lumley
Probably the first female playwright who wrote in the English language was Jane Lumley who translated Ancient Greek speeches and plays into English. During the 1560’s she translated Euripides’s Iphigeneia at Aulis. This translation was probably not performed publically but ‘chamber theatre’ or ‘closet drama’ reading were probably held at either Lumley Castle or Nonsuch Palace. Here are some extracts from Lumley’s Iphigeneia at Aulis:
In this speech Iphigeneia accepts her fate to be offered to the Gods for the greater good of her people.
Iphigeneia: Wherfore seinge that I shall be sacraficed for the cõmoditie of all grece,
I do desier you, that none of the grecians may slaie me preuilie:
for I will make no resistance againste you. (Iphigeneia, fol. 95v . 1348-1352)
In contrast to this the character of Clytemnestra is remarkably modern. Here in this speech she attacks Agamemnon and the male members of her family and society.
Clytemnestra: For if any man shoulde aske of you the cause of the deathe of your daughter, you woulde answer for Helens sake, which can be no lawfull cause,
for it is not mete,
that we sholde sleye our owne childe for a naughtie womans sake… (Iphigeneia, fol. 87v . 978–983)
Jane Lumley’s exploits were soon followed by those of Mary Sidney Herbert who translated Petrarch’s Triumph of Death. Her interest in verse and soliloquy meant that some of her verse is considered to be a great influence on some closet drama of the 1590’s such Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra and William Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra. In 2010, poetry and possible verse soliloquys written by Mary Sidney Herbert were discovered.
Elizabeth Cary
The first female playwright to write original plays in English seems to have been Elizabeth Cary. Around 1610, she seems to have written her first play around 1610 but this play is lost. Probably her second play, The Tragedy of Mariam, the Fair Queen of Jewry was written in 1613 but was intended as a ‘closet drama’ and so primarily intended to be read. It is possible that it was done as a performed reading in her house. The play is a social commentary which addresses divorce, revenge and advocates female agency.
Here is an extract from a speech by the Chorus about the nature of female expression:
Chorus: That wife her hand against her fame doth rear,
That more than to her lord alone will give
A private word to any second ear,
And though she may with reputation live,
Yet though most chaste, she doth her glory blot,
And wounds her honor, though she kills it not.
Mary Wroth
Mary Wroth wrote her most famous play Love’s Victory around 1620. The play is a pastoral comedy which is principally written in rhyming couplets. The play centres around shepherds and shepherdesses in Cyprus and explores a number of different types of love. The pairing up of different couples at the end of the play to suggest different types of love suggest staging elements of the play. This would suggest that it may have been read or performed as a ‘closet drama’ and that female and male friends of Wroth may have taken on reading different parts. Love’s Victory has some interesting characters, sequences and stylistic elements. Some parts of the play are like Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour Lost and other section are reminiscent of The Winter’s Tale. Here is an extract from Act 3 Scene 2 of the play where the character of Dalina talks to shepherdesses about the sisterhood of women:
Dalina: Now w’are alone lett every one confess
Truly to other what our lucks have bin,
How often lik’d, and lov’d, and soe express
Owr passions past: shall we this sport begin?
Non can accuse us, non can us betray
Unles owr selves, owr owne selves will bewray.
The play’s ending is extraordinarily egalitarian with a suggestion that the audience joined the actors on stage after the characters were taken through the valley of death at the moment of resurrection done in a style reminiscent of ‘magic realism’.
Priests: Philisses, of us take Musella faire,
Wee joine your hands, rise and abandon care.
Venus hath caus’d this wounder for her glory,
And the Triumph of love’s victory.
Venus Lovers bee nott amas’d this is my deed,
Who could nott suffer your deere harts to bleed.
Come forth, and joy your faith hath bin thus tride,
Who truly would for true love’s sake have dy’de. (Act 5. Lines 483-490)
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