The Time Traveller's Guide to British Theatre

The First Four Hundred Years

Aleks Sierz, Lia Ghilardi

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781783192083
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781783197071
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

British theatre is booming. But where do these beautiful buildings and exciting plays come from? And when did the story start? To find out we time travel back to the age of the first Queen Elizabeth in the sixteenth century, four hundred years ago when there was not a single theatre in the land. In the company of a series of well-characterised fictional guides, the eight chapters of the book explore how British theatre began, grew up and developed from the 1550s to the 1950s.

The Time-Traveller's Guide to British Theatre tells the story of the movers and shakers, the buildings, the playwrights, the plays and the audiences that make British theatre what it is today. It covers all the great names - from Shakespeare to Terence Rattigan, by way of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw - and the classic plays, many of which are still revived today, visits the venues and tells their dramatic stories. It is an accessible, journalistic account of this subject which, while based firmly on extensive research and historical accuracy, describes five centuries of British creativity in an interesting and relevant way. It is celebratory in tone, journalistic in style and accurate in content.

1

Elizabethan Theatre

Meet our guide: Walter

Our guide, Walter Wickson, is enjoying a hearty breakfast of oat pottage and ale at the Boar’s Head tavern in Eastcheap, a bustling noisy road in the old City of London. As we arrive, he hurriedly finishes eating, wiping his mouth briskly on his sleeve. Walter is in his late forties, has longish, salt-and-pepper hair and proudly sports a neat moustache and a short, trimmed and pointed beard. He is a clerk, but also owns a scrivener’s shop, and has, in the past, been a copyist of play scripts, writing out the parts for actors to learn. As he sketches out the story of his life, we learn that he’s gone up in the world, his father having been a humble carpenter who worked on staging plays at court. Walter is wearing the clothes of a successful middle-class professional: white linen shirt, dark doublet and hose, with a fur-edged gown for bad weather. He likes to show off, and tells us that he’s the proud owner of well-dyed velvet clothes, but only wears them on special occasions. On the oak-wood table in front of him is his flat wool cap. His hands are sturdy and one of his fingers boasts a large silver ring engraved with a skull, a memento mori. He’s a fastidious character, tending to get lost in detail, but we’re immediately impressed by his compendious knowledge. We’re less keen on him picking his teeth, though, but then again table manners are a recent invention. Anyway, he explains that on this trip we will be looking at London theatre from the 1550s to 1603, the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Enter Gloriana

Walter is a Londoner through and through so he is ideally placed to introduce us to the capital of Tudor England. In the 1550s, he says, ‘It is a city of some 50,000 souls’, although he’s not really sure about the exact figure. At this time, London covers three main areas: the old square mile of the City of London, enclosed by a stone wall with massive gates and guarded by the grim Tower of London, a place where traitors are beheaded. This prosperous yet densely populated area is the historic heart of the capital. To the west, new buildings are expanding along the Strand towards Westminster. Here growing numbers of landed aristocrats, government officials and busy lawyers make their homes. This area is an upper-middle-class suburb. By contrast, to the north, east and south of the City dwell large numbers of craftsmen — like Walter’s father — and semi-skilled workers, their number swelled by migrants from the countryside and abroad. Near the river Thames, which only has one ancient mildew-covered medieval bridge, sailors and dockers settle. Walter warns us against wandering around these poor areas at night.

A keen royalist, Walter gives us our first taste of theatre by taking us to witness Queen Elizabeth’s triumphal progress through the City of London. It is Saturday 14 January 1559, the eve of her coronation. As we make our way through the narrow twisting backstreets, we have to tread carefully: the lanes are littered with rotting vegetables, horse shit and puddles of piss. ‘In the summer the stench is unbearable,’ says Walter, but now — thankfully — it’s winter and we notice the cold on our cheeks more than the smell of the streets. As we come into broader avenues, we see that the skyline is dominated by the old medieval cathedral of St Paul’s. Sir Christopher Wren’s familiar dome hasn’t been built yet and this cathedral is an old gothic building, with flying buttresses and a stubby tower whose 160-metre spire stabs at the sky. It is surrounded by gabled roofs, walled gardens, parish churches, law courts and royal palaces. Everywhere, just a short walk away from the cramped and stinky alleys, there are frost-covered fields and spiky trees.

Suddenly we step into a crowded avenue and see something truly amazing: over the heads of the multitude, their breath steaming in the cold, we see the twenty-five-year-old Queen Elizabeth. She is bare-headed, as tradition demands, so that her subjects can see their new monarch clearly. What strikes us is the whiteness of her complexion and the ginger colour of her hair. But what is most impressive is the magnificence of her apparel: she wears a mantle of gold and silver cloth, furred with ermine, and her dress is of tasseled silk and gold. On this richest of materials is stitched the red-and-white rose symbol of the Tudor dynasty. Queen Elizabeth sits on a cushioned seat in a litter decorated with yellow cloth of gold lined with white satin, and borne by two strong mules, also draped in gold. From the sky, a flurry of snow. It’s a cold afternoon so she has a white damask quilt for warmth. All around her are nobles, courtiers, attendants, gentlemen pensioners and sturdy footmen. A thousand people on horseback; a thousand more on foot. It is a carnival of regal crimsons, starched ruffs and flashing jewels. The crowd loves the spectacle; one man weeps for joy; one poor woman hands Queen Elizabeth a sprig of rosemary, a symbol of remembrance. Everyone is cheering, with several cockney voices praising her father: ‘Good old King Henry VIII!’

As we follow the procession Walter, who warms his hands by blowing on them, calls our attention to the pageants with which the City welcomes its new sovereign. They are little mimed playlets with speeches declaimed in Latin. Crossing London from East to West, Queen Elizabeth watches five of these pageants, each introduced by trumpet blasts: the first, in Gracechurch Street, celebrates her ancestry, harking back to her namesake Elizabeth of York, whose marriage to her grandfather, Henry Tudor, ended the bloody Wars of the Roses. The second pageant, at Cornhill, shows four virtues: Religion, Love, Wisdom and Justice. The third illustrates the Beatitudes from the New Testament: ‘Blessed are the poor; blessed are the meek.’ The fourth features the figure of Time, with one tableau showing a decayed nation under Queen Mary, Elizabeth’s Catholic older half-sister and the previous monarch, and another featuring a flourishing nation under the new queen. The final pageant, at Fleet Street, depicts the new queen as Deborah, the Hebrew prophetess of the Bible, and predicts that, like Deborah, Queen Elizabeth will rule in harmony for forty years. In fact, Walter whispers, she will rule for forty-five years. Yes, this is Gloriana, the shining star of the Elizabethan world.

Our next stop is the Inner Temple, one of the four inns of court. Walter knows it well because his son, Wilt, is a student here. We can’t see much, but in the light of flickering torches Walter hurries us through gothic oak-panelled passages in an old building that functions both as a training ground for lawyers and as a third university (the other two are Oxford and Cambridge). We can hear music and see people dancing, and Walter says that revels are being held to celebrate Robert Dudley, one of Queen Elizabeth’s favourites and the future Earl of Leicester. It’s a glittering occasion. The word that comes to mind when describing Leicester is ‘magnifico’. The man loves his clothes, which drip with jewels; he entertains his sovereign at vast expense, perhaps because he has designs on the Virgin Queen. With his carefully trimmed moustache and beard, and his severe look, he is every inch the noble courtier. And he’s a patron of the arts. We see jesters and musicians, as well as actors preparing their interludes, the short playlets that, Walter says, ‘are all the rage.’ There are shouts, cheers and the sound of drums. But what’s that funny smell? ‘Tallow candles,’ says our guide, ‘made from animal fat.’

In the great hall of the Inner Temple a group of lawyers, not content with mere interludes, perform a full-length play. It’s called Gorboduc. In the flickering candlelight, watching from the back of the room, we struggle to follow what is happening but later Walter fills us in. Gorboduc has been penned by Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, two high-profile statesmen, and its plot is set in ancient times. Gorboduc is a mythical king of Britain, who divides his kingdom between his sons, Ferrex and Porrex. They argue, and Porrex kills his older brother. In revenge, their mother Videna kills Porrex. The result is a civil war that lays waste the kingdom. So this is a cautionary tale about the dangers of a disputed royal succession. What Norton and Sackville are doing is using the play to lobby Queen Elizabeth, indirectly suggesting that she should get married and produce an heir to the throne, as soon as possible. A month or so later, on 18 January 1562, the play is performed in front of her. She understands the allegory, but ignores the advice to get married, and so the issue of the royal succession rumbles on for the rest of her reign. As Walter takes us away from the Inner Temple, he explains that the play is highly innovative because it is the first English tragedy to be written in blank verse, which means that the ends of the lines don’t rhyme. Rhyme makes lines sound clunky, while blank verse gives the speech of noble characters both dignity and resonance. Gorboduc is a game changer — it heralds the age of Elizabethan tragedy.

THEATRE THEORY: CLASSICAL MODELS

Every intellectual and artist in Elizabethan England is steeped in humanist learning, and influenced by the culture of ancient Greece and Rome. This is cultural cringe big time: Elizabethans believe that the ancient world is cleverer, more cultured and more intellectual than their own. So they take their ideas of what makes a good play from the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and his Poetics, the first work of drama theory (dating from about 350 BC). They also read the plays of Roman playwrights such as Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC—AD 65), a stoic philosopher whose work includes the blood-soaked tragedies of Medea, Phaedra and Oedipus, all in five acts. From these sources, Elizabethan scholars come up with a model called The Unities. This theory is that the best drama has to be convincing and for that to happen it should have one main plot, take place in one location, and over one time span (the play should run for the same length of time as the events it portrays). Also, sex and violence can be talked about by a play’s characters but never shown on stage. A case of tell, don’t show. The trouble with this model is that if you follow it for every play you get boring drama. One reason for the energy of English playwrights is that they know these rules, but have no problem with breaking them: using subplots, multiple locations and jumps in time. So from the start our drama is a hybrid, partly an imitation of classical models, partly the invention of new ideas.

Fast forward a couple of years and Walter is showing us around one of the many inns of the City, stroking his beard as he concentrates on giving us the big picture. Basically, British theatre is in ‘a mess’, he tells us. There are no theatres, only pop-up venues. Most plays last less than an hour, with the typical entertainment being a comedy with fart and burp jokes; a typical title being Ralph Roister Doister. All around the country, such comedies are performed in the courtyards of inns, in the halls of great mansions, in the guildhalls of towns, even in churches. Some actors are amateurs, some are students and some the servants of a rich lord. There are many strolling players, grouped into companies of some six men, who perform on the back of wagons parked in town squares. In London, plays are put on using makeshift stages at those inns which have an open yard surrounded by galleries. Walter takes us out into the yard and shows us where the audience stands, and points out the upper galleries where there are benches. The common people stand below while the richer folk sit above. The four City inns that put on plays are the Bel Savage, the Bull, the Bell and the Cross Keys. But change is afoot. Over the next twenty years, the mess that is British theatre will be transformed into a cultural treasure.

By Royal Command

Walter now takes us on a tour of Richmond Palace, one of Queen Elizabeth’s most sumptuous residences. Built of white stone, with tall decorated chimneys in brick, it is an imposing and impressive edifice. He moves easily around the building, and we can see that he is familiar with the place and all its rituals. As we stride down corridors and cross courtyards, he says, ‘The great thing about Queen Elizabeth and her court is that they love the theatre. But her majesty would not be seen dead watching a play at a common inn. No, when she wants to see a show she summons a theatre company to come and perform it at one of her palaces.’ It’s called a command performance. The best companies, which attract the best actors, are those sponsored by her favourites. So Lord Leicester’s Men have as their patron il magnifico, Robert Dudley, and consist of actor James Burbage — a joiner from Bromley who leads the troupe — and a handful of other thespians.

As we perch nervously on richly upholstered seats in one of the palace’s long galleries, Walter explains how the system works: under ‘The Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds’ of 1572 all actors are classed as ‘masterless men’ and such ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars’ are liable to be whipped out of town. However, when a nobleman sets up a company, the actors come under his protection. They wear his livery; they are safe. If anyone questions their right to put on a play in public, they can always say that they are just rehearsing for a royal command performance. And who would dare question their right to do their best for the queen? From the point of view of the patron, having a company is a demonstration of status: when Leicester’s Men pla...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Timeline
• 1. Elizabethan Theatre (1550-1603)
• 2. Jacobean Theatre (1603-1642)
• 3. Restoration Theatre (1660-1714)
• 4. Georgian Theatre (1714-1780)
• 5. Regency Theatre (1780-1837)
• 6. Victorian Theatre (1837-1901)
• 7. Edwardian Theatre (1901-1918)
• 8. Modern Theatre (1918-1955)
• Book List
• Acknowledgements
• Index