Elizabethan Theater

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Elizabethan Theater
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• Elizabeth I encouraged the growth of theater due
  to her Renaissance Education.
• Prior to her reign, theater
• theater companies traveled from town to town
• The audience booed, cheered, hissed, and threw
  rotten vegetables at the actors

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The Globe Theater

• 2,000 people
• 800 groundlings
• paid 1 cent to stand in
• open air court in center
• 3 stories high
• octagonal
• tiers of seats w/ roof for upper and middle class

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• rectangular, wooden stage
• 2 doors at back of stage dressing rooms
• trap door
• curtain behind mainstage
• the heavens
• open to the elements

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• elaborate expensive for the
• time period
• special effects to please the
• audience
• all male actors

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William Shakespeare

• 1564-1616

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• born April 23, 1564 in Stratford-on-Avon
• greatest English writer
• understood human nature
• compassionate towards all types/classes of people
• used powerful language skills
• quit school at age 13
• married Anne Hathaway at age 18
• Susanna
• Hamnet Judith (twins)
• left family and hometown for London at age 23

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• 1st entered the theater as an actor
• began success as playwright by age 27
• Joined Lord Chamberlains men
• Lord Chamberlains Med built Globe Theater in
  1599
• The Kings Men
• retired in 1610 at the age of 46