Shakespeare: Technical

Stage and Acting

Charles II reopened the theatres after their closure during the protectorship of Oliver Cromwell. Charles II made it possible for women to act on stage, as before all actors had been men, teenage boys would have played any female parts, due to their voices not having broken

During this time there no formal rehearsal's, the only rehearsal's they had were right before the play when they were told where they were coming on from and to make sure everyone knew what they were doing. There was no director, only someone in charge of the actors. It was all about hearing the play rather than the performance itself

The ground of the Globe was called the 'Yard' and only the Lower Class would stand there for 1 penny. They were called 'groundlings'. The gentry would sit in the galleries and the rich nobles would sit on the stage itself, they had a restricted view of the stage but everyone else could see them and know they were rich

An image of the outside of the original Globe Theatre

The stage was a thrust stage with two pillars, which were tree trunks painted to give a marble effect, and two levels. It was an open air theatre with no lighting. In the backstage area there was a Tiring House where the actors would wait, it was by the two exits. There would have been a curtain where the actors could change and there was a Lord's Room above the stage wall for the Lords or actors. There were many entrance and exits in the stage; the middle, right and left entrance. There was the inner and outer stage, the outer stage was the part of the stage projected from the backstage wall to the pit and the inner stage was at the back of the outer stage where actors who weren't directly involved with the action on the stage would be, like Miranda and Ferdinand in The Tempest when they play chess

Height: 5 feet
Width: 45 feet
Length: 30 feet
It could hold: 600 people standing and 900 people sitting

The decoration on the stage was supposed to look like the world. The top part was "heaven" and the bottom part, the pit and the floor, was "hell". This was to help the audience understand whether the characters was good or bad. If they were good they would come from the top and if they were bad they would come from the bottom. There was a trapdoor with another section underneath, where actors would create a soundscape of "hell". The trapdoors helped to create a sense of otherworldliness

They performed a different play every day so there were no props or set because of a) funding and b) no time in between the plays. To counteract this there were lots of descriptions in the script itself, not in stage directions but through what the actors were saying. Costume would have helped with setting the scene as well

Because of the way the stage was set out and made, the actors interacted with the audience more, the audience would shout things at the actors, which made it harder for the actors to concentrate

Audiences could not be controlled because of the space. The space encouraged the interaction between audience and performer, there was no fourth wall and the audience were closer to the actors, when actors had a monologue they would speak it directly to the audience using soliloquy, this means they spoke it aside and it's there to help the audience understand what was going on

The Globe

It was built in 1599 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men using timber from an earlier theatre, which had been built by Richard Burbage's father, James Burbage, in Shoreditch in 1576

The Globe was owned by actors who were also shareholders in Lord Chamberlain's Men

On 29 June 1613 the Globe Theatre burned down during a performance of Henry VIII. A cannon, set off during the performance, misfired, setting the Globe on fire. It was rebuilt in the following year