Category Famous Personalities

     Art and literature have been greatly appreciated and encouraged in societies for ages as they gave direction and shape to civilization and culture. Art and literature thrived, unfortunately, not in affluence; and therefore, artists and writers had to seek help and support from the wealthy and the aristocratic.

     There were patrons who volunteered to assist artists from time to time. In fact, during the medieval and Renaissance periods in European history, the structure of society itself was built on patronage. Shakespeare had patrons too. They helped him establish himself as an actor, playwright and poet.

     Edward Manners, the third Earl of Rutland, was Shakespeare’s first patron. The Earl was Shakespeare’s friend too. This patron was interested in Shakespeare from his teenage and encouraged him to write as the bard wished.  Maybe, Rutland also helped Shakespeare in building the stage in which his earlier plays were staged.

    Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd Earl of Southampton, was probably the most important patron of Shakespeare. Some say that the ‘fair youth’ in Shakespeare’s sonnets is, in fact, this Earl of Southampton. However, some others say that William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke, was the ‘fair youth’. Among his other patrons Queen Elizabeth 1 and King James I are the most prominent. Both of them loved drama. Queen Elizabeth enjoyed poetry greatly and devoted herself to the study of the ancient classical period. Many times did the Queen attend the plays of Shakespeare in person?

     King James too encouraged art and drama and was often in the audience watching and enjoying Shakespeare’s plays. Both of them contributed greatly directly and indirectly in aiding the culture of art and literature in England and thus promoting Shakespeare who we see today as the epitome of theatre and poetry.

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    Shakespeare is best known to the world as a playwright. However, Shakespeare’s reputation as a writer was established in society through his poems first. During the Elizabethan times, it was hardly profitable to write poems. However, as it is today, attempting poetry was fashionable and poetry helped the author to enhance his social status. For Shakespeare, poetry was not only something he greatly enjoyed, but also a platform to express his most personal and intimate thoughts and desires.

      There was an interim during Shakespeare’s busy life of acting and writing plays. There was an attack of a plague in England between 1593 and 1594; and as a result, theatres had to be closed down for controlling the spread of the disease. It was during this period, Shakespeare turned to writing poems. The first of his long poems was ‘Venus and Adonis’, written in 1593 and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, written in the next year. Both poems deal with passion and violence. ‘A Lover’s Complaint’, ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ and ‘The Passionate Pilgrim’ are some of his other narrative poems.

     However, Shakespeare’s reputation as a poet lies in his sonnets. They were published in 1609. There are 154 sonnets in total. The first 126 are addressed to a young man; whereas the last 28 are addressed to a young woman. While Shakespeare’s plays made him a popular dramatist, his poems cemented his place in the literary world.

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            A London theatre was not as disciplined as a theatre of the modern times. The groundlings, those poor people who paid one penny to watch the play, made up the majority of the audience. These groundlings were composed of tanners, butchers, iron-workers, millers, seamen from the ships docked in the Thames, glovers, servants, shopkeepers, wigmakers, bakers, and countless other tradesmen and their families. They would keep standing throughout the play. If anyone wanted to sit, they had to pay an extra penny. If a person wanted to sit comfortably on a cushion, then he would have to pay an additional penny again.

            One penny in Elizabethan times, it should be remembered, was the wage of an entire day! There were other galleries where one, if you paid more money, could sit more comfortably, and save himself from the jostling of the crowd below.

            The atmosphere inside the theatre would be deafening. The groundings were more boisterous and uproarious than any modern day audience.

            After all, their purpose of watching, the play was to relieve the tension and tedium of the entire day. They would shout, jostle about, be angry at each other, and get into brawls and even pickpocket the one in front. Loud and hot-tempered, they would, in all probability, refuse to calm down when the play started. It was often in the midst of such an undisciplined crowd that Shakespeare performed his plays.

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            Like the superstars in movies today, there were heroes who had cut out larger than life images in Shakespeare’s time. Richard Burbage, an English stage performer, was the most famous actor during the late I 6th century. Burbage was not only an actor, but also a theatre owner, entrepreneur, and painter.

            By the age of twenty, Richard Burbage achieved success as a performer. He played the major Shakespearean characters, including Othello, Hamlet, Lear, and Richard Ill. Richard Ill was the most popular of his roles with the Elizabethan public. The performance of the character of Richard III gave Burbage a superstar image. He had also performed in the plays of leading playwrights of the time such as Ben Jonson, Thomas Kyd, Beaumont and Fletcher, and John Webster.

            The only image of Richard Burbage available to us today is often considered a self-portrait. He is also credited with painting a portrait of Shakespeare. When Burbage died, it was a huge event. People believed that Burbage was the true sound of Shakespeare’s lines. Writers of the Elizabethan period wrote eulogies about him. All of London fell into a great gloom at the great actor’s departure. There was so much grief that, it is said, the official mourning for Queen Anne was overshadowed by Burbage’s death.

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            During Shakespeare’s time, the Globe was the leading theatre in all of England. The name ‘Globe’ derives not only from its circular shape, but also because the owners had a cosmic vision of the world. The motto of the theatre was ‘because all the world is a playground’. The theatre was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613.

            Shakespeare’s historical play, Henry VIII, was being staged then. Theatrical cannons, which were set up as a surprise for the audience, exploded during the play. While the cannon ball was meant to harmlessly fly over the stage, nobody gave much attention to the smoke and fire it had ignited at the top of the theatre. The cannons misfired and set the entire theatre on fire. The wooden beams and thatch of the theatre caught fire immediately. Suddenly, people started running out of the building, leaving behind their cloaks. One or two people sustained minor injuries. Although no one was reported to have lost life, the conflagration marked the end of the leading theatre of England. The fire was so fierce that it consumed a house next to the theatre too.

            However, the theatre was rebuilt the very next year. It went on to perform for some more decades until it was closed down, along with many others, in 1642 by the Puritans. Puritans were the English Protestants who were rigorous practitioners of their faith and believed all kinds of celebrations and revelries were immoral. In 1644 or 1655, the theatre was pulled down and dismantled.

            Centuries later, the theatre was reconstructed in 1997. Today, it is known as Shakespeare’s Globe. The theatre performs plays regularly even today.

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            Since there are hardly any documents from the 16th century suggesting the dimension of the theatre, it is difficult to say conclusively what exactly the theatre looked like. However, over the last couple of centuries, there has been extensive research on the shape and size of the theatre and we know something about it today. The Globe was an open-air amphitheatre around 30 metres in diameter in a polygon shape with twenty sides. Around 3,000 spectators could be accommodated in the theatre.

            The theatre had three storeys. Much like our modern movie theatres, the ticket charges differed according to where one preferred to sit. The commoners who could not afford to pay more than a penny had to stand on the ground at the base of the stage. This area was known as the ‘pit’. The people who paid a penny to watch the play were known as ‘groundlings’. Groundling, in fact, is the name of a kind of a small fish with a gaping mouth. All that the actor at the centre of the stage looking down to the ‘pit’ could see was the ocean of faces of men that looked like a swarm of open-mouthed groundlings!

            The theatre had a backstage area or tiring-house, which contained the dressing rooms, the prop room, the musician’s gallery and connecting passage-ways. There were an inner stage, a central balcony stage and a central music gallery within it. The shape and structure of the theatre determined some of the important features of Shakespeare’s plays too.

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