"All the world's a stage" this quotation from Shakespeare’s As You Like It has got my little grey cells thinking again as Hercule Poirot might say. While researching the great literary writers whose busts and names are in the Octagon, a question came to mind, when did the theatre and plays first start? What impact did they have on society and the world stage? A blog by Special Collections Information Assistant Anne Marie McHarg.
Map from Homage to Greece edited by H.M. Andrews [Ref. ND588.W5 AND]
All the world's a stage /and all the men and women merely players. / They have their exits and their entrances, / and one man in his time plays many parts. As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 7
As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 7
This quotation from Shakespeare’s As You Like It has got my little grey cells thinking again as Hercule Poirot might say. While researching the great literary writers whose busts and names are in the Octagon, a question came to mind, when did the theatre and plays first start? What impact did they have on society and the world stage?
It is believed that the theatre as we know it today, started in Ancient Greece. Theatre buildings were called a theatron. The word theatre itself comes from Greek and it means “seeing place”. They consisted of three main elements: the orchestra, the skene, and the audience.
These earlier theatres consisted of a simple design: a flat space with an altar at the foot of the hillside. On the slopes of a hillside the audience sat or stood watching the performance taking place below. As time went on the structure of the theatre changed. Wooden or stone benches began to appear, one behind the other in a terrace layout, climbing the hillside for the audience to sit upon. Gradually the shape changed a little more to a semi-circle round the circular dancing and acting space.
This space for performances was called the orchestra. The only building that stood in this space was the temple. Not long after this a hut was built further away from the audience. This formed the backdrop to the acting – basically the first piece of stage scenery – as well as being a dressing room for the actors. This was called a skene and from this name we get the English words scene and scenery. The skene had a door in the centre through which the actors made their exits and entrances.
Later the Greek actors would add a raised platform in front of the skene to be more visible to the audience sitting furthest away. This was the beginning of the modern stage as we know it today. It was made of wood and supported by stone pillars about 10-12 feet high. One example of this type of ancient Greek theatre is in Epidaurus and was built about 340B.C.
The Greeks went to the theatre because their plays formed part of a religious festival. The Greek people honoured their gods especially the god, Dionysus. Every year in Athens when the festival took place, men used to perform songs to welcome Dionysus. Plays were only presented at City Dionysia festival.
At the very beginning of the life of the theatre, the actor, director and dramatist were three roles rolled into one person. As time progressed actors began to perform the dramatists’ plays. As it was a small stage the Greeks allowed three actors to perform their plays. The next stage was to introduce the non-speaking roles to perform on stage. The biggest change of all is the introduction is the Chorus which became a very active part in Greek theatre to this day. Music was often played during the chorus' delivery of its lines. Different theatrical genres of plays were performed. These consisted of Comedy, Satyr and Tragedy plays. Tragedy and comedy were viewed as separate genres. Satyr plays dealt with mythological subjects in a comic manner. Aristotle's Poetics sets out a thesis about the perfect structure for a tragedy.
It was circa 335 BCE that the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote his most important work, Poetics. For Aristotle, poetry doesn’t just mean verse but theatre. His plays were thought provoking, aiming to inspire pity and terror thus releasing emotions in the audience, allowing them to purge themselves of repressed feelings. Good tragedies had to meet certain criteria. Their characters should be believable and consistent and feel like real people. The whole play would take place in a time constant of no more than twenty-four hours all in one sitting and focused on a single plot.
According to tradition, in 534 or 535 BC, Thespis astounded audiences by leaping on to the back of a wooden cart and reciting poetry as if he was the characters whose lines he was reading. In doing so he became the world's first actor, and it is from him that we get the world thespian.
The Romans built their theatres very differently from the Greeks. Their structure was not built into a nearby hillside but on a level site, therefore the Romans erected a complete building. The seats were built up in a semi-circle and supported by arches and vaults with a wall circling the theatre which was open to the sky. It was like the Greek theatre with a raised stage and orchestra, but it was semi-circular instead of round. On three sides of the raised stage were the walls of the stage buildings which were richly decorated with columns, niches and statues. Later a roof built of wood could be added and it was possible to hang a covering over the auditorium.
In both Greece and Rome there were permanent theatres as well as the simple wooden stages that were carried by strolling players who travelled from town to town across the country. These were easy to put up and disassemble rather like Ikea furniture today!
By the time the twelfth century began, on our shores the role of the theatre and actor changed. Through travel and commerce there were new forms of plays coming in from Medieval Europe. These were part of the religious festivals, this time of the Christian Church. They were performed on platforms called mansions ranged around a church, later around an open space in the town.
In some places the mansions, with the stage and curtained area beneath, were mobile and moved from place to place. Each wheeled mansion, or pageant as it was called, was replaced by another when the scene of which it was part was complete. It would move on to another audience while the first group wait for scene two to roll up. This went on continuously until the finale. These were called the Mystery, Miracle and Morality plays.
These Mystery plays were part of the medieval tradition of bringing religious messages to the people. Most people were illiterate, so the plays became part of the oral tradition teaching the masses about the life of Christ. They were performed on the day of the great medieval festival of the Feast of Corpus Christi. This fell 60 days after Easter, in May or June. The first plays came about because in some church services especially during Easter, there were sections that were already dramatic, containing questions and answers almost like an actor’s role which could be played by different voices. Gradually over time the priests wrote special dialogues in Latin which were included in the services. They were collected and transcribed into English and formed plays. The parts were taken by town’s people, for example members of guilds or unions of particular trades. Each episode or scene was performed by the appropriate guild: i.e. Noah’s flood by the Shipwrights and the Three Kings by the Goldsmiths.
These plays depicted the chief events and stories of the Bible, from the creation of man to the life and death of Christ, and the last judgement at the end of the world. These plays were treated very seriously but could have additional comic characters such as Noah’s wife who nagged her husband and could only get into the ark by force.
From the mysteries, the miracle plays developed. These plays were based on the lives of the saints. The next sequence of the plays to be developed was the morality plays where the actors took the parts of various virtues and vices in their struggle to capture Man’s soul for heaven from hell. Even today these plays are still performed in towns like Wakefield, York and Chester.
We travel now to Europe, to Germany and the Southern Alps of Bavaria and the small town of Oberammergau. The Oberammergau Passion Play was first performed in 1634. During the bubonic plague that swept the region the inhabitants made a vow to God that if they were spared from the terrible plague, they would perform a passion play every ten years. The story is that one of the inhabitants, a man coming home for Christmas, allegedly brought the plague with him by accident. That man died and the plague spread throughout Oberammergau. But once the vow was made by the residents no one died. To this day the Passion play is played every ten years and the whole of the town of Oberammergau takes part.
A blog by Special Collections' librarian Anne-Marie Mcharg.