In the 1580’s the verse became suppler. Rhyme was abandoned, rhythm because subtler and more varied. The total effect was less stentorian and more lyrical. It was possible to utilize the superior advantages of poetic drama without the artificiality to which it is liable. For the actor the change tore down a veil. Character portrayal could be more vivid. Contact between actor and actor was easier to achieve. In a word, the actor was able to make events more “real.” At the same time, he had a more difficult task in rendering speech. Whether or not this change led to a realistic style of acting will be discussed in connection with the Globe plays. To these plays the early actor contributed experience in playing all kinds of roles before all kinds of audiences, portraying generic types through conventional means, emoting in extravagant and conventional fashion, speaking verse with vigor and sweep, and performing in the peripheral arts of dancing, tumbling, and vaulting. The picture he presents is of a rough-and-ready trouper, not a sophisticated and refined artist.
III. THE EFFECT OF PLAYING CONDITIONS UPON ELIZABETHAN ACTING
After 1592, stability and new theater construction, though continuing the earlier tradition in many respects, brought about new playing conditions, the third factor which contributed to the acting style at the Globe. Playing conditions include the structure of the theater, the arrangement of the repertory, and the organization of the company. The first two of these conditions have been discussed at length in previous chapters and the last has been treated in Professor T. W. Baldwin’s Organization and Personnel of the Shakespearean Company.
With the opening of the Globe playhouse the company, for the first time since its organization, had its own building. Although the Theatre may not have been very different in form, it had never served as a permanent home. How much this affected the actors is difficult to know. We found in [Chapter Three] that only 20 per cent of the scenes in the Globe plays made use of stage facilities. For the larger part of the play, the actor needed only a bare platform. Thus the conditions that the plays required were no different from those he had known for years.
But if the physical conditions did not change greatly, the artistic conditions did. The splendor of the stage façade enhanced the actions of the player. The very sumptuousness of the stage elevated them to a level of grandeur, setting them off with elegance and opulence. In return it called for scope in delivery, grace in manner, and audacity in playing. Against a setting so dazzling only intensive and extensive action could hope to make an impression upon an audience.
Not only the design but also the plan of the stage conditioned the acting. The flat façade and the deeply projecting platform had a serious effect upon the physical movement of the actor. For the moment we can assume that the actor played many scenes at the front of the stage. To do so he had to come forward twenty-five feet. The modern director would motivate such a movement, that is, provide the actor with some internal or external impulse to cause him to move forward. In some instances this must have been the same at the Globe. Often we read scenes where characters on stage describe the entrance and approach of another actor. But there are many instances where such aid is not forthcoming. In those cases one of two effects was possible. Either the movement forward was treated as a conventional action which the audience expected, or it was treated as a ceremonial action which dignified the player. Further investigation of this matter is reserved for the [next chapter]. Here it is sufficient to point out that in either case the actor’s entrance was theatricalized. Boldness was necessary to catch and hold attention on such a vast stage.
The sightlines of the theater also had an effect upon the acting. Essentially they were poor. We are dealing with an aural theater, not a visual one. Note how the author of An Excellent Actor (1615) expresses the relation of actor and spectator:
Sit in a full Theater, and you will thinke you see so many lines drawne from the circumference of so many eares, whiles the Actor is the Center. [My italics.]
Gesture for specific communication rather than general reinforcement of the speech was not feasible. For example, the comic actor could not rely on a visual gag. A humorous walk or risible situation, such as the tavern scene in I Henry IV, could be managed. But the type of farcical routine represented by the commedia dell’arte lazzi would have been lost to a large part of the audience.
The sightlines not only prohibited certain types of gestures, they also required a certain orientation of the body. Today as much as possible the actor will try to maintain the illusion that he is facing a fellow actor and not facing the audience. The flat picture frame of our theater encourages this illusion. In the Elizabethan theater the actor had to turn out, that is, orient himself to the circumference of auditors, if he were to be seen at all. This condition reinforced the conventional or ceremonial manner in acting.