ENG220 Semester 1 Lecture 2 (1.

2)
September 16th, 2010

Notes:
• The Norton Shakespeare has landed
• Focus Questions for next Tuesday
o What aspects of AMND do not support viewing the play as a series of
variations on the theme of order and hierarchy? (Compare Sonnet 43)
o The action of AMND is essentially concluded at the end of Act 4. What
purposes does the play-within-the-play serve? How does it relate to the
main experiences and themes of AMND?
• The actors and how they organized and build the globe theater
o Had the first performances of most of the plays we are looking at in this
course
o Fruits of actors preceding the building of the theater
o They traveled from one feast to another
o The whole profession did not have nearly the social responsibility and
respectability that it has today
o It was to try and escape the stratification and stifling social hierarchy that
was firmly embedded elsewhere in England
o Actors were considered undesirable people
 If you did not want to be hounded you would seek the patronage of
a wealthy aristocrat and you perform for him at feasts etc…
 This is the system that exist via the Elizabethan age
 The band with which Shakespeare associated with “The King’s
Men”
 The performances by these groups of actors took places in the
great halls of the nobel’s houses, inn yards, you will find a
depiction of what a playhouse or inn yard was like—they are
almost interchangeable
 Play house structure evolves with the structure of the inn yard
o Drama as we know it began
 Anyone on the off day can pay money and see the play
 This is where the market grows—the demand for drama escalates
 In 1567, someone comes along, James Burgedge, is interested in
making money via drama
• What he does is to throw all of his capital into building a
theater simply called Theater right outside the city of
London
• The wooden building he has erected is someone like an inn
yard—an acting space surrounding the audience space
• Several other theaters go up right after
• The most important aspect, it was not at first in the city of
London b/c the London officials were not willing to do so
• b/c of the risk of fire, that was a real risk,--the globe house
burned down but also b/c of the risk of plague, and the risk

1
ENG220 Semester 1 Lecture 2 (1.2)
September 16th, 2010
of riots
• the London authorities view the theater as a haven for
disreputable persons
• they had a great advantage in doing so—the suburbs also
attracted the patrons of those bear-baiting rings
o it consists of tying a bear to a stake and letting him
battle to the death with four or five equally hungry
dogs
 most enjoyable pastime until playhouses
come along
 they provided strong competition for the
theaters
 many play it smart and they had a collapse
the stage and have bear-baiting going on
• you have to have a certain reach
o attract the lower people but also the upper class
o this is what Shakespeare manages to do
 you have a crowd pleasing act with dramatic
verse and dramatic action
• the company and the theater that Shakespeare wrote for
o involves adjustments in his writing to get the maximum amount of actors
o you look for producers and actors
 this is not the way it worked in Shakespeare’s time
 the playwright knows how he is writing for and what company he
is writing for
 the playwright is a member of that company and knows the talents
of this actor
 the lord chamberlain’s men and lord Adel’s men
• both of them survived for over 40 years
• major achievement for an acting company
• acting companies tend to be very short lived
 two major setbacks 1593-94
• there is plague in London and theaters had to close down
for the season
• Shakespeare writes the long poems and dedicates them to
an influential nobleman and gets money
• 1598—another major setback
• the property owner refuses to renew the lease unless they
pay ten times the rent
• Shakespeare company’s solves the problem
o They transfer their assents to the other side and
reconstruct it there
o What has survived from this encounter is the record
of the unsuccessful lawsuit from the landowner

2
ENG220 Semester 1 Lecture 2 (1.2)
September 16th, 2010
o The lesson here is that the structure of the theater
does not consist of a series of places; it is instead a
platform for the project for the theatrical
performance
o The reference to order and hierarchy is not just to AMND but also the
society in which Shakespeare lived
 He was one of the founding members of that company
 He knew the characteristics of each actor for which the characters
were being made for
 What plays did he act in?
 Most experienced actors—take principle roles and take stock
• 6-8 of these fellows
• Shakespeare was a fellow
• And Richard Burbridge was one as well (played Romeo in
Romeo and Juliet)
 Next is the minor men
• Paid weekly
• Occupied minor roles
• You would have a minor actor taking your ticket as you
would come in and then play a part and then play an
instrument
• 15-20 of these in the company
 boy actors
• age 8 to 14
• rigorously trained
• graduates of choir schools
• played women, children and people who had old but high
voices
 the characters of women were very powerful
• but he had a limitation of actors who could play women
• Romeo and Juliet only have three scenes where they are
together
• if you tally up the people in Shakespeare’s company
• you get a total of 30 actors available
o 2 boys, the 6 fellows and maybe 4 of the hired men
—12 actors who are really able to sink their teeth in
primary roles
• you solve it via doubling—you arrange the play so that
each major actor can double and can play two or more roles
in each single play
• visual hoodwinking of the audience is not involved
• you are no farter from the actor than the people from the
back and you know very well of the doubling
• in a two week period, if you were in London, you would

3
ENG220 Semester 1 Lecture 2 (1.2)
September 16th, 2010
see at the same playhouse, a different play each night, so
that ten different plays in two week period performed by
the same actors in order to draw the same actors
• a company would introduce a new play every second week
and performances would be repeated if they were
successfully
o besides tailoring the play to the group he also had to
tailor it to the theater
o the rectangle is for the playing area and the rest of
the space is for the spectators
o it works for Shakespeare time b/c the theater is so much smaller
 you get a chance to sit down
 it works in an age before deodorant and who might affect your
response to what is going on stage
 the scene is suggested by the poetry
 and the result is liberated by the circumstances—these plays call
for a liberal imagination from the audience
• 2/3 went to hear a fellow—the tyranny of the eye
• they though of the plays as primarily an oral rather than
visual experience