III. THE DESIGN OF THE STAGE
Until now the discussion of the Globe playhouse has proceeded from dramatic function to theatrical realization. But inevitably the reader is bound to wonder, if only inwardly, what the Globe looked like. No one knows. Startling as it may seem, no one really can reconstruct the design of the Globe playhouse. The reader may remonstrate: what about the various reconstructions of Walter Godfrey, John C. Adams, C. Walter Hodges, Richard Southern? What about their sketches and models? All hypotheses, some reasonable, some farfetched. Each scholar, selecting for his palette certain scraps of evidence, has painted a hypothetical image of the Elizabethan playhouse. Each realizes, of course, that his image is conjectural. The damage occurs when the image is realized in drawings and the drawings are reproduced with such frequency that what was conjecture comes to be regarded as historical fact by the general reader. Acknowledging that “the hard facts available [for the reconstruction of Elizabethan playhouses] are insufficient in themselves,” Hodges admits that each scholar interprets the evidence according to “influences of taste” of which he may not even be aware.[42] The result has been that equally reputable scholars have produced widely divergent images of the Globe playhouse. In recent times the once prevailing Tudor image has yielded to Renaissance design.
The leading advocate of Tudor style is John Cranford Adams. He affirms that it was a “tendency of [Elizabethan] stage design to imitate contemporary London houses,” and therefore, that “the façade of the tiring-house differed from its model, a short row of London houses, mainly in having upper and lower curtains suspended in the middle.” Each reference to a contemporary urban structural feature of the stage is considered to be a description of a realistic detail. “It was the habit of Elizabethan dramatists to accept the equipment of their stage rather literally and to refer to that equipment in dialogue.”[43] He cites construction methods of the period for support. The building contract for the Fortune calls for wooden frames “sufficiently enclosed withoute [outside] with lathe, lyme & Haire.” This specification suggests a half-timbered-and-plaster building of Tudor design, a type of construction which continued to appear through the early part of the seventeenth century. In contrast, buildings in the newer Renaissance style were largely built of stone or brick.[44] Since its completion in 1950, Adams’ model of the Globe, now at the Folger Library, has impressed itself upon the imagination of lovers of Shakespeare, particularly in America.
In 1953 C. Walter Hodges presented an opposing image of the Globe.[45] Adhering closely to the Swan drawing, which Adams rejects, and deriving the Elizabethan stage from market place booth stages and tableaux vivants, Hodges developed a series of sketches in Renaissance style. Doors and galleries in the stage façade are flanked by columns of one of the three regular orders; obelisks and statuary appear above the cornices of the Fortune sketch; and in his drawing of the Hope, carved busts support the gallery ends of the heavens. To avoid contradicting the Swan drawing, which shows no enclosure, he devised one to project from the stage façade.
The contribution of the tableaux vivants to the design of the Elizabethan stage was first explored by George Kernodle. His thesis is that “The greatest problem of the Renaissance stage was the organization of a number of divergent scenic elements into some principle of spatial unity.” Medieval art bequeathed three forms to the theater: the side arches leaving the center clear, the center arch or pavilion with subordinate side accents, the flat arcade screen. While the Italian theater, later to be imitated by Inigo Jones in England, utilized the form of side arches in combination with central perspective to create illusion, the northern theaters of England and Flanders developed the central pavilion into a theater of architectural symbolism. The immediate predecessors of these stages were the tableaux vivants, or street pageants, erected to signalize the entry of a royal or civic personage into a city. It was “from the tableaux vivants (whose conventions they took over)” that the Flemish and English stages derived “the power to suggest, by decoration and remembered associations, the places they symbolized.” The conventions of medieval art, which persisted throughout the early Renaissance, were passed on to the street theaters where they were interwoven with Renaissance forms. Prints of the Flemish stages illustrate the conventional architecture which resulted from these influences. In parallel fashion, the English theater was subject to the same influences. “Most of the new buildings erected in England in the latter half of the sixteenth century were of the newer Renaissance architecture.” Yearly the Londoner could witness the pageants in the Lord Mayor’s Show. “A comparison [of street shows and stage drama] will make clear,” Kernodle believes, “not only that many particular scenes of Elizabethan drama were derived from the tableaux vivants but that they provided the basic pattern of the English stage façade.”[46] This basic pattern involved a central arch which conventionally represented an interior, and side arches or doors which conventionally represented an exterior. Architectural symbols as throne, arbor, arras, by general recognition could transform the façade into the symbols of palace, garden, room.
For the design of the English stage, Kernodle’s theory is provocative rather than proved. There is no clear flow of Flemish theatrical influence into Elizabethan England, and even in art, though we know many Flemish craftsmen were in London, there is no certain influence.[47] Furthermore, the medieval tradition in art, which Kernodle has shown to have persisted on the continent, was abruptly terminated in England. “The year 1531, in which the convocation of Canterbury recognized Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church of England, can be conveniently taken to mark the close of the medieval period of art in England [and the severance of] what had been the most fruitful field of subject-matter for artists in Europe for a thousand years.”[48] What followed was a court art of portraiture which does not readily yield demonstration of Kernodle’s thesis. Even in the popular forms of art, which he recommends for study, the formal medieval elements are absent. For example, the woodcuts of Wynken de Worde show no consistent use of conventional devices.
As for the street pageants, continental experience cannot be readily applied to Tudor practice. For the last half of the sixteenth century the royal entries were virtually abandoned by Elizabeth, and it was not until the coronation of James that the magnificence of the royal entry returned to London. When it did, it had all the characteristics of the flamboyant Renaissance style described by Kernodle. Until then, from 1558 to 1603, the Londoner could witness the Lord Mayor’s Show, an annual event to honor the installation of the new Lord Mayor. The central device was a single pageant supplied by the Company of which the Lord Mayor was a member.[49] Featuring child orators, it was usually carried along in the procession by porters, though from time to time we hear of frames being built to support the pageants.[50] It appears that the pageant was stored in the company hall from which it was removed when needed, with or without redecoration, though occasionally a new pageant would be ordered.[51] The fact that the pageant remained on permanent view in the company halls suggests that it may have been similar to the figures of saints carried even today in religious processions.
Allegorical in nature, the pageant depicted a theme apt for the new Lord Mayor and his company. In 1561, for example, five ancient harpers, David, Orpheus, Amphion, Arion, and Iopas, were displayed in a pageant to honor the new Lord Mayor, Sir William Harper. Often the themes of the pageants represented the trade rather than the man, the Ship, for instance, being deemed appropriate for the Merchant Tailors Company.[52] At an appropriate point in the procession, the figures in the pageant would speak commendatory verses to the Lord Mayor. From the extant texts, it is quite clear that the presentations were brief and rhetorical; they did not involve dramatic action. In fact, the very people being honored were those who most assiduously sought to destroy the public playhouses.[53]
No sketch of a sixteenth century pageant exists. The presence of mythical figures encourages the notion that Renaissance design characterized these pageants, but there is no graphic or thoroughly descriptive evidence for assuming so. Nor do the symbols which Kernodle enumerates appear prominently in these pageants. Instead the companies relied on those trade-or-personal symbols which held special significance for them. For one company the lion appears in pageant because a lion is part of the company’s coat of arms;[54] for another, a Moor rides on a lynx, which animal is deemed appropriate for the Skinners’ company.[55]
What is substantiated by these pageants and reinforced by the royal entries of the seventeenth century is the mode of presentation. Perhaps the particular symbols which Kernodle emphasizes did not have significance for the Londoner of the 1590’s, but he was familiar with presenting and interpreting theatrical forms in a symbolic manner, and I believe that to this extent the pageants may have influenced the design of the public playhouse.
In conclusion, then, one cannot verify whether the Elizabethan playhouse reflected the outgoing Tudor or the incoming Renaissance style. Roughed up by a master carpenter, such as James Burbage, Peter Streete, or Gilbert Katherens, the structure could have retained the traditions of design familiar to these men or it could have responded to the new fashions. These new fashions, however, were principally decorative; classical forms were applied to Tudor-Gothic foundations.[56] I tend to think that the pragmatic attitude of Elizabethan builders led them to erect a fundamentally Tudor structure to which they attached classical ornaments more or less at random. In such a structure the stage would certainly be the focus of such adornment.
Based solely on the evidence of the Globe plays, what then is the picture of the Globe stage? The principal part of the stage was a large rectangular platform upon which rested two pillars. At the rear of the platform two doors and a curtained recess between them provided access to the stage. The recess, which was an integral part of the tiring house, had to accommodate less than half a dozen people. Above the recess and/or doors was an upper level principally required where characters related themselves to others below. In the floor of the outer stage there was at least one substantial trap. No machinery for flying either actors or properties existed. In over-all design the stage, which was Renaissance in surface details, emphasized formal rather than realistic decoration. Altogether it was a theater that presented itself as a show place rather than as an imitation of London.
In a review once Granville-Barker remonstrated against overemphasis on the physical aspects of the stage at the expense of the imaginative. Such overemphasis has too frequently resulted. In their zeal to reconstruct the Elizabethan stage, theorists have given the impression that the theater of that day was constantly using traps, heavens, upper level, and enclosure. However, a comparison of the number of scenes which use some stage facility, be it merely a stool, with the number which use no stage facility whatsoever, neither property nor stage machinery, save merely a means to get on and off, shows that of the 345 scenes in the Shakespearean Globe plays, only 20 per cent require any facility. Fully 80 per cent need nothing but a bare space and an audience, not so much as a stool.
As a result, Shakespearean drama depends a great deal upon the vigorous movement of the actors coming on and off the stage. The actors themselves, rather than the stage equipment, provide the impetus for a play’s progression. We are all familiar with the conclusion of a Shakespearean scene. More often than not, a character will say, “Come along with me,” and off will go the actors. I have checked every scene in the Globe plays and found a startlingly high percentage of such exits. For purposes of computation I divide the scene conclusions into four categories.
First, there is the explicit exit line.
Orl. Come, I will bear thee to some shelter,
and thou shalt not die for lack of a
dinner if there live any thing in this
desert. Cheerly, good Adam. Exeunt.
[As You Like It, II, vi, 16-19]
Next, there is the implicit exit line.
Ant. [musing upon Sebastian’s departure]
But come what may, I do adore thee so
That danger shall seem sport, and I will go. Exit.
[Twelfth Night, II, i, 48-49]
Thirdly, there is the scene which ends with no exit line implying motion.
To. [to the dancing Sir Andrew] Let me see
thee caper. Ha, higher! ha, ha, excellent! Exeunt.
[Twelfth Night, I, iii, 149-150]
Lastly, there is the scene which ends in a soliloquy or an aside. Although the playwright occasionally inserts an exit line in such a conclusion, his opportunity to do so is slight. Below I have enumerated the scene endings that conclude with explicit and implicit exit lines, with no exit lines, and as a solo exit.
| Explicit Exit lines | Implicit Exit lines | No. Exit lines | Solo Exits | ||
| Shakespeare | 192 57.2% | 74 22% | 35 10.4% | 35 10.4% | |
| Non-Shakes. | 88 48.4% | 37 20.3% | 23 12.6% | 34 18.7% |
Only 9 to 13 per cent of the scenes fail to indicate that the characters end a scene by leaving the stage. Although the soliloquies may or may not imply that the actors leave the stage, the majority of the scene endings clearly demonstrate that it was the physical departure of the actors which gave fluency to the action. When a stage direction reads “exeunt” at the end of a scene, it means exactly that: “they go out.”
It is time to revive an old cry. The pendulum has swung too far. It is time to reassert that the Globe stage was bare. Sumptuous and gorgeous as this playhouse may have appeared, the decoration was largely permanent and passive. In brief, the Globe was constructed and employed to tell a story as vigorously and as excitingly and as intensely as possible. Though spectators were usually informed where a scene took place, they were informed by the words they heard, not the sights they saw. Instead, place was given specific emphasis only when and to the degree the narrative required. Otherwise, the audience gazed upon a splendid symbol of the universe before which all sorts of human actions could be unfolded.
Chapter Four
THE ACTING
Since 1939 the debate over the style of acting in the Elizabethan theater has been argued on the grounds defined by Alfred Harbage. One of two styles could have existed, he wrote. Acting was either formal or natural.
Natural acting strives to create an illusion of reality by consistency on the part of the actor who remains in character and tends to imitate the behavior of an actual human being placed in his imagined circumstances. He portrays where the formal actor symbolizes. He impersonates where the formal actor represents. He engages in real conversation where the formal actor recites. His acting is subjective and “imaginative” where that of the formal actor is objective and traditional. Whether he sinks his personality in his part or shapes the part to his personality, in either case he remains the natural actor.[1]
Professor Harbage then, and a succession of writers subsequently,[2] have endeavored to prove that formal acting prevailed on the Elizabethan stage.
When we have sifted the various arguments presented over the years by this school of thought, we discover these common points. Oratory and acting utilized similar techniques of voice and gesture so that “whoever knows today exactly what was taught to the Renaissance orator cannot be far from knowing at the same time what was done by the actor on the Elizabethan stage.”[3] Contemporary allusions which compare the orator to the actor establish this correspondence without a doubt. This system depended upon conventional gesture, “as in a sorrowfull parte, ye head must hange down; in a proud, ye head must bee lofty.”[4] By learning these conventional gestures, the actors could readily symbolize all emotional states. Such symbolization was necessary since the speed of Elizabethan playing left little room for interpolated action. The result was that the actor did not so much interpret his part as recite it. His personality did not intrude, for his attention was devoted to rendering the literary qualities of the script. Although the emotions expressed in the play were usually violent, the actor projected them “by declaiming his lines with the action fit for every word and sentence.”[5] In this way he properly stressed the significant figures of speech. He played to the audience, not to his fellow actors. The final effect, several writers have concluded, was more like that of opera or ballet than modern drama.
Rejecting this theory of formal acting, a smaller but equally fervent group of scholars is sure that Elizabethan acting was “natural.”[6] Denying that oratory and acting were similar, they maintain that style was dynamic, that an older formalism gave way to a newer naturalism. Since Renaissance art sought to imitate life, the actors in harmony with this aim thought that they imitated life. To grasp how their style emerged from such a view, it is necessary first to comprehend what was the Elizabethan conception of reality. Admittedly, natural acting then was different from natural acting today in some respects, yet the intention was very much the same. “What can be said is that Elizabethan acting was thought at the time to be lifelike ... [which would suggest] a range of acting capable of greater extremes of passion, of much action, which would now seem forced or grotesque, but realistic within a framework of ‘reality’ that coincides to a large extent with ours.”[7]
Some attempt has been made to reconcile these contradictory views. Generally the reconciliation has taken the line that Elizabethan acting was mixed, partly formal, partly natural. Some have thought of the mixture as a blend: a unified style midway between the rigidity of formalism and the fluidity of naturalism. It has also been thought of as an oscillation: certain scenes played in a formal manner, such as longer verse passages delivered in a rhetorical style; other scenes, such as brief exchanges of dialogue, acted in an informal manner. The scholars who have proposed this reconciliation, despite the fact that they arrive at slightly different conclusions from those of the proponents of formal or natural acting, accept the fundamental premise that Elizabethan acting can be discussed only in terms of formal or natural styles.
Until now, it is true, the research and discussion that have gone into this debate have produced careful studies of contemporary allusions to acting. But it seems unlikely that further progress can be made by considering Elizabethan acting in relation to these fixed poles of formality and reality. Brown and Foakes have undertaken a new approach by urging an evaluation of Elizabethan acting in terms of the Elizabethan conception of reality. But neither has followed through. They have merely redefined what is meant by natural acting. Much of what the formalists consider conventional, they argue, represented reality to the Elizabethan. Do sudden insubstantially motivated emotional changes in Othello or Measure for Measure seem forced? They occurred in life and therefore were natural to the period, is their answer. The result has been confusion. The formalists describe the means at the actor’s disposal, the techniques of voice and gesture; the naturalists, the effect at which he aimed, the imitation of life.
This confusion is inherent in the original proposition. Harbage wrote about both aims and means, but without sufficiently discriminating between the two. I think that it is necessary to clarify our understanding of the aims and methods of the actor’s art in general before returning to a consideration of the Elizabethan actor’s art in particular.
At the heart of dramatic presentation stands the actor, imitating a person in a fictional situation in such a way as to hold the continuous attention of the audience in the unfolding circumstances. This holding of attention is dramatic illusion. Whether that illusion is an imitation of contemporary life, historical life, or mythical life, the action and characters must achieve a level of reality sufficient to involve us. For the children who say, “I believe in fairies,” Tinkerbell has become real. The means may be conventional and symbolic or contextual and descriptive; the effect must be an “illusion of reality.” Ultimately, we must reconstruct what that “illusion” signified and how it was achieved in order to visualize the acting of a period.
The understanding that the actor has with the audience about the relation of dramatic experience to life will determine the significance of the illusion. The common understanding that they, actor and audience, have about the characters and stories will affect the means at the actor’s disposal for creating the illusion. Consider a simple stage movement. An actor turns his back on the audience. In the context of the Théâtre-Libre or the Moscow Art Theatre this movement emphasizes the convention of the fourth wall and the illusion of the unpresent audience. The same movement employed in Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme is a deliberate artifice introduced for comic effect. Not the fixed forms, but their function and context shape the illusion of reality. Not the intent, but the created image, determines the significance of that illusion. The aim may be one, but the manifestations are many.
When an illusion of reality becomes differentiated sharply, it eventuates in a style. Not being an arithmetic total of absolute qualities, style does not remain constant. It is a dynamic interplay of many impulses brought to a point of crystallization by the creative genius of the actor. Such a complex, if distinctive and appealing enough, itself becomes an impulse for further creative activity. What we often term “formal acting” is a previous means of creating illusion which has coalesced into a fixed form imitable by later generations. Some of the impulses that led the commedia dell’arte to create a Harlequin, a Franca Trippa, and a Dottore were “realistic”; that is, the activities of Italian daily life helped to refine the stage figure. Gradually the types became stock and finally ossified so that they responded less to the impulses of contemporary life and more to the tradition from which they were derived. Perfection and variation of old roles rather than the invention of new devices and characteristics became the custom. By the time these figures came to the hand of Marivaux they had, through the loss of much of their original force, become somewhat precious and self-conscious. Illusion of reality was still achieved, but it was a new kind of illusion, less robust, more sophisticated, less aware of the cry of the street, more attuned to the repartee of the drawing room. Then the acting became “formal,” that is, traditional, conventional, “objective.” But from the germination of the improvised drama to the “decadence” of Marivaux, commedia acting went through several styles. To visualize the style of any single period we have to study a cross section of its theatrical and social conditions.
Of these conditions there are five which provide the principal clues to an understanding of the Globe acting style. First, there are general intellectual tendencies reflected in the theory and practice of Elizabethan rhetoric. Next, there is the theatrical tradition handed down to the Lord Chamberlain’s men. Thirdly, and continuing the foregoing material, there are the playing conditions under which the company operated. Fourthly, there is the conception of human character and behavior held by society. Lastly, and perhaps most important, there are the playing materials themselves, the characters and actions with which the actors were provided. Cumulatively, the study of these conditions supplies an understanding of the means at the Globe actors’ disposal for creating their “illusion of reality” and, through it, offers an insight into the significance of that illusion.