OUTLINE HISTORY OF ENGLISH DRAMA (PART I) – BEGINNING TO ELIZABETHAN

 Origin

 

    The maxim ‘necessity is the mother of all invention’ epitomizes in a nutshell the basic circumstance underlying the origin of English drama. At the start of the medieval period in England, all rituals within the Catholic Church were exclusively carried out in what was its designated medium of communication, Latin. This naturally meant that the congregation which was for the most part uneducated, remained by and large oblivious to the proceedings that transpired during the services. A conscious need was therefore felt by the clergy to improvise a viable means by which the public could be made to understand the ideas and doctrines that were preached. The solution they came up with was to perform illustrative gestures that the audience could simply see and discern from. Subsequently these actions evolved into mute enactments, which could be historically taken to represent the initial phase in the development of English drama. It is thus important to remember that the first plays enacted in England were not plays at all but pantomimes. The pantomimes in due course took the shape of rudimentary plays when the element of dialogue was incorporated into their framework. This incorporation that denotes the second phase in the development of English drama, signals the dawn of medieval drama in England.

 

Medieval Drama

 

    English medieval drama developed in terms of two stages, the first of which is epitomized by the religious or liturgical plays performed within the church by the clergy. These plays essentially fall into two categories, the mystery plays that were based on stories taken from The Bible, and the miracles founded on the events and incidents derived from the lives of saints. Both these plays obviously were aimed at inculcating religious values in the onlookers, and their enactment was exclusively managed and run by the church. In fact, all the actors involved in the performance were formal members of the church, and a strict ban was placed on enacting these plays outside church premises. However, midway through the medieval period a change inevitably began to occur in this regard, when the popularity of the mysteries and the miracles started to incite an exorbitant swelling in the size of the congregation. Naturally concerns regarding the holy grounds of the church being desecrated arose among the clergy, who eventually succumbed to the idea of permitting the plays to be performed outside in secular venues. This meant that the responsibility of managing the performances also had to change, and the organization handpicked for the purpose were the trade guilds. With the plays emerging from the confines of the church to the market place, it was just a matter of time before the strictly religious feature of the enactments inevitably acquired a secular character. This anticipated change finally materialized in the form of the morality plays and the interludes, which mark the inception of the second stage in the development of drama in medieval England. A morality was essentially a long serious play of humanized abstractions, whose ultimate objective was to indoctrinate moral values in the audience. By contrast, an interlude was a short comic play, performed during the interval of either two halves of a long morality play or two separate morality plays. Medieval drama in England thus may be said to altogether comprise of four different types of plays, the mystery, the miracle, the morality and the interlude, each of which in their own distinct way contributed to the shaping of regular drama.

 

Regular Drama

 

    Regular plays emerged in England in the sixteenth century, during the reign of Elizabeth I. The first regular play which was a tragedy called Garboduc authored by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, was in fact initially performed in the court of Elizabeth by the members of the Inner Temple. This enactment was quickly followed by the performance of the first English comedy entitled Ralph Roister Doister, traditionally attributed to the authorship of a Nicholas Udall. It is important to note that unlike Garboduc Udall’s play had a relatively modest opening, far from the grandeur of the royal court. It was customary at the time to enact a Latin play by the Roman playwrights Plautus or Terence during the spring festivities in the London public schools. Udall a headmaster in one such institution, presumably came up with the improvisation of replacing the usual Latin comedy with an English one that apparently he himself authored. After the performances of the first regular plays, drama became quickly established as the most sought after mode of entertainment, and professional playwrights started to emerge. Of the many such, the group generally labelled the University Wits are particularly noteworthy.

 

University Wits

 

    University Wits denotes a school of dramatists who operated during the reign of Elizabeth I, whose plays are credited with establishing the foundations of English drama. The rather peculiar title attributed to the school derives itself from the fact that all its members happen to be graduates from the universities of Oxford or Cambridge. Seven members are principally identified as constituting the group. These are John Lyly, George Peele, Robert Greene, Thomas Kyd, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Nashe, and Christopher Marlowe. Though the university wits by no means consciously followed any shared code in writing for the stage, some common features could be discerned in their plays. These include a fondness for depicting heroic subjects, a partiality towards employing an evidently poetic style, a self-conscious orientation towards tragedy, all of which make their dramas both spectacular and self-conscious at the same time. While talking about the University Wits, it is necessary that special mention be made about Christopher Marlowe, for not only is he the most important of the lot, but is also the greatest playwright before Shakespeare. In fact, it could rightfully be said that it was Marlowe who truly paved the way for Shakespeare, a fact justified by the accolade widely conferred on him as the father of English drama. Regarding this point, the contributions made by the man could be summed up as being essentially three fold in scope. The earlier plays before Marlowe’s time portrayed plots that were nothing more than a sequential arrangement of events and incidents. It was Marlowe who brought organic unity into dramatic plotting, ensuring the events and incidents constitute a unified whole. In the plays prior to Marlowe, characters imparted the impression of being puppets that were animated by forced passions and concerted expressions. It was Marlowe in his plays who invested his characters with a much needed sense of vitality, depicting them as representatives of real humanity. In the earlier plays before Marlowe’s own appeared, style was given an overblown significance to the extent that the subject was made to suit the medium, rather than the other way around. It was Marlowe who inspired the overturning of this logic, by replacing the traditional emphasis on rhymed verse with blank verse as the most appropriate medium for framing dramatic dialogues.

 

Elizabethan Theatre

 

    The theatre which during the time of Elizabeth I was by far the most popular means of entertainment, exemplified specific characteristics, some of which have become extinct over the years, while others have remained as staple features the world over. To begin with, the Elizabethan theatre could be essentially regarded as consisting of three basic structures, the stage on which the play was performed, the galleries on either sides of it with seats in them, and large open area in front known as the pit. The spectators who watched the play from the pit had to remain standing throughout the performance, not only because there were no seats to sit on, but also because the stage represented a raised platform that was roughly four to six feet high from the ground. This stage called the apron stage, was a peculiar set up in that in addition to the usual rectangular platform, it had a protrusion stretching into the pit from the middle of it. The theatres themselves fell into two types, the private theatres that housed a relatively small audience, but in which the entire building was roofed, and the public theatres that were comparatively much larger, in which only the stage and galleries were roofed. The performers who acted in the plays during Elizabethan times, invariably organized themselves into troops that generally consisted of half a dozen actors, all of whom were men. It is noteworthy that at the time women were prohibited to perform on the stage, and very few in fact actually visited the theatre to witness the enactments. All the female roles in the plays were played by young boys dressed in women’s clothes, a phenomenon known as transvestism literally meaning cross dressing. Finally, turning our attention to the people who attended the performance, it is notable that Elizabethan theatres housed a mixed audience, which could be essentially divided into two types. These are the nobles, who watched the plays comfortably seated from the galleries, with the most important among them actually given a seat on the stage, and the commoners or the groundlings, who viewed the performance standing from the pit. Though the audience varied in their social rank, there was one thing that united them, the fact that they were an animated lot, who watched the performance with a lot of gusto.

 

William Shakespeare

 

    Unlike Marlowe’s dramatic career that was abruptly cut short by a drunken brawl in which he  died stabbed through the eye, Shakespeare’s not only lasted for a substantial period of time, but was also extremely prolific. Starting from roughly 1588, Shakespeare’s dramatic journey lasted for over a quarter century, until 1614, during which if popular accounts are to be trusted, he authored 37 plays that are traditionally categorized into four types namely tragedy, comedy, history and romance. The dramatic career of Shakespeare, with a view to trace the pattern of his development as a playwright, is generally divided into four periods. The first period that is envisaged to be from 1588 till 1594, was a time during which Shakespeare was striving to find his footing as a playwright. The period is dominated by comedies, all of which though skilful betray a young man’s fancy at work. The same could also be said about the history plays and the tragedies he wrote during the phase. The second period which is supposed to be from 1594 till 1600, sees Shakespeare attain maturity as a dramatic artist, a fact amply testified by the comedies he authored towards the culmination of the century. This said however, it must be pointed out that the best of Shakespeare comes into the spotlight only in the third period, which is from 1600 till 1608. It is noteworthy that unlike previously, it is not the comedies but the tragedies that predominate in the third phase. This of course could be readily explained by the fact that Shakespeare suffered many personal losses during this time, the most noteworthy of it being the death of his son Hamnet, which naturally dampened his spirit and darkened his outlook. The fourth and final period of his dramatic sojourne, which is generally taken to last from 1608 till 1614, sees Shakespeare liberate himself into a more light hearted vein as a dramatist. However, though his spirits might have taken a turn for the better, his talent seem to take a turn for the worse, with a very palpable decline in power exhibited by him in his plays. The fact that this period is dominated by the romances that often involve fantastic elements and sudden reversals, bear witness to the point. Shakespeare was not an original genius, he after all derived the plots for many of his plays from several popular and known sources at the time, but he definitely had the Midas touch. He was also a romantic, who exemplified absolutely no qualms in breaking with the classical rules of dramatic composition. His plays are often filled with multiple strands of action, indiscriminately intermingle tragic and comic elements, break with the idea of poetic justice, and frequently span a time period of many days, months, and weeks, sometimes even years, taking the audiences across diverse settings that are both far away and farfetched. His most telling attribute as a dramatist however, is neither his romantic sensibility nor his skilful handling of derived material, but lies in his unique ability to capture the essence of human nature in his many characters and scenarios. It could be rightfully said of Shakespeare’s plays that they are ever contemporary, that they would remain relevant and engaging as long as humanity continues to thrive on earth.

 

Ben Jonson

 

    Ben Jonson epitomizes an ideal foil to Shakespeare as a playwright. Shakespeare was a thorough romantic, who simply wrote for the stage, exhibiting no regard whatsoever to rules of any kind. On the contrary, Jonson was a rigid classicist in his dramatic art, who considered the classical rules of dramatic composition as his guiding principles. Jonson’s corpus as a playwright therefore essentially consists of only two types of plays, tragedies and comedies, for as a classicist he was strictly opposed to the idea of intermingling the light-hearted and the serious. His plays also unerringly fell in line with the concept of the three unities, which naturally meant that the dramatic action in his plays did not involve subplots, did not span a time period beyond a single day, and was invariably restricted to one or at the most two places located in close proximity to each other. It is noteworthy that Jonson unlike Shakespeare was not a playwright of all-round skill. In striking contrast to the latter, who tasted telling success in every type of drama he wrote, Jonson himself is noted only for his comedies. Jonson’s comedies popularly labelled comedies of humour, did not endeavour to depict a well-rounded portrayal of humanity. They were essentially satirical plays meant to ridicule a social or human folly, which centred around a one dimensional character called oddity, whose entire personality is defined by a single peculiar trait blown out of proportion. Limited as his talent and appeal was, it must be acknowledged that Jonson’s status as a trend setter in English drama is undeniable. After all, the classical strain in the drama of England that reached its peak during the Restoration period in the form of the heroic plays, and more particularly, the comedy of manners, essentially derive their inspiration from Jonson’s plays.