Greek Drama (ca. Fifth Century B.C.)
Western drama originated in ancient Greece when, legend has it, one member of the chorus, Thespis, stepped aside and conversed with the rest—hence the term thespian. More than entertainment, drama for the Greeks was a vital part of the community’s cultural life. It was derived from the dithyramb, a choral hymn and dance performed in honor of Dionysus, god of fertility and wine. Tragic and, later, comic playwriting competitions dating from 534 B.C. were held in Athens (and later in other cities) during the City Dionysia, an annual festival in honor of Dionysus.
Greek Festivals and Theaters The City Dionysia was a five-day festival that began with two days of pageantry in the name of Dionysus and ended with three days of drama. Three competing playwrights were each given a day on which to present their tetralogies, sets of four plays consisting of three tragedies and a brief satiric play called a satyr play. The tragedies almost always drew on familiar stories of the gods and heroes of Greek culture, often from stories found in the Iliad and the Odyssey. The productions consisted of two actors (later three actors) and a chorus. The satyr plays were bawdy, comic looks at mythology featuring choruses costumed to resemble satyrs, the half-man, half-goat minions of Dionysus.
Beyond writing the plays, the competing playwrights were responsible for creating the music, scenery, and costumes. They were also responsible for the directing and choreography, and in most cases acted in the productions as well. Each play interspersed narrative or dialogue elements, or both, with dance-songs performed by a chorus. All of the participants in the plays wore elaborate masks and costumes, allowing actors to assume the roles of the different characters.
Greek theaters were semicircular stone structures built into slopes of hills. Each theater had a central area called an orchestra, or dance space, where the chorus performed. At the back of the orchestra was the skene, a structure believed to have been used first as a storage area, later as a scenic background for plays, and finally as a raised stage. The area where the audience sat was called the theatron, or “seeing place.” The theaters typically held between 14,000 and 19,000 audience members, though some held even more (the theater at Epidaurus held 25,000 audience members).
Tragic Playwrights Although there were many tragic playwrights, the work of only three survives from the fifth century B.C.: that of Aeschylus (ca. 523–456 B.C.), Sophocles (ca. 496–406 B.C.), and Euripides (ca. 480–406 B.C.). Each is credited with an innovation that changed the form of theater. Aeschylus is said to have introduced a second actor to the stage, and was instrumental in the transition from the early dithyramb form to the tragic form. He is thought to have written some 90 plays, of which 70 fragments still exist. His Oresteia follows Orestes as he avenges his father’s murder by his mother, and exemplifies Aeschylus’s concerns with issues of vengeance and justice. The Oresteia is the only trilogy that survives intact. Sophocles introduced a third actor and increased the size of the chorus from 12 to 15 members. He is thought to have written some 123 plays, of which only seven have survived. Euripides is credited with having introduced realistic characterization and dialogue. He has 19 surviving plays, including The Trojan Women and Medea.
Comic Playwrights The comic playwrights Aristophanes (ca. 450–388 B.C.) and Menander (ca. 342–292 B.C.) show a division in comic styles. Their work is categorized as Old Comedy (Aristophanes) and New Comedy (Menander). Old Comedy, typified in Aristophanes’s masterpiece, The Frogs—which satirizes Aeschylus and Euripides and puts them onstage as characters—showed the world in chaos. In Lysistrata he creates an anti-war play in which the women of Athens refuse to have sex with their husbands until there is peace. New
Comedy introduced stock characters, and in this way provided a direct link to the comedies of Rome and later the stock characters of the Italian commedia dell’arte.
Drama and Aristotle’s Poetics After the fifth century B.C., with the defeat of Athens in the Peloponnesian War, the golden age of the Greek tragedy faded. In writing on fifth-century drama in his Poetics, considered the most important tract on Western drama ever written, Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) defined the elements of drama. He introduced the term catharsis—the purging of spectators’ emotions through pity and fear—and the concept of the unities of time, place, and action—that the action of a play should take place within no more than 24 hours, have but one location, and have only one main plot. His work would inform Western drama for centuries to come.
Roman Drama
The theater of the Roman Empire was, to a large degree, a transfer of Greek theater into a Roman vernacular. Plays, though performed at Roman festivals, were set in Greece; actors wore costumes similar to those worn in Greek theater; and most of the surviving Roman plays are adaptations of Greek plays. However, whereas drama in ancient Greece was intrinsically tied to religious experience, drama in the Roman Empire increasingly found value as entertainment. Farce, typified in the works of Plautus (ca. 254–184 B.C.) and Terence (ca. 195–159 B.C.), was a popular form, and the chorus of Greek theater diminished in importance.
Spectacle in Roman Drama Whereas in Greek theater action took place offstage, in Roman theater, which relied heavily on spectacle, action took place directly onstage. In Seneca’s (ca. 4 B.C.–A.D. 65) Medea, for example, Medea kills her children onstage. Euripides’ Medea, in contrast, kills her children offstage; the audience hears the events taking place offstage but does not see them.
With the fall of Rome in the fifth century, theater fell into a void for nearly 800 years. The rise of Christianity saw the festivals of Rome become incorporated in the Christian liturgical calendar, giving birth to what would be the liturgical drama of the late Middle Ages.
Medieval Drama (ca. 500–1500)
As the Christian church rose to power during the Middle Ages, a new style of drama that celebrated the life of Christ and Christian principles emerged. By the late Middle Ages (ca. 1300–1500), with the rise in the importance of craft and trade guilds and of universities, these plays began to be performed outside of churches, often outdoors at festivals where they were produced and performed by the guilds in the towns in which they were presented.
Mystery Plays Mystery plays, also called liturgical plays or cycle plays, had their roots in Christian liturgy and in the church calendar. They enacted moments from the life of Christ, and were performed in cycles. The most popular mystery plays were connected to Easter and depicted events involved in Christ’s resurrection. Also popular were plays performed during the Christmas season, depicting scenes about the birth of Christ. Special stages were erected for the plays, and the festivals at which they were performed began with processions through the town.
Morality Plays Morality plays dramatized Christian morals by portraying scenes in which actors personified allegorical characters. One actor might take the role of Goods or Fellowship, while another might enact the role of Sloth. The best known of these plays, Everyman (ca. 1500), shows the character of Everyman summoned by Death and accompanied on his journey by actors personifying the material elements of his earthly life, such as Kindred and Fellowship. By the time Everyman reaches Death, only Good Deeds remains as his companion. Morality plays, though first performed by guild members, eventually were performed by professional actors who traveled from town to town.
Theater of the Italian Renaissance (ca. 1300–1600)
During the Italian Renaissance theater developed along two lines: the courtly theater in which the scenic arts flourished and for which new theaters were built; and the improvisational theater of commedia dell’arte. Within the courtly theater there were few playwrights of significance. Among them were Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533) and Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), both of whom modeled their work after that of the Romans. Plays were often performed at court with amateur performers who were usually courtiers. Although there are few memorable plays from this period, a number of innovations were made in terms of scenic design that influenced theater throughout Europe for centuries to come, including scenes painted on backdrops and the proscenium arch, a frame at the very front of the stage that hid the mechanisms for moving
scenery. The proscenium has remained in place in theaters through modern times.
Commedia dell’Arte Commedia dell’arte was exuberant, largely improvisational theater, dependent on actors rather than on playwrights. It was performed by touring acting troupes throughout Italy, and later throughout Europe. The productions were generally farces, and, while dialogue was improvised, the plots were standardized. Many of the standard plots were laid out in Flaminio Scala’s Teatro delle favole rappresentative (The theater of stage plots). Each plot had a main story, usually involving a pair of youthful lovers, and a comic subplot that was moved along by the characters of comic servants, or zanni. Performances relied on visual humor and set comic bits called lazzi. With the exception of the young lovers, all actors wore masks. Actors had some scripted speeches that they could draw upon and insert where appropriate, but because of the improvisational dialogue, every performance was different. Music, dance, and acrobatics were often incorporated into the action.
Commedia dell’arte troupes were made up of between eight and 12 members and included women as well as men. Each performer took on the role of a commedia character, often playing the same role throughout his or her career. The roles were the same throughout all troupes—among them were the middle-aged Pantalone; the maid, Colombina; and the servant, Arlecchino (Harlequin).
By the late 16th century, commedia dell’arte troupes had begun to tour throughout Europe. Commedia reached the peak of its popularity by the mid-17th century, though it continued to be performed until the mid-18th century. Commedia’s influence was far-reaching and can be seen in the work of, among others, Molière and Shakespeare.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama (1558–1642)
In the early part of the 16th century English drama was still beholden to the conventions and practices of the medieval stage. Performances were given by companies that were under the patronage of wealthy gentlemen and were presented both to the court and to the general public. The performances combined elements of popular entertainment with a wide range of source material including biblical stories, romantic tales, classical myths, and English folklore. They often took place on temporary stages consisting of a simple platform, or on pageant wagons that could travel from town to town. In 1559, however, Queen Elizabeth I prohibited plays that dealt with political or religious subjects, forbade the presentation of the medieval cycle plays, and made local authorities responsible for the performances that took place in their area. In addition, she passed a number of laws that were designed to keep the growing number of theatrical companies under close supervision. It was with these developments that the first professional companies appeared, and with them, the need for playwrights and permanent theaters.
Elizabethan Playwrights In the 1580’s the University Wits, a group of highly educated playwrights influenced by an interest in the classical ideal of ancient Greece and Rome that was common throughout Renaissance Europe, appeared in London. They elevated the English language and introduced Senecan devices such as the use of soliloquies, ghosts, and confidantes. The best-known of these playwrights were Christopher Marlowe (ca. 1564–1593), a great innovator in the use of iambic pentameter; and Ben Jonson (1572–1637) who, like Shakespeare, did not have a university education, but was perhaps the most ardent of the period’s playwrights in following the classical ideal.
Elizabethan Theaters The late 16th- and early 17th-century theaters were generally divided into two categories: public (open-aired; outdoor) and private (closed roof; indoor). By the middle of the 1600’s, professional companies performed in both. James Burbage built the first permanent public theater (the Theatre) in 1576, and by the start of the English Civil War in 1642 there were as many as nine others competing for business. These theaters included, among others, the Globe, the Swan, the Rose, and the Fortune. The layout of the public theaters is still a matter of speculation, but it is generally thought that they consisted of a raised platform stage that could be surrounded on three sides by standing spectators. Surrounding the standing audience were two galleries of seated spectators. To the rear of the stage was a wall with doors leading to a backstage area. Above the doors was a gallery used for musicians, and above that a tower contained stage machinery. Covering the stage was a painted canopy that was supported by columns and referred to as the “heavens.” The private, or indoor, theaters were the venue of choice for the more classically-minded playwrights such as Ben Jonson. The best-known of these theaters was the Blackfriars Playhouse.
Theater Companies Although Elizabethan and Jacobean theater companies operated under the patronage of noble or wealthy gentlemen, most still relied on the public for support. These companies, like the Italian commedia dell’arte troupes, generally operated according to a profit-sharing system. Most company members had multiple responsibilities within the company, such as playwriting, business management, costuming, or acting. Some companies owned their own theaters. Women were not allowed to perform; female roles were played by male actors. A high level of competition existed among the various companies, making it necessary for companies to perform often and maintain a large repertory of plays. Commissioned plays became the property of the company once the playwright’s fee was paid. Plays were tightly guarded and rarely published. Rather, the actors would be given the lines for their individual parts alone, and the play would come together as a whole only during its presentation.
William Shakespeare Although much speculation and debate surround the identity of William Shakespeare, official documents and literary references lend valid evidence of his existence.
In 1564 William Shakespeare was born to John and Mary Arden Shakespeare on April 23, as scholars infer from his christening date, April 26. As Shakespeare grew up and attended school in Stratford, his father worked at a number of local government jobs to support the family and became one of the town’s most noted citizens. At age 18, William married Anne Hathaway, another citizen of Stratford, and in 1585 they had a twin son and daughter, Hamnet and Judith. One year after the birth of his first two children, Shakespeare left his family in Stratford and traveled to London to pursue his career as an actor and playwright.
In London, between 1589 and 1591, Shakespeare wrote his first plays, a trilogy chronicling the reign of King Henry VI. But in 1592 the plague that swept through the city, killing thousands and forcing all theaters closed by official decree until 1594, compelled Shakespeare to retreat to the outer areas of London.
As his career advanced, a friendly competition arose between Shakespeare and his contemporary Christopher Marlowe, author of The Jew of Malta (published posthumously in 1633), The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (1588), and other plays, as both playwrights attempted to win the favor of English audiences. Despite the rarity of theatrical performances during the time of the plague, Shakespeare continued to write plays and, ultimately, 154 sonnets.
In 1593, one year before London’s theaters reopened, Christopher Marlowe was killed in a bar fight, leaving Shakespeare as the preeminent playwright of the era. When the theaters did reopen, acting troupes returned to business, and the troupe with which Shakespeare worked as an actor and writer of plays for the rest of his career, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, came together. In 1599 the Globe Theatre—the theater most regularly used for Shakespeare’s performances—opened for exclusive use by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. In 1601, the year of John Shakespeare’s death, and the year William Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, his history Richard II played at the Globe Theatre. At about the same time, the earl of Essex attempted a rebellion against Queen Elizabeth. Because of the content of Richard II, many felt that Essex’s party had instigated this performance as an incentive to rebellion, thus implicating Shakespeare as a sympathizer to the earl of Essex and his cause. After the failed rebellion an investigation into Shakespeare’s actions disclosed no irregularities, and ultimately the authorities brought no charges against him.
Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, leading to accession of James I (James VI of Scotland) and ushering in the Jacobean period in England. King James was a great supporter of the theater, and after he saw a performance of Shakespeare’s comedy As You Like It, he issued a royal order to change the name of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to the King’s Men.
Shakespeare’s artistic production was astounding, not only in number but in quality: the 38 plays and the poems and sonnets are a trove of both astounding insights into human character and arguably the most magnificent poetry ever written in the English language.
Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. It seems an unlikely coincidence that his death took place on his 52nd birthday. Yet, since we can infer the date from the date of his burial (April 25) and from an inscription on a statue carved in his honor a few years after he died, scholars have more or less agreed on April 23 as the correct date of his death.
Timeline for Shakespeare’s Writings
| Year Written |
Play and Publication Date |
| 1590–1591 |
2 Henry VI (pub. 1594), |
| 3 Henry VI (pub. 1594) |
| 1591–1592 |
1 Henry VI (pub. 1623) |
| 1592–1593 |
Richard III (pub. 1597), |
| Venus and Adonis (pub. 1593) |
| 1592–1593 |
The Comedy of Errors (pub. 1623), |
| The Rape of Lucrece (pub. 1594), |
| Titus Andronicus (pub. 1594), |
| The Taming of the Shrew (pub. 1623) |
| 1594 |
Two Gentlemen of Verona (pub. 1623) |
| 1594–1595 |
Love’s Labour’s Lost (pub. 1598), |
| Romeo and Juliet |
| 1595–1596 |
Richard II (pub. 1597) |
| 1595–1596 |
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (pub. 1600) |
| 1596–1597 |
King John (pub. 1623) |
| 1596–1597 |
The Merchant of Venice (pub. 1600) |
| 1597–1598 |
1 Henry IV (pub. 1598) |
| 1598 |
2 Henry IV (pub. 1600) |
| 1598–1599 |
Much Ado about Nothing (pub. 1600) |
| 1598–1599 |
Henry V (pub. 1600), |
| 1596–1600 |
Julius Caesar (pub. 1623), |
| As You Like It (pub. 1623) |
| 1599–1600 |
Twelfth Night (pub. 1623) |
| 1600–1601 |
The Merry Wives of Windsor (pub. 1602) |
| 1600–1601 |
Hamlet (pub. 1603) |
| 1601–1602 |
Troilus and Cressida (pub. 1609) |
| 1602–1603 |
All’s Well That Ends Well (pub. 1623) |
| 1604–1605 |
Measure for Measure (pub. 1623), |
| Othello (pub. 1622) |
| 1605–1606 |
King Lear (pub. 1608), |
| Macbeth (pub. 1623) |
| 1606–1607 |
Antony and Cleopatra (pub. 1623) |
| 1607–1608 |
Coriolanus (pub. 1623), |
| Timon of Athens (pub. 1623), |
| 1608–1609 |
Pericles (pub. 1609) |
| 1609–1610 |
Cymbeline (pub. 1623) |
|
1610–1611 The Winter’s Tale (pub. 1623) |
| 1611–1612 |
The Tempest (pub. 1623) |
| 1612–1613 |
Henry VIII (pub. 1623) |
| 1613 |
The Two Noble Kinsmen (pub. 1634) |
Tragedies
Romeo and Juliet This is a tragedy of young—indeed, very young—love, doomed from the start; the hero and heroine are introduced in the prologue as “star-crossed lovers.”
Act I A street-brawl erupts between servants of the feuding Montague and Capulet families, then spreads to involve members of the families. The absence of Romeo Montague is noted, and he is found by his cousin Benvolio to have been brooding with love-sickness. They disguise themselves and attend a ball at which Romeo’s beloved is to be present. There, however, he and Juliet, a Capulet who is to marry Count Paris, fall in love. Tybalt, a Capulet, recognizes Romeo and predicts a bitter meeting ahead.
Act II In the celebrated balcony scene, Romeo and Juliet eloquently express their love and agree to marry secretly. Friar Laurence, entreated by Romeo, agrees to officiate, hoping to bring peace to the families. The lovers go to him in stealth.
Act III After the ceremony, Tybalt chances to meet Romeo and challenges him. Romeo demurs, but Mercutio engages Tybalt and is killed; when Tybalt returns, he is slain by Romeo, who is then exiled by the Prince of Verona. The lovers steal one night together, as the Capulets arrange for Juliet and Paris to marry very soon. Informed of this, the daughter spurns her parents.
Act IV Friar Laurence proposes that Juliet fake her death with a potion he will provide, and then be rescued by the banished Romeo. However, her father moves up the marriage by one day, so Juliet takes the arranged potion immediately. The next morning her nurse finds her body and presumes her to be dead.
Act V By mischance, Juliet’s death is reported to Romeo, and he plans to poison himself at her tomb. There he finds Paris, who challenges him and is killed. Romeo takes the poison. Juliet awakes, finds him dead, and kills herself with his dagger. Capulet, Montague, and others arrive, learn of events from Friar Laurence, and, moved by them, end their feud.
This early Shakespearean tragedy presents literature’s most famous lovers. Filled with action that brings out the danger of their rashness, the language presents a major enrichment in the beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry.
Julius Caesar The fear of a power-hungry Caesar leads to betrayal and self-sacrifice in 44 B.C.
Act I Cassius and Brutus, Caesar’s friend and ally, agree that Caesar has grown arrogant and ambitious, and that his rule has left many unhappy in Rome. Caesar meets a soothsayer, who tells him to beware the Ides (the 15th) of March. Mark Antony three times offers Caesar the crown, which he declines to great cheers from the crowds. Cassius plans to lure Brutus to conspire against Caesar by forging letters that show support from other nobles.
Act II Brutus resolves to join the conspiracy for the general good of Rome. Caesar’s wife describes a dream she had of Romans’ dipping their hands in Caesar’s blood. Caesar resolves reluctantly to go to the Capitol on March 15.
Act III Caesar once again rejects warnings from the soothsayer. The co-conspirators assassinate Caesar, who as he dies cannot believe that Brutus is one of the murderers. They dip their hands in his blood, fulfilling the dream. Mark Antony asks to speak after Brutus at Caesar’s funeral. Brutus and Cassius justify to the crowds their killing of Caesar, but Mark Antony sways the citizens to fury, forcing Brutus and Cassius to flee.
Act IV Mark Antony, Lepidus, and Octavius form the Second Triumvirate, discuss which conspirators should live and die, and plan the attack on Brutus and Cassius’s armies. When Brutus and Cassius meet again, they argue heatedly over mutual grievances, then reconcile. A servant reports that the enemy approaches and that Brutus’s wife, Portia (Cassius’s sister), has killed herself. Mark Antony convinces distraught Cassius to bring his armies to Octavius and Antony. That night, Brutus sees Caesar’s ghost, which foretells that they will meet again in Philippi.
Act V Brutus and Cassius exchange insults with Mark Antony and Octavius. On the battlefield Brutus’s men defeat Octavius, but Cassius’s men retreat. Cassius sends Titinius to assess battle progress. When he believes that Titinius has fallen into enemy hands, Cassius kills himself on Pindarus’s sword. But Titinius returns to report Brutus’s success; when he finds Cassius dead, Titinius kills himself. Brutus finds the dead bodies of Cassius and Titinius then returns to battle. As his army is cornered, Brutus asks the remaining men to kill him. They refuse; he runs into his own sword and dies. When Octavius and Mark Antony find Brutus’s body, they declare Brutus the noblest of the conspirators because he believed he was doing good for Rome and not seeking personal gain.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark The first of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies is a drama of revenge and is considered by many Shakespeare’s most psychologically complex play.
Act I Set in Denmark in the royal castle at Elsinore sometime during the late Middle Ages, the play begins with a question—“Who’s there?”—establishing a theme of mystery and a motif of searching. King Hamlet of Denmark has inexplicably died, and Prince Hamlet, his son, has returned from university for the funeral. He is suspicious about the hasty marriage of his mother, Gertrude, to his uncle Claudius, who is now king. Informed that his father’s ghost has been appearing on the castle battlements, Hamlet arranges to encounter it. The ghost tells him that Claudius had poisoned him and directs Hamlet to avenge him.
Act II Hamlet feigns madness in a confrontation with Ophelia, once his lover, and the daughter of the king’s counsellor, Polonius. King and counsellor secretly listen to the exchange and deem Hamlet mad. Two schoolmates of Hamlet are employed to spy on him. Hamlet, in turn, employs a troupe of “players” to enact before Claudius a scene simulating King Hamlet’s murder, and so determine the king’s guilt by his reaction.
Act III The “play within the play” is performed, and Claudius flees the room in distress. Hamlet judges his uncle guilty. Gertrude calls Hamlet to her room, and, on his way, he spies Claudius alone, but passes up this opportunity for revenge because the king is praying, and, if killed, would go to heaven. While mother and son converse, Polonius hides behind a curtain. When Gertrude, frightened by Hamlet, calls for help, Polonius cries out, and Hamlet, mistaking him for Claudius, stabs and kills the hidden figure.
Act IV Hamlet, with his school friends, leaves for England, where Claudius has sent him to be executed. Ophelia goes mad and dies, and Laertes, her brother, seeks revenge for the death of his sister and his father, Polonius. Hamlet has escaped and returned to Denmark, and Claudius plans a duel between him and Laertes, allowing Laertes to use a poisoned sword, backed up by a poisoned chalice.
Act V Hamlet confronts Laertes when Laertes jumps into his sister’s grave at her funeral, but Claudius comes between them and arranges a duel, at which the swords get
exchanged and both are fatally wounded. Gertrude mistakenly drinks from the poisoned chalice, then confesses her and the king’s guilt. Hamlet stabs and kills Claudius. King Fortinbras of Norway arrives and claims the throne of Denmark.
The complex and uncertain motives, moods, emotions, actions—and inaction—of a hero burdened with duty, grief, and conscience, inform one of the towering works of literature, a compelling story that searches deep into the mystery of being human.
Othello, the Moor of Venice Its action unfolding with descending force over a few days, this is the most compactly structured of Shakespeare’s mature tragedies. Indicative of its concentration and unity, at least one of the three main characters appears in each scene. It is Othello’s tragedy, but its most vivid, psychologically intriguing character may be Iago, one of literature’s greatest villains.
Act I Iago, ensign to Othello, the black-skinned Moor who is military commander of Venice, is violently jealous that Cassio has been promoted over him to be Othello’s lieutenant. He declares his diabolically cunning revenge on his leader, beginning with the revelation of Othello’s secret marriage to Desdemona, daughter of Senator Brabantio. Outraged, Brabantio has Othello brought before the Duke. Othello, with his wife’s support, defends himself, and matters are let stand as the Duke orders his general to Cyprus, where he will be joined by Desdemona, to oppose a Turkish force. Iago plots to make Othello suspect an affair between Desdemona and Cassio, and he enlists Roderigo as his aide.
Act II Iago seeks to bring down Cassio, whom he now suspects is involved with Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s attendant. He gets Cassio drunk and instructs Roderigo to provoke him into a fight. Cassio strikes both Roderigo and the Cyprus official Montano, and, as a result, Othello demotes him. Iago counsels Cassio to appeal to Desdemona and hints to Othello that she supports Cassio because she loves him.
Act III Othello and Iago secretly observe a conversation between Desdemona and Cassio, then Iago finds an opportunity to deepen his leader’s suspicion when Emilia picks up Desdemona’s dropped handkerchief, a gift from Othello. Iago hides it in Cassio’s rooms and tells Othello that he has seen Cassio carrying it. Othello asks his wife for the handkerchief and is told she has lost it.
Act IV Othello sees Cassio’s companion, Bianca, with the handkerchief, and he now believes that Desdemona is unfaithful. He resolves to kill her. He berates his dumbfounded wife and directs Iago to kill Cassio, who deputizes the job to Roderigo.
Act V Roderigo’s assault fails, and Cassio wounds him. Iago appears and wounds Cassio, then kills Roderigo to silence him. In the next scene, after a speech in which he reveals his enduring love and a painful dialogue in which she protests her innocence, Othello smothers Desdemona in their bed. Emilia enters and rails against the Moor. When Iago arrives, she realizes his plot and her role in it. Othello lunges at Iago, who stabs Emilia. The eloquently remorseful Othello stabs himself and dies. A Venetian official sentences Iago to be tortured.
King Lear Commonly considered one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays, this tragedy is set in an unknown period of ancient Britain.
Act I Aging King Lear resigns his authority by dividing his kingdom among his daughters Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia, the youngest, who is unable to match her sisters’ insincere declarations of love, and so is disinherited. When the Earl of Kent objects, he is banished, but will later return in disguise to attend the king. The King of France resolves to marry Cordelia, while Goneril and Regan conspire with their husbands to deprive Lear of all majesty. When he visits Goneril, she offends him, and he goes to Regan.
A subplot is revealed when the bastard Edmund attempts to convince his father, the Earl of Gloucester, that his legitimate son, Edgar, is planning for the two sons to usurp the father’s authority.
Act II Edmund feigns to his father that Edgar has wounded him, as Regan and her husband, Cornwall, avoiding Lear, arrive at Gloucester’s castle. Kent attacks Goneril’s messenger, Oswald, and is placed in the stocks. Lear arrives at Gloucester’s, attended by his “all-licens’d Fool,” who nags the king for his own folly. After Goneril and her husband, Albany, appear, Lear becomes aware of his daughters’ treachery. They protest that he is no longer entitled to his attendance of knights, and, raging, he departs, with Kent and the Fool, into the storm-threatened night.
Act III As Cornwall and Albany contend with each other, France and Cordelia arrive with an army at Dover to campaign for Lear, who has gone mad amid the blasting storm. Gloucester supports Lear, and Edmund betrays him to Cornwall, while Edgar, in retreat and pretending madness, seeks shelter in a hovel with Lear and his companions.
Cornwall arrests Gloucester and tears out his eyes. His own servant attacks and fatally wounds him, and is slain in turn by Regan. Gloucester learns the truth about his sons.
Act IV Edgar, unrecognized by his blind father, escorts him to Dover, where Lear also has headed. Still distracted, Lear goes to sleep, and wakes to recognize Cordelia beside him. With Cornwall dead and “milk-livered” Albany denounced, Regan and Goneril have both fallen for Edmund. Oswald has been employed by both sisters to take love messages to Edmund, and, by Regan, to kill Gloucester. But Edgar kills Oswald when he threatens Gloucester; then he discovers Goneril’s letter.
Act V As France and Britain prepare for battle, Edgar reveals Goneril and Edmund’s liaison to Albany, and Edmund condemns Lear and Cordelia to death. Edgar, supporting Albany, engages and mortally wounds his brother. Goneril poisons Regan and stabs herself; the dying Edmund suggests that Cordelia can still be saved. But she has been hanged, and her father enters carrying her body, opening a powerful scene in which he briefly hopes that she lives, grieves for her, then himself dies. The last words and, apparently, the fate of Britain, are left to Edgar.
This profound, thematically dense, painfully sad drama searches without illusion into evil, yet balances, in part with its own beauty, the diabolical and angelic capacities of humanity.
Macbeth Set in Scotland and England during the 11th century, this tragedy explores the role of destiny and an overpowering ambition to influence it.
Act I Three witches on a Scottish countryside scheme about Macbeth’s future. King Duncan declares Macbeth the new Thane of Cawdor after Macbeth has defeated his enemy. Macbeth and Banquo encounter the three witches, who tell Macbeth that he will be “king hereafter” and that Banquo’s descendants will be kings. Macbeth considers whether to usurp Duncan; when Duncan visits Dunsinane, Macbeth’s castle, Macbeth wavers. Lady Macbeth calls him a coward and pushes him to action through her own steely resolve.
Act II Macbeth murders Duncan; Lady Macbeth plants the bloody dagger on Duncan’s guards. Noblemen Lennox and Macduff arrive expecting to see Duncan, and Macbeth leads them to Duncan’s quarters to find him brutally murdered. Macbeth kills the guards, accusing them of being the assassins. Duncan’s sons, Malcolm and Donalbain, escape, implicating them in their father’s death. Macbeth becomes king.
Act III Macbeth orders the murders of Banquo and his son, Fleance. Fleance escapes. At a banquet celebrating his kingship, Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost. Malcolm gains the support both of the King of England and Macduff.
Act IV Macbeth returns to the witches, who show him three apparitions: an armed head warning of Macduff’s return to overthrow Macbeth, a bloody child saying that no man born of a woman can harm him, and a child wearing a crown and holding a tree who predicts that Macbeth’s demise will come only when the Burnham woods outside Dunsinane move against him. Macbeth has Lady Macduff and her son murdered. Macduff meets Malcolm, who tests Macduff’s loyalty. Macduff’s wife’s and son’s death enrage Macduff; Malcolm leverages Macduff’s anger against Macbeth.
Act V Lady Macbeth grows mad. She sleepwalks, imagining blood on her hands. Macbeth prepares for battle; he fears no man born from woman and is certain that woods cannot move. However, Malcolm orders his men to camouflage themselves with tree branches as they attack Dunsinane. Macbeth learns that his wife has killed herself and that the woods are moving toward the castle. Macduff admits that he was “untimely ripped” from his mother’s womb, therefore not “born” in the conventional sense. He kills Macbeth. Macduff takes Macbeth’s head to Malcolm’s army and hails Malcolm as the new King of Scotland.
Comedies
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Although set in and around ancient Athens, this early Shakespearean romantic comedy owes its fantastic quality to the English conceit that strange, dreamlike events are likely to occur on Midsummer night, June 23rd.
Act I As the marriage of Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta approaches, the duke is forced to judge on the fate of other lovers. Egeus has promised his daughter, Hermia, to Demetrius, but she loves Lysander. When Theseus rules that she must marry Demetrius, Hermia and Lysander run off into a local wood. When they reveal their plan to Helena, she determines to tell Demetrius, whom she loves.
A group of laborers—the “rude mechanicals”—meet in the same wood to rehearse a playlet to be performed at the Duke’s wedding celebration.
Act II The wood’s inhabitants, the Fairies, appear, as Queen Titania quarrels with King Oberon and refuses to give up the changeling boy she has seized. In his wrath, Oberon assigns his jester, Puck, to bring him a flower whose juice, when rubbed on the eyelids of the sleeping queen, will cause her to fall in love with the first being she sees when she awakes. When he hears Demetrius, who has entered the wood to search for Hermia, harshly rejecting Helena, Oberon decides also to apply the love potion to Demetrius. Puck, however, mistakenly sprinkles it on Lysander, while Oberon anoints Titania. Helena discovers Lysander and wakes him. Stricken with love, he follows her.
Act III The mischievous Puck, coming across the mechanicals, turns Bottom the Weaver’s head into a donkey’s, and this hybrid creature is the first living thing that the waking Titania spies. Hermia, looking for Lysander, meets Demetrius and accuses him of murdering Lysander. Oberon and Puck, realizing their error, apply the juice to Demetrius and arrange for Helena to be present when he awakes. Both youths now love Helena, and prepare to battle, but Oberon and Puck and make them fall asleep, and plan to anoint Lysander with an antidote to the love potion.
Act IV When Oberon finds Titania clinging to Bottom, he applies the antidote to her. Meanwhile Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus enter the wood in a hunting party and discover the four young lovers asleep. Egeus appeals to Theseus to enforce the marriage of Hermia and Demetrius, but when Demetrius protests that he now loves Helena, the duke permits the new pairings.
Act V A triple wedding feast follows at Theseus’ palace, and the mechanicals present their version of Ovid’s “Pyramus and Thisbe,” which is followed by a dance of the Fairies.
One of Shakespeare’s most attractive, delightful, and humorous plays, what this “Dream” may lack in depth is compensated for by its consummate artistry.
The Merchant of Venice Shakespeare’s dark comedy pits love against usury and revenge in 16th-century Venice.
Act I A sad Antonio listens as his friend Bassanio requests more loan money to woo and marry Belmont heiress Portia. Antonio’s money is tied up in his ships at sea, but he puts up his own property to borrow from Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, in order to help Bassanio. Shylock hates Antonio because the Christian merchant loathes Shylock’s usury; Shylock will provide the money, but if Antonio does not repay the debt in three months Shylock will extract a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Meanwhile, Portia, who remembers Bassanio fondly, carries out her father’s wishes by making anyone who wants to marry her solve a riddle and choose from a gold, silver, or lead box to find her portrait.
Act II Ashamed of her father, Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, vows to marry Bassanio’s friend Lorenzo; when Lorenzo comes for her, she steals her father’s gold and jewels and escapes disguised as a boy. The Prince of Morocco takes his chance at Portia’s riddle; he chooses incorrectly, as does the Prince of Aragon. Shylock mourns the loss of his daughter and part of his fortune and blames Antonio.
Act III Bassanio solves the riddle and accepts a ring from Portia, which he swears will be removed only at his death. Bassanio’s friend Gratiano marries Portia’s woman-in-waiting, Nerissa. Antonio’s fortunes apparently have failed, and Shylock will take his pound of flesh. Portia and Nerissa insist that Bassanio and Gratiano help Antonio; the women disguise themselves as men to witness the encounter with Shylock.
Act IV Shylock refuses appeals to spare Antonio. Portia, here named Balthazar, presides over the case. She rules in favor of Shylock, but under penalty of death to the usurer, she invokes the “quality of mercy” and tells him that he must take exactly one pound of flesh, with not a drop of blood. Further, since Shylock conspired to kill a Venetian, he must give half his fortune to Jessica and must convert to Christianity. Bassanio stops Balthazar (Portia in disguise) to thank him. Testing Bassanio’s loyalty to his wife, Balthazar demands the wedding ring; after refusing, Bassanio then sends it to Balthazar. Nerissa resolves to play the same trick on Gratiano.
Act V Portia and Nerissa arrive home and feign anger when Bassanio and Gratiano cannot produce their wedding rings. The women scold their husbands for giving away the important symbols of their love and faithfulness. Then the women present the rings to their husbands and reveal their involvement in the judgment against Shylock.
As You Like It Composed alternately in verse and prose, this is one of Shakespeare’s finest mature comedies.
Act I In a troubled, unnamed duchy, from which the rightful Duke Senior has been banished to the Forest of
Arden by his brother, Frederick, Oliver de Boys plots against his own brother, Orlando, arranging for the wrestler Charles to attack him. Orlando, however, defeats Charles. Rosalind, Duke Senior’s daughter, observes the battle and falls in love with Orlando. Frederick banishes Rosalind to Arden, accompanied by Frederick’s daughter, Celia.
Act II When he learns that Oliver intends to murder him, Orlando flees to the forest, where Rosalind and Celia have disguised themselves as the boy Ganymede and his sister, Aliena, and plan to live as shepherds. Orlando, searching for food, discovers the duke in the company of his cynical courtier, Jaques, who speaks of the “seven ages” of man, and the clown Touchstone. Orlando approaches the duke’s domain, brandishing a sword, but the duke recognizes and welcomes him.
Act III Frederick demands that Oliver find Orlando, under threat of losing his estates. In the forest, Orlando seeks Rosalind by hanging love poems on trees. She greets him as Ganymede and proposes that Ganymede pose as Rosalind so that Orlando can practice courting her. Before this occurs, Ganymede speaks disapprovingly to the shepherdess Phebe about her scornful treatment of her lover, Silvius—and Phebe falls in love with Ganymede.
Act IV After Orlando practices his lovemaking, a changed Oliver encounters Rosalind as Ganymede, and tells her that Orlando has saved him from an attack by a lion and has been wounded. He shows her a cloth stained with Orlando’s blood, and she faints.
Act V Oliver reveals to Orlando, who is well, that he loves and will marry “Aliena.” “Ganymede” then talks to Orlando about his love for the still-missing Rosalind. He tells Orlando that he has the power to arrange his marriage to Rosalind, as well as the reconciliation of Phebe and Silvius. Rosalind reveals herself, and Hymen bestows wedding blessings on Rosalind and Orlando, Celia and Oliver, and Phebe and Silvius. The duke appears, reveals that he has found religion, and restores the dukedom to Frederick.
Although sportive and magical, this play, moving meaningfully back and forth from city to forest, is an earnest exploration of love and society, cruelty and redemption.
Twelfth Night Given by its author the alternative title What You Will, this gay comedy is named for the twelfth night of Christmas, January 6th, when it may have first been performed.
Act I Duke Orsino of Illyria seeks the hand of Olivia, but, mourning for her brother, she rejects him. Viola and a ship’s captain are survivors of a wreck off Illyria, and she, believing her brother Sebastian is also lost, disguises herself as “Cesario” to seek Orsino’s aid. She falls in love with the duke, but agrees to help him woo Olivia.
In Olivia’s household, the characters of a subplot appear: her glum, “ill-willed” steward, Malvolio, her able maid, Maria, her bibulous uncle, Sir Toby Belch, and the idiotic Sir Andrew Aguecheek, from whom Toby takes money to help him conquer Olivia. When Viola-as-Cesario arrives, Olivia is smitten by “him,” and, when he has left, sends him her ring, pretending that she has found it and presumes it to be his.
Act II “Cesario,” seeing the ring, realizes unhappily that Viola loves “him.” Toby and Andrew become raucously drunk, and Maria bids them to calm down. Malvolio then reproves all three, and Toby and Andrew plot revenge. They send him a love-note supposed to be from Olivia, bidding him to come to her in yellow hose and “cross-gartered.” The presumed-dead Sebastian appears in the company of Antonio.
Act III Olivia professes her love to Cesario, while Malvolio, dressed ridiculously and smirking constantly, follows his false instructions and is locked up as insane. Toby stokes Andrew’s jealousy of Cesario, and a duel is arranged, which Antonio, thinking that Cesario is Sebastian, prevents. Confusion thickens when Antonio asks “Cesario” for his (Antonio’s) purse, and is naturally denied. At length, Viola-Cesario, who has heard the name “Sebastian,” senses that her brother is alive.
Act IV Andrew challenges the “cowardly” Cesario, but finds himself confronting Sebastian. Olivia arrives to head off a fight. Olivia asks Sebastian, who she thinks is Cesario, to solemnize their betrothal, and he agrees.
Act V Antonio, in the duke’s presence, confronts Cesario, still believing him to be Sebastian. The duke is upset when Olivia addresses Cesario as her beloved, and grows angrier still when a priest reveals that he has married them. Andrew and Toby appear, wounded after a battle with Sebastian, whom they had assumed to be the weak Cesario. The puzzlement dissolves when Sebastian enters. Duke Orsino then proposes to Viola, and it is revealed that Toby has married Maria. Only the gulled Malvolio remains unhappy, and swears revenge “on the whole pack of you.”
So ends one of Shakespeare’s most delightfully plotted, amusing, and popular plays.
The Tempest This Shakespearean “romance” is the author’s last complete play.
Act I Antonio, Duke of Milan, and his party, returning by sea to Italy from a wedding celebration, are driven by a storm to the island where Prospero, the former duke, deposed and set adrift by Antonio, his brother, has settled with his daughter, Miranda. Prospero, a magician, has usurped the witch Sycorax, freeing the spirit Ariel, whom Sycorax has imprisoned in a tree, and subordinating the witch’s brutish son, Caliban. Prospero’s “art” has caused the tempest and, through Ariel, manipulates the shipmates, separating the crew from the courtly passengers. The innocent Miranda falls immediately in love with one of the latter, Ferdinand, who represents to her a “brave new world,” but Prospero consigns Ferdinand to be his wood-carrier.
Act II Ferdinand’s father, Alonso, King of Naples, mourns for his lost son as he, Antonio, Sebastian, and Gonzalo wander about. When Ariel causes the former two to sleep, the others plan to kill Alonso. Elsewhere, the drunken seamen Trinculo and Stephano discover Caliban, who considers their liquor “celestial” and kneels in homage to Stephano.
Act III Ferdinand proposes to Miranda, and Caliban enlists his new friends to murder Prospero. Ariel performs tormenting tricks on the noble companions and reminds them of their crime against Prospero, in which all took part. Repentant Alonso believes Ferdinand’s death to be his punishment.
Act IV Prospero employs spirits and nymphs to create a masque to celebrate the betrothal of Miranda and Ferdinand. Ariel reports to his master that he has charmed the would-be assailants and driven them into a “filthy pool.” When they arrive, soaked, at Prospero’s cell, the spirit beguiles the sailors with glittering garments, and a phantasmal pack of hounds drives off all three.
Act V Prospero discloses himself to the four noblemen when they in turn are led to his cell. He reclaims his dukedom and the plot against Alonso, pardons his offenders, and reveals Ferdinand, in Miranda’s company, to his joyful father. Ariel brings the ship’s boatswain to report that it is ready to sail. Caliban rues his admiration for Stephano and Trinculo. Prospero directs Ariel to provide smooth sailing for the travelers, then sets him free. In an epilogue he renounces his “charms” and begs the audience to release him from the island—and the play.
This play, an adventure into enchantment, music, and fancy, moves playfully through darkness to establish the mood of forgiveness and theme of restoration that distinguishes Shakespeare’s late romances, while it also expresses the author’s farewell to his own incomparable poetic art.
History
King Henry IV, Part I Set in about the year 1400, this “history play” focuses both on the reign of Henry IV and the transition of his son, the Prince of Wales, from wild youth to noble heir apparent.
Act I King Henry IV, who has usurped the crown of Richard II, faces continued civil war. His general, Mortimer, has been defeated and captured by Glendower of Wales, and Mortimer’s brother-in-law, the fiery Hotspur, has defeated Douglas of Scotland. The king, suspecting that Mortimer is in league with Glendower, will not ransom him, and Hotspur, in turn, will not yield his prisoners. Henry, who had favorably compared Hotspur to his own dissipated son, threatens him, and Hotspur, his father, Northumberland, and uncle, Worcester, join with Mortimer, Glendower, and Douglas in rebellion against the king.
Prince Hal appears in the company of the much older, rotund Sir John Falstaff, who plans a highway raid with his companions. Hal’s soliloquy declares his intention to break off soon with the frivolous life of his youth.
Act II Hal and Poins foil the raid by robbing the robbers, an event that Sir John distorts to his advantage at the Boar’s Head Tavern before Hal and Poins reveal their role. In an extraordinary scene, Hal and Falstaff conduct a dialogue in which they alternately play the king and the prince.
Act III The rebels propose their partition of Britain, while the king reproves his son. Hal promises to compensate for his wanton ways by taking revenge on Hotspur. Before leaving for the battlefield, however, he returns to the Boar’s Head, where he enlists Falstaff in the war.
Act IV Hotspur finds himself deprived of support, but, ever vainglorious, relishes the challenge. Falstaff, ever corruptible, accepts money to release soldiers, then joins the prince. The king sends a messenger to arrange a meeting with the rebels.
Act V A peace is arranged, but the emissaries, Worcester and Vernon, fearing that the rebels will nonetheless be punished, report the opposite to Hotspur, and the battle begins. Falstaff, for whom “the better part of valor is discretion,” drinks sack (sherry) and feigns death amid the fighting, while Hal routs Douglas, who has confronted King Henry, and, in an inevitable encounter, slays Hotspur. Henry condemns Worcester and Vernon to death, and prepares to continue the war on two fronts—king and prince will fight together in Wales.
So gripping are the events in this play, so brilliantly realized the characters—particularly Hotspur and the universally appealing Falstaff—so deft the balance of humor and high seriousness, that some believe its sequel, Henry IV, Part II, was staged in response to popular demand.
The Shakespeare Controversy Some people actually believe that Shakespeare was not a real person, but the pseudonym of another author of the Elizabethan era. Others believe that because the works are so brilliant they cannot possibly be the work of one man, and therefore bear the mark of many writers. The controversy endures today as the Calvin Hoffman Prize, worth almost 1 million British pounds, is still offered as an incentive for researchers to investigate and uncover a concrete answer to the question of Shakespeare’s identity.
Some people have suggested that Francis Bacon wrote much of what we attribute to Shakespeare, since Bacon possessed the range of cultural knowledge exhibited in Shakespeare’s works and was often seen in the royal court. Another popular choice for the real identity of Shakespeare is the 17th earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, whose life seems to be reflected in a number of Shakespeare’s works.
Many people prefer a more obvious choice for Shakespeare’s identity, the playwright, poet, and translator Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare’s rival. Marlowe and Shakespeare always competed with each other to turn out popular plays, all of which followed a similar poetic style—a blank verse version of iambic pentameter.
The abundant theories notwithstanding, several local government and church documents from Stratford-upon-Avon in the 16th century mention John Shakespeare and his various business and government dealings in addition to the births of his children. Nevertheless, the search continues for the identity of the author of William Shakespeare’s works. Today virtually every serious scholar of Shakespeare believes that Shakespeare—who is also called simply the Bard or the Poet (to attest to his supreme standing in the world of poetry)—did exist and wrote all of his own dramatic and poetic works.
Jacobean Theater Shortly after the ascension of James I (1566–1625) to the throne in 1603, a new kind of dramatist emerged in England. The work of these technically skilled playwrights was highly polished but lacked the profundity of the work of their Elizabethan predecessors. The Jacobean playwrights were more interested in sensation and thrills than in illuminating universal truths. The work of this period is often described as decadent. John Ford (ca. 1586–1639), in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629), treats themes of incestuous love sympathetically. Other writers of note were John Fletcher (ca. 1579-1625), Francis Beaumont (ca. 1585–1616), and John Webster (ca. 1580–ca. 1632), whose plays The White Devil (1609) and The Duchess of Malfi (1613) are still often produced.
In general, the theater in England began to decline after Shakespeare’s death in 1616, and when civil war broke out in 1642 the theaters were effectively closed. By the time theatrical activity reemerged in 1660, the great theater culture that had marked the Elizabethan and Jacobean stages and the genius of Shakespeare had vanished, and English theater was forced to begin anew.
French Neoclassical Theater and Molière (1500–1700)
The neoclassical movement encouraged imitation of classical works and adherence to classical literary rules, and eventually led to French plays written in the classical manner. By 1550, plays by Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Terence, and Seneca, as well as critical works by Horace and Aristotle, including Aristotle’s Poetics, had been translated into French. During this time the Pleiade, a group of French intellectuals, formalized rules of French grammar and poetry with the goal of developing the French language into a vehicle for classical works and defining the neoclassical ideal.
The Neoclassical Ideal Realized By the 17th century, a group of highly learned and technically proficient playwrights led the neoclassical movement. Chief among them was Pierre Corneille (1606–1684). In Le Cid (1636), Corneille adapted a sprawling Spanish play, compressing the original into the neoclassical five-act structure. In addition, he attempted to adhere to the unities by reducing
the original play’s many locations to four settings in a single town, and the original play’s many years into the course of a single day. Despite Corneille’s efforts, Le Cid was still criticized for not adhering closely enough to the three unities and for lacking verisimilitude. Jean Racine (1639–99) was later credited with perfecting the neoclassical tragedy with Phedra (1677).
Molière Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73), who took the name Molière, was an actor, manager, and dramatist who combined the exuberance of the touring acting companies with the ideas of the neoclassicists. He was considered the greatest comic playwright of France and perhaps all of Europe, and his work (together with the tragedies of Racine) marks the high point in French neoclassical theater. Molière was highly educated, but he abandoned a promising career at court in 1643 to join the acting company Théâtre Illustre. He eventually became the head of the company and soon began to write its plays. Among Molière’s numerous plays are the comedies Tartuffe (1664), The Misanthrope (1666), The Miser (1668), The Learned Ladies (1672), and The Imaginary Invalid (1673). His work was often controversial, both reflecting and commenting on the social and religious hypocrisies of his day. His full-length plays, often written in verse, adhered to the five-act structure and the three unities espoused by the neoclassicists. Molière worked in the theater until his death, directing and often performing the leading role in his plays himself.
Restoration Drama (1660-1700)
In 1660 the restoration of Charles II to the English throne after his exile in continental Europe paved the way for the reopening of theaters and the reestablishment of English drama. For the first time, women were allowed to perform on the British stages. New theaters were built using innovations, such as the proscenium arch, from the Italian theaters. The new theaters were opened only with a mandate from the king. Audiences, mostly from the upper class, were more sophisticated than in earlier times. Plays often made allusions to gossip of the day, so that to a large degree Restoration theater was an insider’s theater.
Restoration Comedy Plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods were performed in the Restoration period but were often rewritten versions. Even many of Shakespeare’s tragedies were reworked with happy endings. Restoration comedies reflected the worldly-wise sensibility of the period. These comedies of manners were set in London, not in the country or in the courts where dramas of earlier periods had been set. They often involved sexual intrigue among characters who were members of the upper class. For the first time, characters spoke in a conversational style, displaying sparkling wit and jaded sensibilities. Two playwrights of note during the Restoration period were the poet John Dryden (1631–1700) and William Congreve (1670–1729), whose Love for Love (1695) and The Way of the World (1695) are considered masterpieces of the form.
18th-Century Drama
In the 18th century the identity of each of London’s theaters was strongly shaped by actor-managers. In 1747 the actor David Garrick (1717–79) became manager, with John Lacy, of the Drury Lane Theatre. Garrick, considered the greatest actor of his day, was instrumental in bringing spectacle to the stage. His style of acting, much admired throughout Europe, included the use of pauses in action to heighten dramatic tension, and elaborate costumes (such as, famously, a trick wig with hair that stood on end at the moment when Hamlet sees his father’s ghost). In 1728 The Beggar’s Opera by John Gay (1685–1732) opened at the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre, launching a new dramatic form, the ballad opera, which combined social and political satire with popular song. Comedies that rejected sentimentality and drew on the Restoration form were also popular. The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) was first performed in 1771. She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith (1730–1774) was first performed in 1773.
Melodrama The 19th century saw the height of the melodramatic form, as well as various technological innovations in theatrical effects (particularly in lighting), and the rise of the English music hall. In melodrama every aspect of a production—including costuming, sets, lighting, and acting—served the purpose of expressing dramatic content. Now the stage setting of a dark night or a lonely forest became symbolic of a character’s emotional state. Plot took precedence over characterization, with virtuous heroes or heroines beset by disasters and under attack by sinister villains. Limelight, originally used to create atmosphere and later as a focused spotlight, was first used in the mid-19th century.
English Music Hall Music halls at first were eating or drinking establishments that catered to a lower- or
middle-class clientele and that also provided entertainment. But as they attracted larger audiences, halls were built specifically for the purpose of entertainment. The performances at music halls consisted of separate acts such as jugglers, dancers, magicians, and singers. Music halls, more affordable than the theater and aimed at a less sophisticated audience, soon rivaled theater in popularity. In America vaudeville was the equivalent of English music hall entertainment.
19th-Century American Drama
Vaudeville, the Minstrel Show, and the Musical Revue During the 19th century, drama in the United States evolved in a manner similar to that in England. Stylish comedies imported from England were produced in theaters in urban centers throughout the country, as were ballad operas and melodramas. By the mid-19th century, vaudeville, the American counterpart to music hall entertainment, had developed into a genre of its own. It reached its height in the late 19th century, then declined in popularity in the 1920’s with the advent of talking films.
Vaudeville bills, like those in music halls, comprised separate acts that usually included singers, dancers, and comedians, as well as jugglers, musicians, or magicians. Like music hall entertainment, vaudeville grew out of a need for a popular form of entertainment for working-class audiences—often audiences made up of frontier workers in the American West. The minstrel show, at first a part of vaudeville and later an event unto itself, consisted of songs, comic bits, skits, and stories depicting caricatures of slaves. Minstrel shows were first staged by white performers wearing blackface; later there were some African-American minstrel troupes as well. The first minstrel show was performed by T. D. Rice (1806–60), who first sang and danced his “Jim Crow” act in 1828. Burlesque—shows that featured satirical or slapstick humor and striptease acts—was also popular during the 19th century. Musical revues such as the Ziegfeld Follies, which included music, dancing, and spectacle, became popular in the early 20th century.
Modern Drama in Europe
European Modern Drama (1880–1920) This period was marked by revolutionary, idea-driven styles sparked first by playwrights and then by the directors and institutions that interpreted and presented the writers’ works. During the modern period, European theatrical movements were no longer localized within any given country; they were broadened to include or correspond with movements throughout Europe. Among the movements were realism, naturalism, symbolism, and expressionism.
Henrik Ibsen and Psychological Realism The Norwegian Henrik Ibsen (1828–1906) is considered the first modern playwright. His later plays, most notably A Doll’s House (1879), were revolutionary: realistic, written in colloquial prose, set in the domestic world, and displaying an until then unseen concern with psychology. Because of the realistic nature of the dialogue, the emotionally intimate content, and the domestic settings, actors could no longer rely on the presentational styles popular in the mainstream 18th-and 19th-century theater. Sets no longer were designed for a painterly effect, but rather reproduced in a detailed way the interiors where scenes took place. The idea of the fourth wall—audiences viewed action onstage as though a fourth wall had become invisible, thereby giving them a window onto private action—was adopted.
In several plays Ibsen set out to show how the rigid mores of a modern society were hypocritical especially regarding marriage, sex, and family life. In addition to A Doll’s House, his major works (Ghosts, 1881, An Enemy of the People, 1882, and The Wild Duck, 1884) were not completely accepted by audiences. In Hedda Gabler (1890) he returned to the idea of a strong woman struggling to find happiness in a repressive society.
Theaters of the Modern Era Venues for the new realistic theater sprang up throughout Europe. In Paris the Theâtré Libre opened under the direction of André Antoine. In Berlin the Freie Bühne opened under the direction of Otto Brahm (1856–1912). In Russia the Moscow Art Theater, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski (1856–1938), presented the new acting style necessitated by the work of Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). In London the Independent Theater presented work by, among others, George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950). Shaw’s career as a comic and satirical dramatist spanned nearly two decades from Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1893) and Candide (1896) to Pygmalion (1913) and Heartbreak House (1917). In Copenhagen the Scandinavian Experimental Theater
opened under the direction of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg (1849–1912).
August Strindberg’s best-known early play, Miss Julie, was a work in the naturalistic style. In it a wealthy girl seduces her father’s servant. Strindberg used the play to examine the schism between the old and the new eras, and its form mirrored the radicalism of its content—the play is written without acts and calls for a sparsely furnished stage. Miss Julie was considered so controversial that its opening in Stockholm was canceled and it was instead first produced in 1893 at the Theâtré Libre in Paris. Strindberg’s later plays The Ghost Sonata and The Dream Play rejected realism, relying heavily instead on symbols in an attempt to portray internal reality on the stage.
Anton Chekhov, like Ibsen, used the stage to explore the psychology of his characters. His dialogue was subtle and often understated, helping to make his plays compelling to actors and directors even today. His characters were simply drawn, their lives limited by circumstances, their tragedies based on the meaningless nature of everyday life. When first presented in the traditional 19th-century acting style in St. Petersburg, his play The Seagull (1896) had met with failure. It was only when The Seagull was produced at the Moscow Art Theater in 1898 under the direction of Stanislavski, whose method called upon actors to identify with the characters they played in a search for emotional truth, that it met with success. Three powerful works for the stage followed: Uncle Vanya (1896), The Three Sisters (1901), and The Cherry Orchard (1904), all stalwarts of the repertory.
Symbolism, Expressionism, and the Birth of the Avant-Garde The playwright Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) came to epitomize the Symbolist movement, whereby experience and ideas were evoked through the use of images, with his play Pelléas and Mélisande. Franz Wedekind (1864–1918) sparked the expressionist movement, which distorted action and images in order to stress the subjectivity of experience, with his play Spring Awakening. Alfred Jarry (1873–1907), whose play Ubu roi was first produced in 1896, is considered the forefather of such avant-garde theatrical movements as surrealism and theater of the absurd, although it was not until more than a generation after Ubu roi was first produced that these movements would find their names.
European Modern Drama (1920–1960) During the period between World War I and World War II, theater increasingly became a venue for social and political protest. In Russia agitprop drama (propaganda-driven theater) developed. First in Switzerland and later in Germany the Dada movement found its way to theater. It aimed to promote social change through acts of simultaneity and spontaneity, in which public displays, such as the disruption of a parliamentary debate, became theater. Such displays necessitated audience participation, breaking down further what theater could be or mean. At the same time theater itself became a subject for drama. Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) wrote Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), in which six characters interrupt the rehearsal of a play; it became an instant classic. As the 20th century progressed, theater became increasingly influenced by theory.
Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theater Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), influenced by agitprop, saw theater as a force for social change. He created epic theater, which consciously rejected Aristotle’s classical vision of catharsis. For Brecht, theater, the importance of which lay in its social relevance, was a forum for making the spectator not only feel but think as well. To this end he employed the alienation effect, devised to remind audiences that they were watching a theatrical production. His productions called attention to the mechanics of theater: signs gave scene information, scene changes were fully visible to the audience, and his company (the Berliner Ensemble) practiced a non-naturalistic style of acting. Among Brecht’s plays were The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage and Her Children, and The Good Person of Setzuan. Brecht, in collaboration with the composer Kurt Weill (1900–50), updated John Gay’s 18th-century ballad opera The Beggar’s Opera for their Threepenny Opera.
Antonin Artaud and the Avant-Garde In France, Dada evolved into surrealism in the work of, among others, Jean Cocteau (1889–1963). Theater of cruelty was a term first employed by Antonin Artaud (1896–1949) in his collection of essays The Theater and Its Double (1938), considered the most important work of theater criticism since Aristotle’s Poetics. In The Theater and Its Double Artaud called for theater that would completely involve the audience. To witness theater meant to participate in it, and by participating, the audience was forced to confront itself. Artaud sought to move not through logic but through invoking “communicative
delirium,” a collective, almost religious, fervor in the audience. The Theater and Its Double became the manifesto of the next generation of avant-garde playwrights, including the absurdists Eugène Ionesco (1909–94), best known for The Lesson (1951), Exit the King (1962) and The Rhinoceros (1958) and Jean Genet (1910–86), whose radical plays about sex and power included The Maids (1947), The Balcony (1957), and The Blacks (1959), which also ran in New York for more than 1400 performances in 1961.
Samuel Beckett After World War II drama began to reflect an even more fractured view of the world. Waiting for Godot, by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett (1906–89), was first produced in 1953. In the play two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, are trapped on a road, waiting for the arrival of Godot. In this vacant world they are forced to repeat the same patterns over and over. Though the play did not meet with immediate success, it went on to become the seminal work of the second half of the 20th century. Other strange and startling works by Beckett have found permanent place on the repertory, especially Endgame (1957), Krapp’s Last Tape (1959), and Happy Days (1961).
The Angry Young Men In England the drama of the mid-20th century evolved with less obvious experimentation than it did in the rest of Europe. Its experimentation at first lay in content rather than in style. Look Back in Anger by John Osborne (1929–1994), was first produced in 1956. This stylistically realistic play, which followed the struggles of its main character, Jimmy Porter, raised highly charged questions about class and social roles. It gave rise to the generation of so-called “angry young men”—playwrights such as John Arden . 1930) and Arnold Wesker (b. 1932), whose work called into question the accepted political and social norms of the times.
Modern American Drama
Modern drama in America was formed by many of the same forces that influenced modern European drama. However, because American theater developed in a country where the two world wars had not been fought, it allowed for a coherence in theatrical traditions uninterrupted by war. American modern theater was as subversive as its European counterpart, but not so extreme in its expression.
Eugene O‘Neill, Thornton Wilder, and Tennessee Williams Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) was the most important playwright in bringing new European ideas of theater to America. Although his primary influence was expressionism, O’Neill’s work is marked by an interest in psychology and virtuosity in a variety of styles. The Emperor Jones (1920) employs Symbolist techniques; The Hairy Ape (1922) employs expressionist techniques; Long Day’s Journey into Night (1943), which was not produced until 1956, three years after O’Neill’s death, uses realism paired with psychological symbols to paint a brutally honest portrait of a family.
Thornton Wilder’s (1897–1975) best-known plays are Our Town (1938) and the highly theatrical The Skin of Our Teeth (1942). Tennessee Williams (1911–83), also influenced by expressionism, paired realism with psychological symbols to comment on American culture, the nature of memory, and the vulnerability of the artist in the modern world. During the 1940’s and 50’s, he wrote several emotionally wrenching plays that were enormously popular and critically acclaimed, starting with The Glass Menagerie (1944), and followed by his most famous work A Streetcar Named Desire (1948) that launched Marlon Brando’s career. In quick succession came The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), solidifying his very high place in American theater history.
The Group Theatre and Method Acting In the 1920’s experimental theater in New York was localized in Greenwich Village. Eugene O’Neill’s company, the Provincetown Players, was originally part of the Washington Square Players (later known as the Theatre Guild). The Neighborhood Playhouse became a venue not only for plays but also for dance and avant-garde performances. The Group Theatre, founded in 1931, had a social and political agenda, reacting to the enormous unemployment and extreme working conditions of the times. The work of Clifford Odets (1906–63) reflects this agenda. Odets’s most famous play, Waiting for Lefty (1935), draws on agitprop techniques to dramatize the concerns of union workers.
The Group Theatre employed an Americanized version of Stanislavski’s approach to acting which became known simply as the Method. Method acting used emotional recall—in which actors drew on their own experiences to imbue a character with life—to create genuine emotion and highly realistic performances. The Group
Theatre disbanded in 1941, but its influence continues to this day.
British and American Theater since 1960
British Theater In the 1960’s the social concerns and experimentation of the earlier generation gave rise to an explosion of new playwrights. In England Harold Pinter (1930–2008), whose plays combine the fractured worldview of Samuel Beckett with a kind of realism akin to that of the “angry young men,” rose to prominence with such plays as The Birthday Party (1959), The Caretaker (1959), and The Homecoming (1964). Pinter’s plays, imbued with a sense of menace, often take place in a vague world where naturalistic dialogue is paired with an unexplained or mysterious situation. The comic playwright Joe Orton (1933–67) used sex farce as a tool to satirize the social norms of the times in such plays as Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1964) and What the Butler Saw (1969). Tom Stoppard (b. Zlin, Czechoslovakia, 1937) combines high theatricality with dazzling linguistic invention to explore philosophical matters such as the nature of reality in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1967), Jumpers (1972), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), and the trilogy The Coast of Utopia (2002).
American Theater Arthur Miller (1915–2005), whose plays comment on societal injustices, rose to prominence when his play All My Sons was produced in 1947. Other plays include The Crucible (1953), which used the Salem witch hunts to comment on McCarthyism; and Death of a Salesman (1949), which introduced the tragic everyman, Willy Loman.
A profusion of new types of theater arose during the 1960’s. Happenings, whose roots can be traced to the Dadaist spontaneous theater of Europe in the 1930’s, gave birth to performance art, in which experimental theater companies such as the Living Theater, the Open Theatre, Mabou Mines, the Wooster Group, and Richard Foreman’s Ontological-Hysteric Theatre expanded the boundaries of what were considered theatrical events. The playwrights best able to navigate a path between the experimental and popular theater of the 1960’s and 1970’s are Sam Shepard (b. 1943), who in plays such as Buried Child (1978) and True West (1980) combines a surreal, poetic style with a realistic setting to explore concern for American identity and mythology; Edward Albee (b. 1928), who rose to prominence in the 1960’s and for over four decades has produced such masterpieces as The Zoo Story (1959), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966), and Three Tall Women (1991); and David Mamet (b. 1947), who in signature work such as American Buffalo (1976) and Glengarry Glen Ross (1983) uses vernacular patterns and rhythms to create recognizable characters and an emblematic American speech. Contemporary American theater exhibits a globalization of styles, drawing upon theater forms from the world over.