English Theatre
How different cultures affected English Theater
Theater unites the past and
present in a unique cultural experience. Theatre
continues to thrive and has
become an important subject for study in schools
and universities. Reaching back
in time and across the world, this ranging
new history draws on the latest
scholarly research to describe and celebrate
theatre’s greatest achievements
over 4,500 years, from festival performances
in Egypt to international
multicultural theatre in the late twentieth
century. English theatre has been
changed by different cultures throughout
the world. The Father of drama was
Thesis of Athens, 535 BC, who created
the first actor. The actor performed in
intervals between the dancing of the
chorus and conversing at times with the
leader of the chorus. The tragedy was
further developed when new myths became
part of the performance, changing the
nature of the chorus to a group
appropriate to the individual story.
Aeschylus added a second actor and a third
actor was added by Sophocles, and
the number of the chorus was fixed at fifteen.
The chorus’ part was
gradually reduced, and the dialogue of the actors became
increasingly
important. The word "chorus" meant "dance or "dancing
ground", which was how
dance evolved into the drama. Members of the chorus
were characters in the
play that commented on the action. They drew the audience
into the play and
reflected the audience’s reactions. The Greek philosopher
Aristotle, who
observed the basic human tendancy to imitate, recognized the
origins of Greek
theatre in the dithyramb, a hymn sung and danced to honor the
god Dionysus.
This had evolved from earlier ecstatic dances by female celebrants
of
shamanism. A chorus of 50 men and related episodes from the god’s
life
performed the dithyramb at annual festivals of Dionysus. The Greeks of
Athens
invented Western drama. Athenian playwrights used myths and heroic
legends drawn
from Homer and other sources, but shaped them to reflect
contemporary issues.
Theatre was a civic responsibility: writers and
actors helped the people
confront current political and religious problems.
Greek drama was at its height
between 500 – 400 BC, when three Athenian
tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides, and the comic playwright
Aristophanes were creating there works.
Although based on Greek forms,
Roman theatre differed in being largely for
entertainment. The farces of
Plautus were based on stock characters, such as the
braggart soldier and the
scheming slave. Terence included less buffoonery in his
comedies and had a
more realistic treatment of character and dialogue. Seneca
wrote violent,
blood-and-thunder tragedies that were intended to be recited
rather than
performed. Based on the critical theories of the Greek thinker
Aristotle
and the Roman poet Horace, the neoclassical ideal was influenced
throughout
Europe in the mid- 1600s. Dramatic unites of time, place, and
action;
division of plays into 5 acts; purity of genre; and the concepts of
decorum and
verisimilitude were taken as rules of playwriting, particularly
by French
dramatists. Renaissance ideas came late to England, where medieval
influences
were felt well into the 1500s - when Elizabeth I banned all
religious plays. The
resulting secularization of theatre, combined with
classical ideas from Italian
humanism, led university students and graduates
to write for London theatre
companies. Notable among these "university wits"
was Christopher Marlowe,
whose Dr. Faustus is a traditional work, showing
elements of the medieval
morality play, but also anticipating Shakespeare in
its use of blank verse. The
greatest playwright in the English language,
Shakespeare was also an
actor-manager of a professional company. He wrote to
be performed; the script
was only important until the actors knew there
lines. Shakespeare never bothered
to publish his plays- the first Folio of
1623, which includes texts of most of
his 38 plays, was collected only after
his death. His work, covering a broad
range of comedy, tragedy, history, and
pastoral, includes such immoral
characters as Hamlet and Falstaff, Rosalind
and Lady Macbeth.