THET110 Notes October 22 2012 The Medieval Period Quem Quaeritis Medieval Theater Hell s mouth they would make hell appear really bad Make heaven appear really good Primarily church ideals Pageant wagon Hroswitha of Gandersheim German Nun Modeled plays on Roman comedy Christian themes especially the virtue of chastity The Renaissance of Rebirth 14c 17c Rebirth from middle ages Return to classics of Greece and Rome Humanism free will Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation and Henry VIII and Anglican Church Trade and exploration Gutenberg and Printing Press o Bibles printed in vernacular Elizabethan England 1558 1603 1588 English defeated the Spanish Armada Religious stability she secured Anglican power Patron of the arts Elizabeth Staging Practice Public theaters Private theaters indoors more expensive Locations of the Theaters In London in the theater district across the Thames River Characteristics of the Theater Polygon many sided Partial roof Many level auditorium held approximately 2 500 Yard groundings standing lower class Characteristics of the Stage Raised thrust stage Traps system comes up from the floor Backed by a tiring house fa ade stage similar to the skene house Heavens Discovery space Bare stage During the day Scenery Elsinore platform before the castle For Profit Theater Sharing companies Commercial theater Acting All male casts Declamatory style Contemporary costumes Limited rehearsal time Sides William Shakespeare Born in Stratford on the Avon Son of merchant Wrote 38 plays History plays to praise house of reigning monarch Tragedies o Hamlet o Othello o King Leon Comedies o Midsummer o Much To Do About Nothing Other Playwrights Christopher Marlowe Ben Johnson The Cult of Shakespeare Over 350 Shakespeare films exist of his works Around 75 20 are of Hamlet Transition to Romanticism and Realism England o 1642 Charles I beheaded by Puritans who establish commonwealth o 1669 The Restoration Charles II returns to England from France and brings with They shut down theater him women on stage o Neoclassicism In France New Classics return of the ideal forms of theater modeled after Greek and Roman theater Rigid and rule based Unites time place and action Purity of genre tragedy was about nobility and comedy about lower classes Decorum people need to behave in appropriate ways for their social class Romanticism Roughly 1750 1850 Context Rousseau 1712 1778 o Nature over civilization Says that civilization is a corrupt force o Revolutions 1776 in America 1789 in France o In literature The Hunchback of Notre Dame monsters tortured heroes Frankenstein monsters tortured heroes Robin Hood heroes that give back to the poor noble y break laws Zorro heroes that give back to the poor noble y break laws Values imagination and emotion over rules and order Romanticism on Stage Romanticism was originally very controversial Melodrama an off shoot of Romanticism Middle class or common characters Black and white moral universe where good is rewarded and bad punished Example The Drunkard 1850 by William Smith a temperance melodrama Spectacle 19th Century Social Context Realism and Naturalism o The industrial Revolution o Urban poor and slums o Louis Daguerre and daguerreotypes Iconoclasts of 19th Century Gregor Mendel Karl Marx Charles Darwin and Origin of Species Sigmund Freud unconscious ego superego id August Comte Empiricism scientific method the world can be explained heredity and environment Foundational Beliefs of Realism Truth resides in material objects we perceive and is verified through science Art should better mankind Solutions can be found with the scientific method Naturalism Emile Zola 1840 1902 o Theater should be a slice of life
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