Life in the theaterShakespeare

By: Isabella Bianchi, Heather Berkman,Sierah Sallo, and Deena Basilious.

Staging and Performances They were not separated from the

audience by a dropping of a curtain between acts and scenes.

They would have to signal that one scene was over , and another has started.

Playwrights had to be quite resourceful in the use of hand properties , like a napkin, or in the use of dialogue to specify when the action is taking place.

Staging and Performance

Usually Shakespeare's stage is referred to as “liare stage” to distinguish if from the stages.

Boy Actors- Perhaps the greatest difference between

dramatic performances in Shakespeare's time and ours was that in Shakespeare's England the roles of women were played by boys. 

 (Some of these boys grew up to take male roles in their maturity.) There were no women in the acting companies, only in the audience.

Business Arrangments

Acting companies and theaters of shakespeares time were organized in different ways, for example;

Phillip Henslowe owned the Rose and leased it to companies of actors.

Henslowe would act as a manager, paying play writers, and buying properties.

Shakespeare's company, however, managed itself, with principal actors.

Business Arrangements

Shakespeare as actor, and sharer in an acting company and in ownership of theaters, Shakespeare was involved in the theatrical industry more than anyone can imagine.

Inside the theaterThe public theaters of Shakespeare's time

were very different from our theaters today.They were open playhousesRecent evocations of the Rose and Globe

confirmed some were polygonal and roughly circular in shape.

The most recent estimate of their size put these diameters at 75 feet (The Globe) 100feet (The Rose). But they were said to hold two to three thousand people!

Inside the theater Some spectators paid extra to sit or stand in

the two or three levels of roofed galleries that extended on the upper levels.

In the yard stood the spectators who paid less.Unlike the yard, the stage itself was covered by

a roof. Its ceiling, called "the heavens," is thought to have been elaborately painted to depict the sun, moon, stars, and planets. 

Just how big the stage was very hard to determine.

London Playhouse and Other Sites.

They placed in courts, halls at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, at the inns and court also sometimes in private houses.

The London Playhouse begun only shortly before Shakespeare wrote his first plays in the 1590’s.

These theaters were two kinds; outdoor or public.

London Playhouse and Other Sites.

\among the more famous of the other public playhouses that capitalized on the new fashion were the Curtain ,Fortune the Rose, the Swan, the Globe, and the Hope .

All these playhouses had to be built outside the jurisdiction of the city of London because many civic officials were hostile to the performance of drama and repeatedly petitioned the royal council to abolish it.

WORKS CITED: "Shakespeare's Theater-Folger Shakespeare

Library." -Folger Shakespeare Library. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Apr. 2012. <http://www.folger.edu/Content/Discover-Shakespeare/Shakespeares-Theater/>.