PLAY = The first thing to be said about a ‘play’ is that it is the opposite of work.

Whereas work takes

place at specified times, in a particular place, and the worker’s identity is fixed – she or he is a plumber, a
librarian, a politician – play takes place at any time, anywhere and the players’ identity is not fixed.
Each ‘playing’ is a kind of performance because involves a measure of pretending, as to enter a world of
‘make-believe’. Play opens up possibilities, and enables us to explore the situations of difficulty, without
any ‘real life’ consequences. It is perhaps a training for the imagination.
PERFORMANCE = A. The accomplishment or carrying out of something commanded or undertaken;
the doing of an action or operation. B. Something performed or done; an action, act, deed, or operation or
process C. The action of performing a play, piece of music, ceremony, etc.; execution, interpretation in
front of an audience; an occasion on which such a work is presented; a public appearance by a performing
artist or artists of any kind. Also: an individual performer's or group's rendering or interpretation of a work,
part, role, etc. In extended use: a pretence, a sham.
We could extend the notion of performance to include virtually any social interaction, even to ‘solo’ events.
To perform also mean to pretend to do something; hence Max Herrmann’s definition: “a game in which
everyone, actors and spectators, participates.” Following Herrmann, we can define a performance as any
event in which all the participants find themselves in the same place at the same time, partaking in a
circumscribed set of activities. The participants can be actors or spectators, and the roles of these actors
and spectators may switch, so that the same person could fulfill the part of an actor for a given period of
time, and then turn into an observer. The performance is created out of the interactions of participants and
only acquires meaning through the earlier experience of the participants. Moreover, in some senses, words
and actions are also one, as happens with performative utterances (Austin). The relationship between
performative and performance is hard to disentangle. A performative is an act; but the act or action itself is
a performance. So, the performative is also a performance. It may be opined that the performative focuses
on the significance of the act’s engagement, whereas the action as performance emphasizes the act as one
between performers and spectators. Goffman, an anthropologist, theorized that each person’s social life
was a series of performances. In each social situation we present a ‘mask’, and during the encounter, each
participant ‘reads’ the other’s performance and responds as appropriately as they can. The encounter is
encoded in its frame or context (time, place, what we wear/say/do). Therefore, there’s no real difference
between appearance and reality – the performance is the reality. It may be seen as a sort of
gangplankpasserella between life and theatre – it exists in both and help us to understand both. Performance
images the world. It is a particular way of reflecting on our identity and communicating about it, affirming
or questioning power structures. The signs and messages are always multifarious, and we may see most
easily only those which chime with our own experiences – for that reason, theatre is able to open up or
subvert the status quo. Theatre performance presents an ongoing metaphor for life – a flow of images
which we should go along with as they clash, fade into one another, complement and contradict each
other.
Characteristics of a Performance (defined by Fischer-Lichte)
- Mediality > a performance is inseparable from the bodily co-presence of various groups of people who
come together as actors and spectators: this is linked to the medial conditions of performance, or its
mediality. The term “medial conditions” refers to the specific conditions of transmission that are created by
the simultaneous presence of actors and spectators.
● Performance vs. Text
“A performance exists in the moment of bodily co-presence of ‘actors’ and ‘spectators.’ Performances
therefore differ essentially from texts and artifacts. Texts and artifacts are products that exist
separately from their creator(s); they are not tied to the bodily presence of their creators. These
products can be encountered at different times, and often in different places. Each time a person reads
a text, observes a painting, or watches a film, they may have a different experience of the same work of
art. But at the same time, the materiality of the text, painting, or film remains unchanged. In contrast, a
performance has very different medial conditions stemming from its reliance on bodily co-presence.
While some of those present—the actors— move through and act in a given space, the others—the
spectators—perceive their actions and react to them. These reactions can be purely “inward,” i.e.
imaginative and cognitive processes. But many of these reactions are outwardly perceptible. In a
 theatre performance, for example, spectators can laugh, cheer, sigh, groan, sob, cry, scream “bravo”,
etc. “Both actors and spectators can perceive these reactions. They feel, hear or see them. In turn,
actors and spectators react to these perceptions […]. Whatever the actors do has an effect on the
spectators, and whatever the spectators do has an effect on the actors as well as other spectators.
Performances are created out of the encounter of actors and spectators; we can term this interplay the
‘autopoietic feedback loop.’”
● Staging & Performance
“Without a doubt it is the actors who set crucial parameters for the performance. The foundation of a
performance lies in a given staging concept or set of rules that all the cast knows and follows. Theatre
performances, for example, involve a staging process— usually weeks of rehearsals in contemporary
theatre—in which strategies are developed, rehearsed, and fixed in a way that determines the manner
in which people, objects, and noises will appear (and disappear) on stage during the performance. But
even in cases in which the actors meticulously follow a completely predetermined staging, they are
incapable of completely controlling the course of the performance. The reactions of the audience can
give the performance a new twist.” “For this and other reasons, it is important to clearly differentiate
between the concepts of ‘staging’ and ‘performance.’ Staging refers to the strategies used in advance
to fix the time, duration, and manner of the appearance of people, things, and noises in a space.
Performance refers to everything that happens during the staged event—in other words, the totality
of the interplay between what happens on stage and the reactions of the spectators. A performance is
ultimately created by everyone present and escapes the control of any one individual. In this sense it
is contingent. The concept of contingency emphasizes the involvement of all participants and their
influence on the course of the performance, including the interplay between these influences. The
participants are co-creators of the play since they affect the shape of a performance.”
● Performance as Interplay of individuals
“The interplay of [the participants’] actions and behavior constitutes the performance, while the
performance constitutes them as actors and spectators. It is only when they take part in the
performance that individuals turn into actors and spectators.” This particular quality of performances
is termed by Austin “performative.” He used the term for verbal expressions that perform an action,
such as “I promise,” “I curse you,” or “With this ring, I thee wed.” Such utterances don’t just say
something; they perform the action of which they speak. They are self-referential in that they
designate what they are doing, and constitute reality in that they create the social reality of which
they speak. In this sense, we should remember that the word “performance” stems from the verb ‘to
perform,’ i.e. to execute an action” – it indicates that the very issuing of the utterance is the
performing of the action. Artistic and non-artistic performances both are performative, and both
encourage people to enter into new relationships.
- Materiality or ‘the Transience of Performance’ > We “define performance by its transience transitorietà. This
transience is integral to the materiality of performance. Unlike processes of production in which people
with various functions work together to create a product—a car, a washing machine, a building, etc.—a
performance does not create a
product. It creates itself. It is transitory and ephemeral, even if the performance involves spaces, bodies,
and objects that outlast the performance. […] Performances cannot be contained in or translated into
material artifacts.
They are ephemeral and transitory; they deplete themselves in a continual cycle of waning and becoming;
they are acts of autopoiesis (that is, self-creation). Material objects employed in performances remain as
traces of the performance. The performance itself is irretrievably lost when it finishes and lies beyond
repetition. Whereas a production is designed to be repeated, a performance is a unique event.”
DIMENSIONS OF MATERIALITY: 1) Spatiality : Performance spaces are pre-existing, whether
they are theatre buildings, convention halls, or sports stadiums. Even though these spaces outlast
the performance itself, we can speak of a particular spatiality that is created during the
performance. The spectator has to understand the different kinds of space which can communicate
in the theatre, and how they do so. There are certain fixed kinds of space, but some spatial features
are only partially fixed – the lighting, the furniture and the spectators may change. Therefore, the
actor is in a sense in constant motion. Here we must differentiate between the architectural space
in which a performance takes place and the performance space that is created by the performance
and in turn influences the performance itself. The architectural space where a performance takes
place exists before the start of a performance and does not cease to exist after the performance
ends. If we are talking about a building, we might think of it as a container whose defining
characteristics (floor plan, height, width, length, volume, etc.) are not affected by what happens
within. The layout of the architectural space and its division of space between the stage and
audience opens particular possibilities for —and even organizes and structures—the movement of
actors on stage as well as the perception of the spectators, affecting the relationship between
actors and spectators. Whatever is made of these possibilities, how they are used, realized,
avoided, or thwarted constitutes the performance space. Each movement of people, objects, light,
and each sound can change it. It is constantly fluctuating. The spatiality of a performance is created
in, through, and as the performance space and is perceived under the conditions set by the space.
Theatre spaces, regardless of whether they are permanent or temporary, are always spaces for
performance. The history of theatre buildings and of stage technology, which up to now has usually
been written as part of the history of architecture, can also be understood as the history of
performance spaces. Changes in these architectural spaces bear witness to the changing
relationship between actors and spectators. […] Audiences have a different range of perceptual
experience depending on the performance space. The changing conditions of light and vista in an
open-air performance space are radically different to a candle-lit interior designed to create a
central perspective. The performance is shaped by the space.
There are many kinds of theatrical space: A) Arena stage/theatre: A central stage surrounded by
audience on all sides (e.g. Ancient Greek Theatre) B) Thrust theatre: A stage surrounded by
audience on three sides. The Fourth side serves as the background. In a typical modern
arrangement: the stage is often a square or rectangular playing area, usually raised, surrounded by
raked seating. Other shapes are possible; Shakespeare's Globe Theatre was a five-sided thrust
stage. C) Proscenium stage: A proscenium theatre is what we usually think of as a "theatre". Its
primary feature is the Proscenium, a "picture frame" placed around the front of the playing area of
an end stage. The wings are spaces on either side, extending off-stage. Scenery can surround the
acting area on all sides except side towards audience, who watch the play through picture frame
opening. "Backstage" is any space around the acting area which is out of sight of the audience.
DIMENSIONS OF MATERIALITY : 2) Corporeality : “The fleetingness of corporeality is
immediately apparent. Whatever actors do on stage does not last beyond the moment of
enactment. This is true whether
the actor makes a sudden movement across the stage, raises their hands, or furrows their brow.
Unlike painters, sculptors, poets, or composers, actors, singers, and dancers do not create a
permanent “work” separate from themselves. Whatever they create is fleeting and transitory, and
is created out of a unique material: their own bodies. How does this very special material create
the specific materiality of performance? The human body is a unique aesthetic material; it is a living
organism, always in a state of becoming; that is, in a continual process of transformation. There
exists a doubleness with regard to the body. On the one hand, people have a body they can
manipulate similarly to other objects, instrumentalize, and use as a sign for something else. On the
other hand, people are their bodies; people are embodied subjects. When actors step outside
themselves in order to portray a figure through the “material of their
own existence,” they emphasize this doubling and the distancing of people from themselves. There
is a tension between the actors’ phenomenal body, their bodily being-in-the-world, and the use of
that body as a sign to portray a character. We will describe this tension as occurring between the
‘phenomenal body’ and the ‘semiotic body.’ Semiotics can best be defined as a science dedicated to
the study of the production of meaning in society. As such it is equally concerned with processes of
signification and with those of communication, i.e. the means whereby meanings are both
generated and exchanged. Its objects are thus at once the different sign-systems and codes at work
in society and the actual messages and texts produced thereby. It is— ideally, at least—a
multidisciplinary science whose precise methodological characteristics will necessarily vary from
field to field but which is united by a common global concern, the better understanding of our own
 meaning-bearing behaviour. Directors and ensembles use a variety of techniques to create a
disjuncture or contradiction between the phenomenal bodies of the actors and the figures they
portray. In a production of Julius Caesar (1998), the Italian group Societas Raffaello Sanzio
employed actors who drew attention to their disabled, weak, fragile, and supposedly abnormal
bodies. The casting highlighted the tension between phenomenal and semiotic bodies as the
production undercut the audience’s expectation of a given character with the reality of the
actor’s body onstage. Equally, cross-gender casting (the casting of male roles with female actors or
female roles with male actors) can draw audience attention to the tension between the
phenomenal body and the semiotic body of the actor. Drag performance (men playing women or
women playing men) has become a popular, and often politicized, form of performance in recent
decades. Drag performers (or “drag queens” and “drag kings”) usually perform exaggerated
versions of characteristics that society considers feminine or masculine. Cross-gender casting
shares some concerns with the historically more recent cross-racial casting, although ultimately the
two differ by as much as they share. In the United States, there has been a long—and often
nefarious—tradition of performing across race. In the nineteenth century, blackface minstrelsy
became a popular, working-class theatre form across the United States. In these performances,
white performers would darken their faces with burnt cork and perform racial caricatures of
African-Americans. Jump Jim Crow, a song and dance supposedly inspired by the song and dance of
a physically disabled black man the white comedian Thomas Rice had seen in Cincinnati, Ohio,
named Jim Cuff or Jim Crow. Jump Jim Crow initiated a new form of popular music and theatrical
performances in the United States that focused their attention on the mockery of African
Americans. This new genre was called the minstrel show. In 1965 the Negro Ensemble Company
explored and reversed this tradition in Douglas Turner Ward’s play A Day of Absence. The play tells
the story of a small Southern town, where one day all of the African-Americans disappear: left on
their own, the Whites in this town realize how much they depend on the African-American
members of the community. One reviewer for the New York Times wrote that the play was a “very
clever, very funny, and pertinent play.” Beyond the subject matter, it was Ward’s casting decisions
that made this play so effective: “what gives it an extra power is Ward’s conception of it as a
minstrel show in reverse. All the white roles are played by blacks in white-face ... and the results
are both savage and touching”. Again,the performance’s power came not only from the content of
the play but also from the tension between the phenomenal bodies and semiotic bodies of the
performers.
DIMENSIONS OF MATERIALITY : 3) Tonality : [Dictionary: “the character of a piece of music as
determined by the key in which it is played or the relations between the notes of a scale or key.”]
Tonality epitomizes the transience of performance. Emerging from silence, sound expands and fills
the space, only to drift away and disappear in the next moment. Nevertheless, its impact on the
listeners is immediate and fundamental. Sound transmits a sense of the space (after all, our sense
of balance is in our ears), it penetrates the body and has a physiological and affective impact. Sound
creates spatiality. Likewise, vocality creates physicality. In the actor’s voice, all three forms of
materiality come into being: physicality, spatiality, and tonality. The voice is produced by the body
and resonates through space so that it becomes audible for the singer/speaker as well as for the
listeners. The close relationship between body and voice is especially evident in screams, sighs,
moans, sobs, and laughter. These utterances are unmistakably created through a process that
affects the whole body: the body doubles over, contorts, and enlarges. These non-verbal utterances
also impress themselves physically onto the listener. The screaming, sobbing, or laughing voice
penetrates the bodies of the listeners, echoes in and is absorbed by their bodies.
- Semioticity or the Creation of Meaning in performance > Everything that is brought forth and shown as a
sign thing—is only present for a certain amount of time and cannot be re-read or observed multiple times,
like a text or a
picture. How meaning is created in performances through such signs can be termed the semiotic
dimension, or semioticity of performances. Traditionally, performances were seen as a means to transmit
specific, pre-existing meanings. The long-standing premise of scholarship was that the performance of a
given play represented a specific interpretation; If we assume that the bodily co-presence of actors and
spectators is constitutive of performance, and that performance is transient, the notion of a fixed meaning
becomes unsustainable. Both bodily co-presence and transience suggest that a performance does not
convey a stable and preexisting meaning.” Instead, meanings only emerge over the course of the
performance and are different for each of the participants. It is impossible to know in advance which
meanings individual participants will generate. The interaction between actors and spectators can always
take an unexpected turn and disturb the planned program. In addition, the spectators can be distracted by
the presence of phenomenal bodies and atmospheres that counteract any purely semiotic interpretation of
the performance. Perceiving bodies and objects on stage means perceiving all of these phenomena as
something. They are not simply stimuli or sensory data, but rather the perception of something as
something. In the perception of the spectator their appearance is their meaning. This sort of self-
referentiality neither transmits nor strips the object of a pre-existing meaning. Instead, this self-
referentiality is in itself a way of creating meaning. In other words, the process of perception is also a
process of creating meaning, since these objects “mean” what they appear as. One does not first perceive
something and then—in an act of interpretation—give it meaning. Rather, the perception of something as
something simultaneously constitutes meaning as part of a process that manifests its specific phenomenal
being. Furthermore, the appearance of a phenomenon is the prerequisite for another mode of perception
and a different way of constituting meaning. DeSaussure defined a sign as created by the union of a
signifier (the symbol) and of a signified (the idea). In the moment that spectators cease to focus their
attention on the phenomenal being of the perceived, they begin to perceive it as a signifier; that is, as a
sign-bearer that is linked with associations— fantasies, memories, feelings, thoughts—to what it signifies,
i.e. possible meanings. Perception and the constitution of meaning are largely dependent on subjective
factors connected to individual spectators. The associations conjured by an object, a gesture, a sound, or a
light cue depend on their individual experiences, their knowledge, and their specific sensitivities. This
includes factors such as age, gender, class, and cultural background, which impact how people perceive and
understand performances. It would be naïve to believe that perception and the constitution of meaning
depend only on what is presented and how it is presented. Instead, both are founded in the specific
conditions that each participating subject brings to the performance. The stage gives the performance a
particular power, but essentially the semiotics are always the same. By marking off the performance, we
agree to invest each action with aspecially charged-meaning – but signs are often ambiguous. Both
perception and the chain of associations produced by it differ for everyone. We can call the oscillation of
perception between concentration on phenomena in their self-referentiality and on the associations that
they give rise to the perceptual order of presence as opposed to the perceptual order of representation.
Both the body of the actor as bodily being-in-the-world and objects in their phenomenal being create the
foundation of the order of presence. Perceiving a body or object as a sign—as a dramatic character and
the character’s environment—is the foundation of the perceptual order of representation. The order of
representation demands that everything that is perceived is perceived in relation to a dramatic character,
the character’s fictive world, or another symbolic order. While the first order of perception (i.e. presence)
focuses on meaning as tied to phenomenal being, the second order of perception (i.e. representation)
creates meaning that comprehensively constitutes the character and fictive world. Personal experiences,
knowledge, beliefs, values, convictions, a person’s whole habitus—i.e. factors that are informed by cultural
and social milieu—create the preconditions for perception and the constitution of meaning. Part of this
knowledge and experience is a person’s previous experiences with theatre. Even when the perceptual
process and constitution of meaning follow the order of representation, the outcome will vary among
spectators depending on the conditions each brings to the performance and it is likely that spectators will
not all agree on the meanings created. We can assume that theatre performances that involve a realistic
psychological style of acting invite the spectators to privilege the perceptual order of representation, while
experimental theatre and performance art draw the spectator toward the perceptual order of presence.
Nevertheless, it is almost impossible to imagine a performance that an audience would perceive
exclusively through one of these orders. Moreover, signs are always dynamic and evolving, constantly
producing new possibilities.
- Aestheticity or the ‘Event-ness of Performance as experienced by the Spectator’ > “Performances, as
the discussion so far has indicated, are “events” and can be characterized by their “event-ness.” Event can
mean 1) A performance can be seen as an event rather than an artwork because it is created through the
interaction of actors and spectators (i.e. an autopoietic feedback loop). This autopoietic process is the
process of the performance.
2) As an event, a performance—in contrast to a staging—is unique and unrepeatable. Any particular
constellation of actors and spectators is singular. 3) A performance is an event in so far as no individual
participant controls it completely. This is true not only because of the bodily co-presence of actors and
spectators, but also because of the specific mode of presence through which phenomena emerge and how
meaning is constituted from these phenomena. 4) The event-ness of performance opens up a very specific
sort of experience for its participants, especially for the spectators. In performance, participants
experience themselves as subjects who partially control, and are partially controlled by, the conditions—
neither fully autonomous nor fully determined. They experience performance as an aesthetic and a social,
even political, process in which relationships are negotiated, power struggles fought out, and
communities emerge and vanish. Concepts and ideas that we traditionally see as dichotomous pairs in our
culture—such as autonomy and determinism, aesthetics and politics, and presence and representation—
are experienced not in the form of either/or but as not only/but also. 5) The collapse of these dichotomies
draws the spectator’s attention to the threshold. The spectator experiences instability and the dissolution
of boundaries as part of the event. This opens up the liminal space between poles such as presence and
representation, and a feeling of in-betweenness dominates . Performances enable a threshold experience
that can transform those who experience it.”

THEATRE
The English word “theatre,” as in many other Indo-European languages, derives from the Greek word
theatron, which comes from thea (“show”) or theâsthai (“to look on”). The word theatron was used to
describe a gathering place for celebratory, cultic, political, and athletic events. The arrangement of rows of
seats and viewing platforms allowed spectators to watch the entrance of processions, dances with song and
music, performances of tragedies and comedies, athletic competitions, and various acts of self-fashioning
by the polis of Athens. The term was used in a general sense to denote a place for watching a wide variety
of events. In English, the term “theatre” was first used in the fourteenth century to designate an open
space where people could watch spectacles of various sorts. The term referred to any open space for
watching, i.e. natural as well as man-made spaces. Starting in the sixteenth century, the term “theatre”
began to refer primarily to enclosed buildings, a definition that has prevailed to the present day. Around
the same time as the term “theatre” came to be associated with designated, institutional performance
spaces, theatre also came to be understood as drama; dramatic texts were studied at Oxford and
Cambridge primarily for learning rhetoric and understanding classical antiquity. Around the same time,
both academic and popular writers showed a renewed interest in using theatre as a wide-ranging
metaphor. Theatre’s metaphorical power goes back to antiquity. The concept was used to designate the
world (theatrum mundi) as well as human life (theatrum vitae humanae). In the seventeenth century, this
metaphor became commonplace. “Theatre” and “World,” or “Human Life,” seemed fundamentally related,
and were understood in reference to one another. Life at the European courts was increasingly staged as a
theatrical performance. We see that the court turned into a stage and courtiers and royalty into actors.
This phenomenon was particularly apparent during courtly festivals. Here, every festival space became a
stage. Members of the court appeared as actors; the king or emperor played himself. “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.” [Shakespeare in As you like it] Theatre was not just used as a metaphor for life
at court. Aside from its extensive use in theatre itself (for example in Shakespeare, Calderón, Gryphius, or
Lohenstein), it found its way into a wide variety of tracts and treatises, including philosophical, scientific,
technical, and geographical discourses. A multitude of publications flooded the European market that had
the words “theatre” or “theatrum” in their titles, referring to the prevailing idea of theatre as a show place,
or a place in which something worth knowing is put on view. These books were metaphorically designated
as show places, places where a subject was presented to the reflection of the reader. This usage also
reveals the etymological connection between theatron (or theatrum in Latin)
and theoria, both of which derive from thea (“show”).
THEATRE & DRAMA this familiar but invariably troublesome distinction requires a word of
explanation. ‘Theatre’ is taken to refer here to the complex of phenomena associated with the
performer-audience transaction: that is, with the production and communication of meaning in the
performance itself and with the systems underlying it. By ‘drama’, on the other hand, is meant that mode
of fiction designed for stage representation and constructed according to particular (‘dramatic’)
conventions. The epithet ‘theatrical’, then, is limited to what takes place between and among performers
and spectators, while the epithet ‘dramatic’ indicates the network of factors relating to the represented
fiction. This is not, of course, an absolute differentiation between two mutually alien bodies, since the
performance, at least traditionally, is devoted to the representation of the dramatic fiction. It demarcates,
rather, different levels of a unified cultural phenomenon for purposes of analysis.

TRADITION is a matter of [wide] significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must
obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly
indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical
sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense
compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole
of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a
simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the
timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer
traditional. [Thomas Eliot]

British Theatrical culture (1760s-1830s)

Theatre in the Georgian era The Georgian era is a period of British history, which includes the reigns of the
Kings of the House of Hanover: George I, George II, George III, and George IV, thus covering the period from
1714 to 1830, and including the sub-period of the Regency, defined by the Regency of George IV as Prince
of Wales during the illness of his father George III (1811-20). Often, the short reign of King William IV (1830
to 1837) is also included.
A theatrical evening in 19th century London “The hour is fairly early, the curtain a 6:30 one, and there are
no assigned seats in the pit […]. Every night it is the same; people clamber to get the best seats in a race
that would make a modern rock concert seem sedate. While you appreciate the lack of seat backs as you
hurtle seventeen benches, you will miss them by the end of the evening. After all, you will remain in the
theater until eleven o’clock or even midnight, and will not see a single play but an entire evening’s
entertainment.”
The institution: theatrical monopoly In 1662 King Charles II granted patents to his courtier playwrights
Thomas Killigrew and William Davenant, which permitted the performance of ‘tragedies, comedies, plays,
operas, music, scenes and all other entertainments of the stage’. The King’s gift of patents, together with
the permission to build ‘two theatres with all convenient rooms and other necessities thereunto
appertaining’ brought about the rise of permanent London theatrical institutions, later identified with
Drury Lane (1663) and Covent Garden (1732).
Censorship The Licensing Act or Theatrical Licensing Act of 21 June 1737 was a landmark act of censorship
of the
British stage and one of the most determining actors in the development of Georgian drama and theatre.
The Act established that the Lord Chamberlain had the power to approve any play before it was staged. The
Licensing Act of 1737 instituted a system of censorship in Great Britain demanding that all plays be
reviewed by the Lord Chamberlain before they could be licensed for public performance. The initial reading
of a submitted play was left to an Examiner of Plays; the Lord Chamberlain himself only became involved if
the Examiner detected some objectionable content requiring review and opinion.
Legitimate vs Illegitimate theatre The Licensing Act of 1737 tightened censorship of drama, placing it under
the control of the Lord Chamberlain. Only patent theatres were able to perform drama – known as
legitimate theatre. Non-patent theatres performed melodrama, pantomime, ballet, and other forms of
mainly visual spectacle. As these involved music or musical interludes they could not be classed as plays
and were regarded as illegitimate theatre and
were not subject to the Licensing Act. Later, a series of royal patents were granted to cities outside London.
These became known as “Theatres Royal”. Many still operate and were built in a restrained neo-classical
style.
The patent theatres: Drury Lane The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a theatre in the West End area of
London, officially situated on Catherine Street, but backing onto Drury Lane just to the east of Covent
Garden. A cockpit in that location was converted into a theatre during the reign of James I. After the
Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, a
splendid new theatre was built to designs by Christopher Wren. Having been razed by fire on January 25,
1672, it was succeeded by a larger and still more elaborate building also designed by Wren, which housed
two thousand spectators with the opening attended by Charles II on March 26, 1674. The great English
actor David Garrick managed the theatre during the mid-eighteenth century, during which time he
produced many plays, including most of Shakespeare's work. By the end of the 18th century, the building
was in need of updating, and was demolished in 1791. A third theatre was designed by Henry Holland and
opened on March 12, 1794, lasting for only 15 years before burning down on February 24, 1809. The
present Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, designed by Benjamin Wyatt, opened on October 10, 1812 with a
production of Hamlet. The interior has been substantially redesigned and overhauled many times since
then. It is one
of the West End's largest, and has been the setting for appearances by Edmund Kean and Sarah Siddons, among
others.
Patent theatres: Covent Garden Covent Garden was originally opened in 1732. In 1792, the theatre was
renovated and enlarged but it burnt down on 20 September, 1808 and was redesigned by Robert Smirke
opening less than a year later on 18 September, 1809, with a capacity of three thousand people. The
auditorium and stage were lit by gaslight from 1817. The picture below is of Smirke's redesign.
Illegitimate Theatres: Astley’s Amphitheatre Philip Astley opened Astley’s Amphitheatre in 1777, and, not
surprisingly for a former riding school owner, featured lots of horses. The amphitheatre mixed circus with
theatre, having a circus ring attached to a stage and exploiting the circus tricks which horses could do.
Astley’s was renowned for its equestrian dramas, which it continued to produce until its destruction in
1895. One production featured not only several hundred humans in the cast but fifty-two horses, fifteen
elephants, two lions on leads, kangaroos, pelicans, reindeer, chamois and many more animals.
Adelphi (Strand) Built in 1806 opposite Adam Street by merchant John Scott as the Sans Pareil to showcase
his daughter's theatrical talents, the theatre was given a new facade and redecorated in 1814. It reopened
on 18 October 1819 as the Adelphi, named after the imposing complex of West London streets built by the
brothers Robert (1728-92) and James (1730-94) Adam from 1768. The name "Adelphoi" in Greek simply
means "the brothers." Among the
celebrated actors who appeared on its stage was the comedian Charles Matthews (1776-1835), whose
work was so admired by young Charles Dickens. It had more "tone" than the other minor theatres because
its patrons in the main were the salaried clerks of barristers and solicitors.
Theatrical Genres Cox and Gamer wrote: “Romantic theater was an exciting dramatic laboratory in which
playwrights experimented with a wealth of new forms and technologies.” Romantic theatre could host two
kinds of drama – either Legitimate or Illegitimate – according to the status of the theatre. • Legitimate (or
spoken) drama: tragedy, comedy of manners.
● Illegitimate (or mixed) drama: comic pantomime, melodrama, ‘burletta’, harlequinade,
‘extravaganza’, nautical drama, hippodrama.
Illegitimate genres: PANTOMIME Etymology: Latin pantomimus, from pant- + mimus mime. An ancient
dramatic performance featuring a solo dancer and a narrative chorus. 3b. the art or genre of conveying a
story by bodily movements only. A 'pantomime' in Ancient Greece was originally a group who 'imitates all'
(panto- all, mimos- imitator) accompanied by sung narrative and instrumental music. The word later came
to be applied to the performance itself. The pantomime was a popular form of entertainment in ancient
Greece and, later, Rome. The origins of British Pantomime or "Panto" as it is known in the UK, has its
origins in the traditions of the Italian "Commedia dell’Arte”, a type of travelling street entertainment which
came from Italy in the 16th century. Commedia was a very physical type of theatre that used dance, music,
tumbling, acrobatics and buffoonery. Commedia spread across Europe from Italy to France and by the
middle of the 17th century began to be popular in England. When the Commedia characters started to
appear in England such was the success that intense rivalry soon sprang up between the theatres producing
it. At first, they were largely visual pieces but gradually became comedic and musical with the development
of the slapstick harlequinade. The harlequinade revolves around a plot improvised with five central
characters, Harlequin, his love Columbine, her father Pantaloon, Clown and Pierrot, a servant. Comic chases
and tricks were employed to full effect.
Illegitimate genres: MELODRAMA Melodrama became popular from the 1780s to 1790s and lasted until
the
early 20th century. Melodrama consisted of short scenes interspersed with musical accompaniment and
was characterized by simple morality, good and evil characters and overblown acting style. Characters in
melodrama were
stereotypical - there was always a villain, a wronged maiden and a hero. The emotions of the actors were
played out in the music and accompanied by dramatic tableaux. Because of these musical interludes
melodrama was not considered a 'play' and thus evaded the monopoly of the patent theatres stipulated in
the Licensing Act. “As a sort of summary image of the changes within the drama of the day, we can turn to
the print ‘The Monster Melodrama’ (Satirist, 4 December 1807), which shows both 1790s writers such as
Matthew Lews and Thomas Holcroft, and newcomers such as William Dimond all suckling from the monster
—half human, half beast; half female, half male—which tramples upon Shakespeare’s works and the
‘Regular Dramas’.
Illegitimate genres: EXTRAVAGANZA The term extravaganza refers to an elaborate and spectacular
theatrical production. The term once specifically referred to a type of 19th-century English drama made
popular by J.R. Planché (1796-1880), a British playwright and antiquary who wrote fanciful portrayals of
fairy tales and other poetic subjects
based on similar French productions. Planché’s productions included dancing and music and influenced
such later writers as W.S. Gilbert.
Illegitimate genres: BURLETTA Closely allied to extravaganza is the Burletta, which began in the middle of
the eighteenth century as a ‘poor relation to an Opera’, and ‘a drama in rhyme, which is entirely in music’.
Legally, any piece with at least five songs in each act was a burletta, and could be performed at the minor
theatres. This allowed the adaptation and presentation of plays by Shakespeare and other ‘legitimate’
dramatists.
Illegitimate genres: NAUTICAL DRAMA England was a seafaring nation, and in the 1820s and 1830s a mania
for
nautical drama gripped the London stage. Plays featuring the exploits of brave, patriotic, honest sailors
battling at sea or safe in harbour included stirring songs, picturesque hornpipes, nautical jargon,
spectacular scenery and effects, and sentimental endings. They presented a hopelessly unrealistic view of
life in the British navy, and audiences adored them.

William Shakespeare
Youth The story of WS’s life has been at the centre of many speculations and distortions. He was certainly
born in Stratford-upon-Avon in April 1564, his birthday traditionally assigned to April 23. His father John
was a glover and quickly became involved in town government, but after some years his fortunes began to
decline. He was fined for not attending council meetings and reprimanded “for not coming monthly to the
church”. Some attribute these absences to recusancy, and it is possible that John and his family may have
held Catholic sympathies (they apparently conformed to Anglican practice anyway). As the son of a
prominent citizen, William probably attended the Stratford grammar school. As Shakespeare come of age,
he married the 8-year-old-older Anne Hathaway, three months pregnant. The next year Susanna, the first
of their three children, was christened. He must have arrived in London towards the end of 1580s, and by
the early 1590s he had provoked both envy and favorable attention. The sequence of 154 sonnets divides
into two groups. In the first series, an older poet affectionately praises a beautiful young man, and urges
him to marry. In the later group, the speaker confesses passion for a faithless “dark lady”. As soon as
playhouses re-opened, Shakespeare came back to the stage. In 1594 he joined Richard Burbage to form a
new company, the Chamberlain’s men, and those were days of relative stability. Burbage took the leading
roles in Richard II, A midsummer’s night dream, and Romeo and Juliet. In a few years, their company
became the most successful troupe in England. Later, in 1596, the owner of their usual playhouse, The
Theatre, got sticky about its terms, leading to the construction of the Globe and the acquisition of the
Blackfriars. James I came to the throne in 1603 and chose to patronize Shakespeare’s troupe, which was
renamed The King’s Men, where the Bard was actively engaged as actor, shareholder and supplier of scripts.
Maturity & the last years Around 1600, Shakespeare changed artistic direction. Thus, began the great
tragic phase – Julius Caesar, Hamleth, Macbeth, Coriolanus. This Jacobean Shakespeare is very different
from the Elizabethan one. Many possible explanations have beef formulated for this shift – psychological
(he experienced some kind of personal crisis), practical (tragedies drew greater audiences), cultural
(increasing pessimism of his age), desire to experiment in the most estimated genre. Shakespeare’s
maturity differed from his youth in many other ways. First, he enjoyed professional security; second, he
became de facto an unofficial court dramatist; third, with the acquisition of a second theatre in 1608,
Shakespeare found himself writing also for a more exclusive audience. In fact, the Blackfriars, although
being public, was small, and the ticket price was higher. The King’s Men dominated the English theatrical
scene, and Shakespeare alongside, until the end of his career. His last years as a playwright should probably
be considered representative of his whole journey, as he managed to invent new dramatic forms to suit the
audience’s taste and his own. The magical tone and effects of the late plays bespeak a deliberate effort to
exploit the resources of the new indoor theatre. Of his elder age we know very little – he presumably lived
at New Place with his wife, and was buried in Stratford. Seven years after his death, two of his friends
published the First Folio (original title: Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories & tragedies), with the scripts
that survived the destruction they were destined to. These texts are not to be conceived in ‘literary’ or
definitive way, but rather as plot outlines that could potentially be modified by actors and directors.
The works Shakespeare’s career divides into two phases - the first ten years, during the Elizabethan reign
(1590-1660) devoted to comedies and histories, the second decade (’01-’11), or Jacobean phase, focused
on tragedies and romances. In the midst of his tragic phase he also produced All’s well that ends well and
Measure for measure, plays variously described because of their mixed characteristics, along with Troilus
and Cressida. Shakespeare’s dramatic structures faithfully represent the variety of the theatrical culture he
inhabited – comedy and tragedy at the centre, with much permutation and hybridization between them.
The First Folio divides the plays into 1) comedies 2) tragedies 3) histories.
Comedies A comedy is a literary structure, usually funny, that moves toward a happy ending (a marriage
or something that resolves the conflict) and implies a positive understanding of human experience. Comedy
moves from confusion to order, from ignorance to understanding, from unhappiness to satisfaction, from
two to one. At the beginning of A midsummer’s night dream, there are many lover quarrels and
unreciprocated attractions – at the end, we have three marriages and one re-marriage. And when the
characters leave the stage, they go off to bed, hence sexual union is the happy conclusion that will
perpetuate the species. Nature seems to endorse amorous or procreative desires, conspiring to assist the
characters in their fulfillment, but in Love’s Labor the ending is problematic. Comedy seems to rely on a
paradox: although the comic ending affirms positive values, this clarification occurs only in the last 5
minutes. For some other two hours, the audience is asked to concentrate on misunderstandings, confusion
and envy that portray the human being a small, silly creature. All Shakespeare’s comedies are hybrids,
complicated mixtures of farce and romance, absurdity and profundity. As Shakespeare explores the tonal
possibilities of comedy, the romantic unions become less joyous and more inflected with irony and
potential failure (see the forced marriage at the end of All’s well that ends well). Even though the author
sides with his young women, he finally marries them to husbands whose superior power is assumed, so the
same play can be read in a number of ways and perspectives, see The taming of the shrew. Each reading,
positive or negative, depends on the reader’s or the director’s decision to emphasize certain actions and
ideas.
History The more influential model for Shakespeare’s histories was the English political-morality play, in
which the subject was tyranny or insurrection and emphasis was given to the health of the body politic.
Thus, the motional impact depended on the historical event portrayed. The most famous history plays are
called the ‘Henriad’ or ‘Great Tetralogy’ (Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, Henry V). This entire tetralogy
may be regarded as an enormous comedy with tragic comedy insights. The cycle presents the success story
of the Prince of Wales, who expiates his father’s crime, leads his country into battle to victory and marries
the princess of France. But this positive interpretation may also take account of the human costs, the many
verbal deception and the slaughter of the French prisoners, in a rising tension between achievement and
disappointment. Shakespeare himself doubts about the truth of memory and about the reliability of
history. Compared to the First tetralogy (Henry VI Part 1, Henry VI Part 2, Henry VI Part 3, Richard III), the
Great one exhibits an increased awareness of the conditional nature of all historical writing.
Tragedy Since comedies tend to focus on a group or community, they’re usually given general titles (Much
ado about nothing, The comedy of errors) – tragedy titles, by contrast, signal a more limited emphasis
(Hamlet, Romeo & Juliet, Othello, and so on), as they invite the audience to witness the misfortunes of
charismatic individuals. Tragedy is a literary structure that moves toward an unhappy ending and thus
implies an unfavorable assessment of human experience. Whereas comedy ends with marriage, tragedy
leads to death, separation, loss, failure, self-destruction. The form of tragedy that Shakespeare helped to
shape derived from a variety of sources: from ancient tragedy, to medieval and early English tragedy, which
gave great importance to the moral purposes of watching the horrifying stories of fallen princes. The tragic
heroic figure, no matter how magnificent, can never escape the traps that await anyone who lives in our
vicious world – even nature seems to conspire against humans. Like comedy, Shakespearean tragedy
depends on a paradox. If comedy is both ridiculous and reassuring, tragedy is dispiriting and uplifting at one
time. Although the curve of action is negative and leads to the death of the hero, this undeniably creates
admiration for the tragic protagonist, even though he bears responsibility for his own misery. Tragedy
displays a great person suffering greatly, and ironically enough, this suffering consoles the spectator. The
world may be a terrible place, but at least the human creature is capable of extraordinary endurance. In the
contemporary age, tragedy was inevitably political, a study of the actions of monarchs: succession and
regicide (Hamlet, Macbeth), political conspiracy (Julius Caesar), conflict of interest (Anthony and
Cleopatra). In more recent times, however, there’s been a redirection of the political focus. Many tragedies
have been since read as exposures of misogynist and racist ideology (e.g., Anthony & Cleopatra and Othello
may be documents of the Western tendency to distance and destroy what they perceive as the other,
whether it is a woman or a black man). Whenever we read a tragedy, two matters bring up – the tragic flaw
and catharsis. Tragic flaw may be misleading; it represents a mistranslation of the Greek hamartia (error in
action), so tragedies basically display heroic people destroyed by their own capable hands. As far as
catharsis is concerned, Halliwell defined it “a powerful emotional experience, which gives of fear and pity
full play, making them useful means for our understanding of events in the world.” Shakespeare
complicated the psychological dimension of the central character and the audience’s sense of relation to
that character. He encourages a simultaneous engagement and detachment that make every tragedy (and
every response) different from one another.

SHAKESPEARE: the TIMELESS & the TEMPORAL

Coleridge was the first critic to grasp, over 200 years ago, this crucial characteristic of Shakespeare’s
greatest plays. Shakespeare ‘writes not for past ages,’ observes Coleridge, ‘but for that in which he lives,
and that which is to follow. It is natural that he should conform to the circumstances of his day, but a true
genius will stand independent of those circumstances.’ ‘It is a poor compliment to a poet’, Coleridge
remarks with Shakespeare in mind, ‘to tell him that he has only the qualifications of an historian.’ And what
enables Shakespeare’s drama to stand independent of the historical circumstances to which it otherwise
conforms is what Coleridge calls its ‘prophetic’ quality, its dream of ‘that which is to follow’. While he
‘registers what is past’ in his plays, Shakespeare also ‘projects the future in a wonderful degree’, and thus
‘shakes off the iron bondage of space and time’, as Coleridge superbly puts it. Among the 40ish plays
written entirely or almost entirely by Shakespeare, there is a tantalising puzzle: a manuscript titled ‘The
Booke of Sir Thomas Moore’ (booke in this context meaning ‘play script’). Now kept in the vaults of the
British Library, the document is a play script from the late 16th century or early 17th, in draft form and
dense with revisions and changes. Its main author seems to be the now little-known poet and playwright
Anthony Munday, but the text also appears to contain the handwriting of four fellow dramatists including a
shadowy figure known initially as ‘Hand D’. In 1871, scholars proposed an identity for Hand D – William
Shakespeare. If they are correct, the manuscript of Sir Thomas More contains something incalculably
precious: the only example of Shakespeare’s handwriting in a literary manuscript. More asks the on-stage
crowd, and by extension the theatre audience, to imagine what it would be like to be an asylum-seeker
undergoing forced repatriation. Though proving that More’s words were indeed written by Shakespeare is
not straightforward, in their keen sympathy for the plight of the alienated and dispossessed they seem to
prefigure the insights of great dramas of race such as The Merchant of Venice and Othello.

Edition = All the copies of a work printed at any time from substantially the same setting of type.
Folio = Book size when the printed sheets are folded once, giving a two-leaf quire and pages half the size of
the sheet. A folio is a large book in which printed sheets are folded in half only once, creating two double-
sided leaves, or four pages. Folios were more expensive and far more prestigious than quartos. Seven years
after Shakespeare's death, John Heminge and Henry Condell, his friends and colleagues in the King's Men,
collected almost all of his plays in a folio edition. Shakespeare's friendly rival Ben Jonson had previously
published his own writings, poems included, in a folio. The 1623 First Folio of Shakespeare, however, is the
earliest folio consisting only of an author's plays. The First Folio groups the plays for the first time into
comedies, histories, and tragedies, and it includes the Droeshout portrait of Shakespeare, generally
considered an authentic image because it was approved by those who knew him. The First Folio sold well
enough that it was followed nine years later by the 1632 Second Folio, full of small corrections, then by the
1663 Third Folio and the 1685 Fourth Folio. The latter two added many new plays, most of which are not
today considered to be by Shakespeare. Quarto editions of the plays continued to be produced as well.
Those published in the late 1600s, after the restoration of the English monarchy, include drastic changes
and "improvements" reflecting the preferences of that time. Shakespeare's plays, as printed in the First
Folio and the early quartos, presented a challenge to later editors, in part because of the great variations
between some quartos and the First Folio.
Octavo = Book size when the printed sheets are folded three times, giving an eight-leaf quire and pages
one-eighth the size of the sheet.
Quarto = Book size when the printed sheets are folded twice, giving a four-leaf quire and pages one-
quarter the size of the sheet. A quarto is a book in which each printed sheet is folded twice—in half, and
then in half again—to produce four double-sided leaves, or eight pages. Quartos tended to be small books
that were used up and sometimes damaged or discarded, thus making them scarce today. When William
Shakespeare died in 1616, only about half of his plays had ever been printed, in quartos. Another 18 plays
are known today only because they are included in the 1623 First Folio, the first collected edition of the
plays.
Quire [mazzetta di n. fogli] = Section of a book resulting from the folding of a sheet after printing. A Folio
may have two leaves in a quire, a Quarto four leaves, and an Octavo eight leaves.

Historical background: the African trade

The transatlantic slave trade generally followed a triangular route: traders set out from European ports
towards Africa's west coast. There they bought people in exchange for goods and loaded them into the
ships. The voyage across the Atlantic, known as the Middle Passage, generally took 6 to 8 weeks. Once in
the Americas those Africans who had survived the journey were off-loaded for sale and put to work as
slaves. The ships then returned to Europe with goods such as sugar, coffee, tobacco, rice and later cotton,
which had been produced by slave labour. European traders captured some Africans in raids along the
coast, but bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers. These dealers had a
sophisticated network of trading alliances collecting groups of people together for sale. Most of the
Africans who were enslaved were captured in battles or were kidnapped, though some were sold into
slavery for debt or as punishment. The captives were marched to the coast, often enduring long journeys of
weeks or even months, shackled to one another. At the coast they were imprisoned in large stone forts
built by European trading companies, or in smaller wooden compounds. When the slave ships arrived from
Europe they were laden with trade goods. Captains offered gifts to local African leaders and paid taxes for
the right to trade. They then began the serious business of barter and exchange, offering a wide variety of
trade goods such as textiles, firearms, alcohol, beads, manillas and cowries. The main European nations
involved in slaving were Portugal, Spain, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden. Britain
began large-scale slaving through private trading companies in the 1640s. The London-based Royal African
Company was the most important and from 1672 had a monopoly of the British trade. Other merchants
who wanted to enter this lucrative trade opposed the monopoly and it was ended in 1698. In the early
1700s most of Britain's slave merchants were from London and Bristol. However, Liverpool merchants were
increasingly involved and from about 1740 were outstripping their rivals. Although London, Bristol and
other ports continued to send ships to Africa, Liverpool dominated the trade until its abolition in 1807.
Indeed Liverpool was the European port most involved in slaving during the 18th century.
The Middle passage was the second leg of the triangular slave trade route. It involved a horrific eight to
ten-week journey across the Atlantic in cramped and disgusting conditions on slave ships. Many of the
enslaved Africans died of disease and many made the ultimate sacrifice and took their own lives. African
men, women and children were treated like animals by European crews and on arrival in the Americas were
equally inhumanely treated.
Arrival in the Americas On reaching the Americas the crew of slave ships prepared the Africans for sale.
They washed, shaved and rubbed them with palm oil to disguise sores and wounds caused by conditions on
board. The captains usually sold their captives directly to planters or specialised wholesalers by auction.
Families who had managed to stay together were now often broken up. Bonds formed during the voyage
were also broken. Immediately owners and their overseers sought to obliterate the identities of their newly
acquired slaves, to break their wills and
sever any bonds with the past. They forced Africans to adapt to new working and living conditions, to learn
a new language and adopt new customs. They called this process 'seasoning' and it could last two or three
years. For Africans, weakened by the trauma of the voyage, the brutality of this process was overwhelming.
Many died or committed suicide. Others resisted and were punished. The rest found ways of appearing to
conform which still preserved their dignity.
Perception of the African people and ’race’: An example of race language“The commerce between
the whites and the blacks has been, and must be, productive of infinite disadvantage to Negro population. [If
a] A black woman, instead of a Negro child, produces a Mulatto, instead of turning out a valuable slave, is
generally emancipated by the father, and becomes often a vagabond, if a male, and always a lady of
concubinage, if a female. This cross-breed [people] seldom are productive with each other; so that if they
are to propagate effectually, it must be with a black man or a black woman, which production is called a
Sambo. But as the brown lady considers it a step derrogêr a noblesse, to descend anything darker than her
own complexion, she either turns a wistful eye to a Boccra [i.e. White] Keeper, or contents herself with a
gentleman of her own colour. By those practices, a host of Mulattoes, Mustees, Guadroons and Mawkish
Whites, swarm in every town, and every corner, to the great detriment of Negro population, and the general
disadvantage of the community.” (McNeill, Observations on the treatment of Negroes).
Britain & miscegenation [Etymology: from Latin miscēre (to mix) + genus (race, kin): a mixture of races;
especially: marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another
race.] The belief among 18th-century racial theorists of the existence of discrete and biologically distinctive
races led them to the conclusion that the progeny of sexual unions between black and white people would
be sterile. The term ‘mulatto’ originates from this belief, deriving as it does from ‘mule’, the hybrid infertile
offspring of a donkey and a horse. Theorists of white racial superiority therefore opposed cross-racial
sexual unions, fearing that such relations would
ultimately lead to the degeneracy of the superior white race. Many argued that the consequence of
miscegenation would be the descent of society into a ‘raceless’ chaos and disorder.
Legacies of British slave-ownership Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its
legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted
to metropolitan Britain. We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the
extent and the limits of slavery's role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into
the present. The stories of enslaved men and women, however, are no less important than those of slave-
owners, and we hope that the database produced in the first two phases of the project, while at present
primarily a resource for studying slave-owners, will also provide information of value to those researching
enslaved people.
Coleridge on Slave Trade
“We receive from the West-India Islands Sugar, Cotton, Rum, Cocoa, Coffee,
[…]. Not one of these articles are necessary; we cannot truly call [most of] them
even useful: and not one of them is at the present attainable by the poor and
Labouring part of Society. If this Trade had never existed, no one human being
would have been less comfortably cloathed, housed or nourished. Slave-captains
 and slave-holders are more to be pitied than the slaves, because more depraved. I
address you, regardless of all political distinctions; profess yourselves Christians!
You are commanded to do unto others as ye would that others should do unto
you.”
“Rude am I in my speech” The starting point for Caryl Phillips’ reflection on Othello isolation and self-
doubt is a personal anecdote. He writes meeting his father in a restaurant in Manchester. A matter so little
like the error of a waitress highlights the different attitudes of two generations of West-Indian immigrants
(or immigrants in general). While the author, representing the second generation, called back the waitress
to inform her of her mistake, the father seemed quite at unease. When he arrived with the first wave of
immigrants in the UK, he was literally “taught” into the ”ways of the English” (to queue at bus stops, to join
a trade union,…) and soon learned that the only two places where an immigrant could express himself and
gather were their homes and social public venues (pubs, cafés). Although being “an outsider both racially
and socially,” Othello appears to be an ”exotic celebrity”, unbothered by not having a pub or a home where
to ”retreat himself”. Also, he seems quite confident and unaware of the unwritten social rules for
immigrants, like “do not speak out loud for yourself”, or “do not go around with fair-skinned ladies”. Yet
the truth is, ”without any family or peer group, he’s uncapable of making sound decisions about something
so basic as who to trust.” Othello is, in Phillips’ opinion, “the most profoundly alone and isolated character
in literature.” “Shakespeare’s pioneer migrant” suddenly finds himself adrift, with no peer group to bond
with, “no Venetian home to return to, no wife to trust” – and eventually loses his mind.

OTHELLO: the SOURCES

[Othello intro] For the information on the Venetian republic, Shakespeare turned to Cardinal Contarini’s
The Commonwealth and Government of Venice (1599). The choice of a Moorish hero was determined by the
novella on which the play was based (Disdemona and the Moor). However, if the source made no effort to
explore the main character’s origins, Shakespeare by contrast highlights it with ethnographical material
garnered principally from Leo Africanus’ encyclopedic Geographical History of Africa.
● A GEOGRAPHICAL HISTORIE OF AFRICA (1600) was the authoritative work
on the geography of Africa at the time and was significant in shaping the idea of Africa for early
modern Europeans. The book was first written in 1550 by a Moorish traveller and linguistic scholar
known as John Leo Africanus, in Arabic named alḤasan ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Zayyātī. It was
translated into English in 1600 by John Pory. Pory’s letter ‘To the Reader’ tells the fascinating story
of Leo’s life – a tale of complex interaction between Europe and Africa, Islam and Christianity. Leo
was born in Granada where the Moors had ruled until 1492. This book was important in that it was
written by a Moorish man and well regarded by scholars. However Pory is aware that some readers
at this time might distrust the writings of a ‘More’ and a ‘Mahumetan’ (or Muslim), and he
reassures them of Leo’s sophistication: his ‘Parentage, Witte, Education, Learning, Emploiments,
Travels, and his conversion to Christianitie’.
● LEO AFRICANUS and Othello Pory’s account of Leo’s marvellous escape from ‘so manie
thousands of imminent dangers’ might remind us of Othello’s tale of ‘hair-breadth escapes i’ th’
immanent deadly breach’. Like Leo, Othello tells of being ‘sold to slavery’ and later exhibits a
moving self-consciousness about his conflicted identity as a Christianized Moor. Perhaps it was this
that prompted Shakespeare to ponder the destructive double allegiance in Othello’s suicide, where
he’s at once the ‘malignant’ infidel, the ‘circumcised’ dog who ‘beat a Venetian and traduced the
State’ and the heroic Christian avenger of that outrage.
● The ‘vertues’ and ‘vices’ of Africans In his description of African people, Leo takes pains to
give a balanced perspective, though it seems nonetheless stereotyped and prejudiced. Celebrating
their ‘vertues’, he says Africans are ‘Most honest people … destitute of fraud and guile’. Leo stresses
the ’venery’ of African peoples and their propensity for jealousy. In the unpleasant description of
their ‘vices’, he says they are ‘very proud and wonderfully addicted unto wrath’. They are also ‘so
credulous that they beleeve matters impossible which are told to them’. It is hard not see these
qualities reflected in Shakespeare’s Othello, at least as Iago describes him. Exploiting the
stereotypes that define the Moor in Venice, Iago talks of the ‘free and open nature’ that makes
 Othello think ‘men honest’ when they only ‘seem so’. He tells Roderigo he suspects ‘the lusty Moor’
of sleeping with Emilia, and plans to ‘put him into jealousy so strong’ that his anger will cloud his
judgement.
● JOHN PORY AND THE MOROCCAN AMBASSADOR Pory’s English translation (1600) was
printed in the same year as the Moroccan ambassador’s visit to London to negotiate a military
alliance between English and African forces, with the hope of conquering Spain. In his letter to Sir
Robert Cecil, Elizabeth I’s secretary, Pory exploits this opportunity to market the book as
particularly current, saying ‘At this time especially I thought [it] would proove the more acceptable’.
This imposing oil painting shows the Moroccan Ambassador who visited London in late 1600. Abd
el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun (seen here aged 42) was part of a delegation of
17 men sent by the King of Barbary, a huge expanse of North Africa which includes modern-day
Morocco. The group came to negotiate with Queen Elizabeth I about the possibility of a military
alliance, combining English and African forces to conquer Spain. As a conspicuous party of high-
profile Muslims (viewed at the time as ‘infidels’), they prompted some suspicion. At the same time,
however, they allowed people to see the spectacle of respected noble Moors, who were well-
treated by the English when it served their political ends. The Africans stayed in England for six
months, giving them the opportunity to attend the festivities that marked the anniversary of the
Queen’s coronation in November 1600. The group probably remained in England over Christmas,
which has led some critics to speculate that they may have witnessed a performance by
Shakespeare’s company of players – the Lord Chamberlain’s Men – as part of the season’s
celebrations. If so, Shakespeare would have had the chance to see the impressive North African
party. The Moroccan Ambassador might have influenced the playwright’s complex portrayal of
Othello the noble Moor – who encounters deep prejudice as an outsider in Venice, but is highly
valued for his military expertise when it serves Venetian interests.
Shakespeare’s knowledge of Africa was colored from one of the oldest of all geographies – Pliny’s Natural
History.
● First english edition of Pliny The Elder’s NATURAL HISTORY . Translated by
Philemon Holland and published in London in 1601, this compendium of ancient knowledge about
the natural world and man’s place in it exposed many English readers for the first time to Greek and
Roman ideas about everything from physics, astronomy, and zoology, to agriculture, physiology,
and the arts. Pliny was the first to describe the Blemmyae of Acephali, the ‘men whose head do
grow beneath their shoulders’, along with the ‘Anthropophagi’.
Shakespeare seems also to be acquainted with The travels of John Mandeville.
● THE TRAVELS of John Mandeville was one of the most popular travel books of the
Middle Ages, surviving in more than 300 manuscripts ranging across ten languages – a medieval
best seller. It presents itself as an eye-witness account of a journey to the Holy Land, India and
China, but it also describes an earthly paradise and the ‘Vale Perilous’ populated by devils. The
supposed author is an English knight, Sir John Mandeville of St. Albans – though he is entirely
fictitious. The identity of the true author is not known, but he was probably a mid-14th-century
French cleric. 'Sir John Mandeville' spends parts of his narrative describing the wondrous races and
creatures that inhabit the edges of the known world.
Othello’s reference to ‘cannibals’, however, suggests a reference to Sir Walter Raleigh’s Discoverie of
Guiana and to his recollection of ‘Canibals’. Also, Shakespeare’s handling of the murder scene seems to
have been influenced by Fenton’s Certain tragical discourses. Discourse 4 tells the story of an insanely
jealous captain who murders his loving and obedient wife so that no one can enjoy her after death. Don
Spado, although being Albanian rather than African, is said to be ‘bred I the deserts of Africa, common
nurse of cruel creatures’. However, for what concerns the plot only one significant source has been
discovered: Giovanni Battista ‘Cinthio’ Giraldi’s Gli Hecatommithi.
● DEGLI HECATOMMITHI This collection of short Italian tales explores the pros and cons of
different kinds of love, especially within marriage. The author Giovanni Battista Giraldi (1504–1573)
was a poet, dramatist and prose writer who was commonly known by his nickname Cinthio. The
book is arranged into 10 sections or decades, each one made up of 10 stories. Two tales –
 ‘Disdemona and the Moor’– seem to have inspired Shakespeare when writing Othello. However,
there is some debate over whether Shakespeare would have read the tales in Italian or in
translation. The Moorish captain falls prey of the envious machinations of his ‘alfieri’ (ensign). This
officer, by exploiting his plausible appearance, manages to convince the Moor into thinking that his
wife is conducting an adulterous affair with one of his subordinates. Like Iago, the Alfieri
manipulates the Moor’s racial unesase by suggesting that the woman has come to ‘dislike his
blackness’. The proof of the adultery is supplied partly by a purloined handkerchief, partly by a
carefully staged conversation between the Alfieri and the supposed adulterer. The Moor visits
Disdemona in their bedchamber, kisses and the kills her. The Moor, realizing too late the villainy of
the Alfieri, is distracted with grief, although he doesn’t commit suicide. The flat documentary
quality of Giraldi’s narrative seems to have contributed to the reductivism of Iago. It is exactly the
prosaic realism of Iago’s stories, his istinctive eye for the commonplace detail, that makes them so
persuasive. Anyway, if Iago were given his original reductive way, Othello would be no different
from Giraldi’s squalid tale – in fact, some changes involving the characters and the plot are
momentous. First thing, nearly all the first act is of Shakespeare’s invention; He lays an entirely new
groundwork for the Ensign’s scheming and turns Othello’s elopement into a public matter. Also,
with Shakespeare, Disdemona’s father become a powerful senator who seeks to arraign the Moor
for seducing his daughter. The setting is changed, too: translating the story to Cyprus allows the
author to focus on the Christian-Islamic conflict. In his re-invention of Giraldi’s thinly-described
Moor, not only as a Christianized black African, but as a princely warrior, Shakespeare may have
been influenced by Balthasar (one of the three Magi) and the soldier-martyr St. Maurice. In Giraldi,
Disdemona is a somewhat colorless figure, whose role is glossed by ‘the unfortunate that she was
given’ (“The Unfortunate”) and who bears humility and countenance in the face of the gravest
provocation, while Shakespeare endows her with a vocal independence of spirit. The most
significant transformation of the source material occurs in the handling of Cassio and Iago.
Disdemona’s supposed lover is a mere caporal with Giraldi and Othello’s lieutenant and Iago’s
superior with Shakespeare. In Giraldi, the Ensign’s plotting is driven entirely by his desire for the
Moor’s wife, but his unreciprocated love turns in hatred, with the Moor becoming the incidental
victim of his spite. In Shakespeare, while the Ancient Iago admits to frustrated desire for
Desdemona, he confesses a bewildering range of motives against Othello. These include: prejudice
against foreigners (including the Florentine Cassio); disgust at the triumphs of a black man; the
suspicion that both Othello and Cassio have cuckolded him and resentment at Cassio’s promotion
to Othello’s lieutenant, and so the usurpation of his own ‘space’. Cassio’s title draws attention to
the etymological insult concealed in ‘leiutenant’ – “one holding another’s place”. Dis-placement is
therefore the unifying theme of Iago’s resentments.
● THE MILITARY TREATISE Stratioticos places particular stress on the ideal lieutenant’s
‘credit’ and ‘reputation’, and […] emphasizes his role as conciliator; So does Iago and Cassio in the II
act (“Reputation, reputation, reputation! O, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part
of myself, and what remains is bestial. My reputation, Iago, my reputation!”)

OTHELLO: AN INTRODUCTION
The composition of William Shakespeare’s Othello has traditionally been dated around 1603/4 by scholars,
though it can also be argued that it was written slightly earlier in late 1601/early1602. The date of
composition is uncertain in part because the play exists in two forms: a Quarto (Q) and Folio (F) text.
Furthermore, the sources of Othello are varied and have generated debate about whether the Q text and
the later F text are derivative of different sources. It has been argued that Q and F can be explained as
“Shakespeare’s first and second thoughts”. However, this remains conjecture, as both texts ‘suffer from
widespread misreading’ and both texts are quite different, perhaps due to textual corruption. The portrait
of Shakespeare on the title page was engraved by Martin Droeshout and is one of only two portraits with
any claim to authenticity. The writer Ben Jonson's admiring introduction to the First Folio, seen in the title
page image, declared in verse that the engraver had achieved a good likeness. This particular copy of the
First Folio is part of the British Library’s Grenville collection and is one of the most widely seen First Folios
in the world. It is estimated around 750 First Folios were printed, of which 233 are currently known to
survive worldwide. The First Folio is the first collected edition of William Shakespeare's plays, collated
and published in 1623, seven years after his death. Folio editions were large and expensive books that were
seen as prestige items. The first record of Shakespeare's career as an actor and playwright in London is
dated 1592, by which time he was reasonably well established. It is believed his London career began
sometime between 1585 and 1592. He wrote around 37 plays, 36 of which are contained in the First Folio.
Most of these plays were performed in the Globe, an open-air playhouse in London built on the south bank
of the Thames in 1599. As none of Shakespeare's original manuscripts survive (except, possibly, Sir Thomas
More, which Shakespeare is believed to have revised a part of) we only know his work from printed
editions. Of the 36 plays in the First Folio, 17 were printed in Shakespeare's lifetime in various good and
bad quarto editions, one was printed after his death and 18 had not yet been printed at all. It is this fact
that makes the First Folio so important; without it, 18 of Shakespeare’s plays, including Twelfth Night,
Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Julius Caesar and The Tempest, might never have survived. The text was
collated by two of Shakespeare's fellow actors and friends, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who edited it
and supervised the printing. They divided the plays into comedies, tragedies and histories, an editorial
decision that has come to shape our idea of the Shakespearean canon. In order to produce as
authoritative a text as possible, Heminge and Condell compiled it from the good quartos and from
manuscripts (now lost) such as prompt books, authorial fair copy, and foul papers (working drafts). The
First Folio offered a corrective to what are now called bad quartos – spurious and corrupt pirate editions,
likely based on memorial reconstruction.

OTHELLO : the Plot

ACT 1. The plot of Othello revolves around a Moorish general who has achieved great military feats on
behalf of the state of Venice. The action hinges on jealousy: in the opening scene, we learn of the
flagbearer Iago’s rage that Othello has denied him promotion in favour of Michael Cassio. Iago goads the
Venetian senator Brabantio into racist horror by telling him that his daughter Desdemona has eloped with
Othello. When Brabantio accuses Othello of seducing her by sorcery, Othello and Desdemona eloquently
describe how they fell in love. Brabantio disowns her. ACT 2. Meanwhile, news arrives of a Turkish attack on
Cyprus, which Othello is sent to repel. Desdemona accompanies him with Iago’s wife Emilia, and Iago
persuades Roderigo, who is in love with Desdemona, to join them. Iago delivers a soliloquy revealing his
hatred of Othello, a rumour that Othello has slept with Emilia, and his plan to make Othello believe
Desdemona is betraying him with her friend Cassio.
ACT 3. After the Turkish fleet is wrecked in a storm, Iago engineers a drunken brawl between Roderigo and
Cassio, and Othello strips Cassio of his rank. Desdemona appeals on Cassio’s behalf and Iago takes the
opportunity to sow the seeds of doubt about the relationship in Othello’s mind.
Desdemona offers a handkerchief to bind Othello’s aching head and, when he drops it, Emilia recognises it
and gives it to Iago, who plants it at Cassio’s lodging and uses it to send Othello into a paroxysm of jealousy.
Iago convinces Roderigo he only has to kill Cassio to enjoy Desdemona. He also convinces Othello to kill
Desdemona. Othello strangles Desdemona. Emilia enters the room and Desdemona revives long enough to
tell her that Othello is not the killer. When Othello confesses, they realise Iago’s role. Iago kills his wife, and
Othello kills himself. Cassio becomes governor of Cyprus and is advised to torture Iago to death.

Shakespeare & the Romantics

Shakespeare meant Othello to be a ‘black moor’ from Africa, an African of the highest nobility of heritage.
From Kean on, he was made a light-skinned Moor because Western Europe had made Africa a slave center,
and the African was seen as a slave. English critics seeing a black Othello were likely to take a colonial point
of view and regard him offhand as low and ignoble. Othello’s personal racial dignity is involved in his love;
he is intensely proud of his color and culture.
De-sensationalising the Tragedy Both Johnson and Halliwell confessed to had felt relief when finishing
the analysis of the scene where Othello ‘sacrifices’ Desdemona. ‘The [although] keen pleasure’ of reading
the ‘inexhaustible poetry the Acts can offer’, cannot possibly countervail, but increase the unutterable agony
of the closing Scene.’ Predictably enough, an even more anxious censorship operated in the theatre itself,
where, however, its consequences were much more difficult to predict. In the most striking of many
effacements, it became the practice for nineteenth-century Othellos to screen the murder from the
audience by closing the curtains upon the bed. This move was ostensibly consistent with a general attempt
at de-sensationalizing the tragedy, an attempt whose most obvious manifestation was the restrained
"Oriental" Moor developed by Macready and others. The racial fear and revulsion lurking beneath the
ambiguous excitements of the theatrical and pictorial traditions is made crudely explicit in an early
nineteenth-century caricature, apparently of Ira Aldridge's Othello, published as Number 9 in the series
Tregear's Black Jokes. The caricaturist sublimates his anxiety at the scene's sexual threat through the
burlesque
device of transforming Desdemona into an obese black woman, her snoring mouth grotesquely agape. The
racialism paraded here for the amusement of early nineteenth-century Londoners is rarely so openly
exhibited, but it has tainted even the most respectable Othello criticism until well into the present century.
A sense of racial scandal is a consistent thread in commentary on the play. While they could scarcely
contrive to remove the scandalous property itself [the bed], late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
editors sought to restrict the curiosity that the final scene gratifies and to obscure its most threatening
meanings by progressively excising from the text every explicit reference to it.
Charles Lamb: BIOGRAPHY He spent thirty-three years working as a clerk in the East India House on
Leadenhall Street, writing poems, plays, and essays in his precious spare time. Renowned for his warm
sense of humour and legendary social gatherings, he lived at the very heart of the literary scene of his day.
His life, however, was often troubled by drink, depression, and tragedy. Charles Lamb’s father was a
cobbler and an author, so he may have passed on a literary disposition to his son. His family was said to
have a history of lunacy, whose effects strongly shadowed his son’s life. Charles met Samuel Taylor
Coleridge in their common school Christ’s House and have cultivated a strong connection ever since. As an
adult, Charles has once suffered a mental collapse, documented in his correspondence with Coleridge; He
never again lost his sanity, but the fear that he might do must have added a terrible anxiety to his life. His
sister was less fortunate; in a fit of rage Mary Lamb killed their mother and was removed to an asylum. His
brother took then the momentous decision to bring her back home on the condition of taking care of her.
They lived together until his death, and Mary represented a somehow influence on his brother. During the
1880s Charles tried his hand at journalistic writing and theatre. When his office work at the East India
Company ended, he – and soon Mary as well – began writing for children. One of their first efforts was
Tales from Shakespear, recasting the plays as prose narratives suitable for children. The tales were
published under Charles’s name in 1807, Charles having written half of the preface and adapted some of
the tragedies, while Mary had completed the substantial rest of the collection. The two unmarried siblings
wrote engagingly for children, emphasizing the virtues of ‘charity, tolerance and thoughtfulness’.
Charles Lamb: the Shakespearean A great deal of Charles Lamb’s Shakespeare criticism seems to have
existed in conversation; Many of his best remarks about Shakespeare may be lost to us. What we do have,
however, suggests how his work might have played a part in larger Romantic dialogues of creativity,
sympathy, reader response and performance. It is also intimately bound up with his relationship with his
sister, Mary, joint author of the Tales from Shakespear (1806): The Lambs’ engagement with Shakespeare
is essentially sociable, not only familial, but also
involving friends and other writers. Through Charles Lamb’s theatre reviews, plays, selections of extracts
and periodical essays, domestic and familial discussions about Shakespeare are opened to larger Romantic
conversations, with Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hazlitt and Keats. Lamb’s engagement with Shakespeare spans
his whole career. These 1790s engagements with Shakespeare through poetry and prose are early signs of
Lamb’s intense interest in the relationship between reading and theatre, and the vexed negotiations
between author, actor, audience and reader. This could manifest itself in adaptations which removed
Shakespeare from the stage entirely, such as the Tales from Shakespear. What Lamb is constantly trying to
create is a ‘familiar’ Shakespeare, in the sense both of a deeply known Shakespeare, constantly present
through allusion and quotation – and also of Shakespeare as domesticated and brought into the family
circle, as in the Tales from Shakespear and the Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. This domestication of
Shakespeare was hugely successful, reaching far into the nineteenth century. Both the Tales and the
Specimens were products of Lamb’s intimate relationships – familial and friendly – and both works in turn
help to
produce a Romantic and nineteenth-century sense of intimacy with Shakespeare. Tales from Shakespear
was composed in collaboration with his sister Mary, and published by a friend, William Godwin: it encodes
a familiar, household scene of shared creativity and then promotes a scene of family reading, as older
brothers are asked to
explain ‘to their sisters such parts as are hardest for them to understand’, and then to read aloud to them
from the plays themselves, ‘carefully selecting what is proper for a young sister’s ear’. This ability to make
us feel ‘familiar’ with a range of sensations is linked to Shakespeare’s capacity for sympathy. While the
concept of Shakespeare as a humane, sympathetic author was by no means a new idea, it takes on a
special significance for this group of writers, themselves struggling to articulate the relationship of art to
larger ideals of humanity and sympathy. Shakespeare was in no way an ‘egotist’; his mind reflected all
ages and all people, and his genius ‘shone equally on the evil and on
the good, on the wise and the foolish’. This lecture lies behind Keats’s definition of the ‘camelion Poet’, the
poetic character which has ‘no self, it makes no distinction of rank or morality, and ‘has as much delight in
conceiving an Iago as an Imogen’. The same idea is also present in Coleridge’s assertion that Shakespeare
‘darts himself forth, and passes into all the forms of human character and passion’. Lamb’s very own ideal
of creative writing and reading would be modelled on what he saw as the Shakespearean loss of identity –
the author’s ability to ‘go out of himself’, prompting a corresponding creative sympathy in the reader.
In The works, Charles Lamb argues that Shakespearean characters like Othello are “improper to be shewn to
our bodily eye.” When we read the play, we have great pleasure in discovering the Moor’s story, since we
are “forced to see the protagonist through Desdemona’s eyes.” In this way, we read of a young Venetian
lady of high extraction who “lays aside every consideration to marry a coal-black Moor” in a “triumph of
virtue and imagination over the senses.” That being said, when we see the story with our own eyes played
on a stage, “there is just so much reality presented to our senses, [that we get] a perception of
disagreement and skepticism. What we are conscious of in reading is almost exclusively the mind, while
what we see upon a stage is body and bodily action. Those characters have something in them which
appeals exclusively to the imagination. Contrary to the old saying <<Seeing is believing>>, sight actually
destroys faith, as “the exposure [of these fictional characters] upon a stake is like bringing a candle to
expose their own delusiveness.”
Ira Alridge: BIOGRAPHY In 1828, when slavery was still legal throughout British colonies, the Afro-
American actor Alridge became manager of the Coventry Theatre and the first black actor to play Othello.
Ira Alridge was an actor, was probably born on 24 July 1807 in New York city, the son of Daniel Aldridge, a
lay preacher. He was the first major African-American actor, although virtually all of his appearances were
in Britain or on the continent; best known for his tragic roles. Aldridge's origins have often been
romanticized. a
tale, often repeated, that he was born in Senegal, the son of a royal family of the Fulah tribe. Based on the
evidence, it seems most likely that he and his father were both free-born African-Americans. After the
closing of the African Theatre, when it became apparent that the opportunities for roles would be severely
limited in the United States, Aldridge sailed for England. he was generally described as tall and well built; it
was common for critics to note, with some surprise, that he was not as dark-skinned as actors in
‘blackface’, but rather was 'almost a light brown', with a 'mulatto tint'. His voice was described as 'rich and
melodious', but some reviewers considered it nasal or whiny. He was given the sobriquet ‘the African
Roscius’.The reviews were a fascinating mix, indicative of the feelings Aldridge inspired in critics. Some
were unable to get beyond a consideration of his race. In general, the more even-tempered reviewers
focused on his 'naturalness'. Notably, they mention the overwhelmingly favorable response from the
audience. After continuing his work in the provinces and in Ireland, Aldridge began his first continental tour
in 1852, and it was here that he received his warmest welcome from the theatrical community. After a
second continental tour had enhanced his reputation he was offered work at the Lyceum, and the response
of the London press this time was much more respectful. It was on one such continental tour, when he died
of an apparent lung infection in 1867.
Playing black Where the anxieties about the treatment of race in Othello once focused on the supposed
scandal of its miscegenation, they’re nowadays more likely to address the play’s complicity in racial
stereotyping. Rymer’s derisive attack at the monstrous nature of the miscegenated match show a clear
connection with the rapid acceleration in British involvement in the slave trade at the end of the 17 th
century. While the idea of a black hero remained unproblematic oddly enough throughout the eighteenth
century, it re-emerged strongly during the political turmoil that followed the French Revolution as
abolitionism strengthened. Coleridge’s notorious repudiation of a ‘veritable negro’ was entirely in accord
with the reactionary anti-Jacobinism of those years. In England, the decision by Edmund Kean and his
successors to play the Moor as a relatively pale North-African seems to have gradually defused the
controversy. This was not the case in the US, where the play was dangerously politically charged. Edwin
Forrest declared himself proud to be the ‘impersonator of oppressed races’, while, among the many
parodies, in Desdemonum and Dar’s de Money, the racial intermarriage was removed through the simple
expedient of the converting the entire cast to black-face minstrel characters. A more orthodox means of
addressing the social anxieties was to play down Othello’s blackness by orientalizing him. The term ‘Moor’
was extremely flexible in the 17th century, as it could also be deployed as a religious category denoting all
Muslims, or as a loose descriptor of color, embracing sometimes even the inhabitants of the New World.
That being said, the language of the play makes it quite plain that it was a black African, and although the
only eyewitness account from Shakespeare’s lifetime is unspecific on the topic, there is even reason to
think that this tradition simply carried on from the practice established by Burbage, the first to play the
part. When Kean took over the role in 1814, he ‘regarded it as a gross error to make Othello either a negro
or black, and altered the conventional black to the light brown which distinguishes the Moors by virtue of
their descent from the Caucasian race.’ Kean’s motive was the desire not to obscure his features in order to
obtain greater physical expressiveness; but the power of this performance must have had something to do
with the actor’s careful balancing of ‘civilized’ appearance and ‘savage’ affect. The enormous success of
Kean’s innovation prepared a way that culminated in the dignified ‘Oriental’ embodied by Tree, who
envisaged Othello as ‘a stately Arab of the best caste’. This transformation had the additional advantage of
distancing the tragic Othello from his blackface counterparts in the minstrel travesties. It was largely
effective to reduce the racial dimension to the point where it could safely be exploited for purely
sensational purposes. For most Victorians, however, Othello’s difference was understood as a matter of
cultural clash implicit in Iago’s contrast between ‘an erring Barbarian and a super-subtle Venetian’. The
Atheneum described Tommaso Salvini’s Moor (with a clear racial sub-text) as a “barbarian, whose instincts
are concealed beneath a veneer of civilization so thick that he is himself scarcely conscious that he can be
other than he appears…in the end, the barbarian triumphs.” Generally speaking, however, it was only on
those very rare occasions when a black actor, such as Ira Alridge was cast in the leading role that race
would be identified as a central issue of the play. Almost always this contrast seems to have been because
the casting itself was enough to collapse the distance between performer and role. Credited with a history
that uncannily mirrored Othello’s own, ‘the African Roscius’ faced a largely patronizing response in
England, but enjoyed a conspicuous success in continental Europe, where he was hailed as ‘the real
Othello’. Alridge extreme identification with Othello’s suffering arose directly from his own past; through
his performance, “the liberation of the Negro in the US becomes something internal, not only for the
enslaved people, but for us all.” So persuasive were the ‘savage elements’ in the passion of this ‘genuine
tiger’ that some viewers found them unbearable – a woman writing for a Slavophile newspaper denounced
what she saw as the performer’s inadmissible assault on the aesthetic distance. In contrast to those in
England who kept on espousing the orientalized Othello, this woman was in no doubt that Othello was
intended to be an African.
Racism on the London stage With caption: 'Yet I'll not shed her blood;/ Nor scar dat Whiter skin ob hers
dan snow, / and Smoove as monumental alabaster./ Yet she must die, else, she'll betray more Niggers.'
Tregear’s black jokes were series of prints issued by the London engraver and print-seller Gabriel Shire
Tregear. The series relies heavily on its humour being drawn from the incongruity of placing Africans in
overtly European social contexts. The ‘joke’ is continued with the extensive use of patois, deepening the
sense of social and racial disparity.
Ridley’s comment In the Introduction to his own version of Othello, Ridley wrote that “the question of
Othello’s [complexion] is important in the extent that the image that we create in our minds as we read is
fundamental to the understanding of the play.” Much argument has been devoted to proof that Othello
was not what Coleridge calls “a veritable negro”, but rather a “tawny Moor”. The term “negro”, because of
a silly subconscious generalization, suggests to many people the picture of a “nigger”, a member of what
Miss Preston called “the African race” – however, we all know that there’s no thing as an African race or
whatsoever.

OTHELLO: The Play in Performance

As an actor, playwright and entrepreneur, Shakespeare seems to have conceived his dramatic designs as
much in visual as in narrative terms. Every great tragedy stamps itself on the imagination with powerful
theatrical images in which sometimes the whole meaning of the play can be compacted; in the case of
Othello, it was the pathetic spectacle of Desdemona “slain by her husband…lying in her bed.” Even if many
critics have singled out the ‘Temptation scene’ between Iago and Othello, the uxoricide has long
dominated the illustrative tradition. For generations, the eroticism and latent violence served to highlight
the centrality of the tragic love affair between Desdemona and the Moor and the scandal of their racial
mésalliance. However, as already said, more often than not it was the Temptation scene that was chosen to
represent the tragedy. The recurrence of the image of Iago hovering over Othello’s shoulders, ready to
pour the poison of suspicion in his ear, is reflected the increasing dominance of Iago in performance, and
the consequent displacement of the relationship between Othello and Desdemona in favour of that
between Tempter and Victim. Two competing relationship sit at the centre of Othello, linked by the ugly
symmetries that are pointed up in the language of the Temptation scene. Othello recognizes that he’s
‘bound to Iago forever’ and their exchange ends in a mock-wedding through which Iago symbolically takes
the ‘place’ of Desdemona, even as he usurps that of Othello’s military second, Cassio. The play’s tragic
effect depends partly on the performers’ ability to achieve a proper balance between the two relationships;
yet this is not easy, partly because Desdemona can seem too flat and monotonous; also, by the end of the
19th century, Iago had begun to establish an increasing ascendancy. Stagings of the play have marked a
tendency to become either Othello-productions or Iago-productions; if the actor playing Othello falls short
of the heroic scale demanded, then Iago can all too easily become the animating spirit of the whole
performance. His astonishing ‘lordship of the will’ makes him ‘great’ to the point where he threatens to
usurp the protagonist’s centrality. From the last quarter of the 20 th century, the growing dominance of Iago
has also been marked with an increasingly urgent preoccupation with Shakespeare’s treatment of colour
and its implications for casting. This probably happens because productions that focus on Othello’s
tragically mistaken jealousy necessarily tend towards an unconscious endorsement on the traditional moral
symbolism of black and white, while productions that focus on Iago’s seduction of the Moor necessarily
problematize the significance of colour and invite amore probing response to the play’s treatment of ’race’.
“Othello, the Moor of Venice” There were published two editions of Othello: the first (1622) was a
quarto, the second (1623) a folio. The major difference between the two is marked by the Profanity Act,
issued in 1606. This law imposed a ten-pound fine for each actor that pronounced on stage whatever
expression related to God, the Virgin Mary, or phrases like sblood (Sangue di [Dio]) o ‘swounds (Christ’s
wounds). Othello, as a play, relies entirely on a double register; Othello’s noble rhetoric, is in contrast with
soldier Iago’s barrack language. There are also some variations, like Cassio’s, who aspires to become an
aristocrat and uses a dummy, unnatural high style. Rhetoric is the decisive factor in the construction and
evolution of the characters. As Iago poisons Othello’s mind with doubt, the protagonist’s language becomes
corrupted with those Iago’s typical blaspheme interjections. He will return to his original rhetorical
structures only when he’ll realize Desdemona’s innocence on her death bed. When the Profanity Act
ensued, Shakespeare managed to find a way out shifting the whole play to the ‘high’ register, created the
well-known <<Othello’s verbal music>>.
Shakespeare took great inspiration from the novella Disdemona & the Moor, although changing many
things. While the novella’s characters are mostly unnamed, Shakespeare christened his. Othello’s name
was probably derived from Otho the Great, the founder of the German Holy Roman Empire renowned for
his many virtues. Iago’s name might’ve been inspired by the Apostle James, Spanish patron who chased the
Moors away, hence his nickname Iago Matamoros. Another difference from the original source was the
‘black-white’ dichotomy, realized on an aesthetic, ethic and even theological level. In no way the play is
indifferent to Othello’s blackness. The work is permeated by a dualistic, chiastic logic, a black/white
imagery that provides an ideological and moral structure. We spectators are offered two versions of
Othello – an overtly racist one (bestial, carnal) by Iago and the noble dignified Moor by Desdemona. The
allegedly soothing words of the Duke (“Your son-in-law is far more fair than black”) furthermore suggest
that Othello’s contradictions cannot be reconciled. Language of blackness is used to articulate a condemn
on transforming the protagonist into the stereotypically violent Moor and Desdemona into asexually
tainted woman. Racial imagery and religious difference are exploited to characterize the couple’s love. Part
of Iago’s manipulating arsenal is to portray their relationship as monstrous (“an old black ram/ is tupping
your white ewe!”), but Desdemona’s declaration (“I saw Othello’s visage in my mind”) counterparts with a
more transcendent and spiritual love. The term “gross” takes on great importance in critical history for
marking the discomfort with sexuality and blackness. It reoccurs multiple times in the play, too: Roderigo
utters that Desdemona was “transported” to Othello’s “gross and lascivious” embrace. This language of
gross materiality/evil aligns in highlighting Othello’s interactions with patriarchal interests in controlling
women, thus making the couple a potentially monstrous and explosive combination. As Iago continually
reminds the audience of the carnality of blackness, he makes Othello see Desdemona’s “grossness” as a
dangerously desiring woman.
Whereas many other plays portray evil black characters (with the common association black=evil), Othello
is the first black hero, since the diabolical characteristics typical of many dark-skinned villains are almost
entirely shifted on the Ensign Iago. In the first scene, Iago delivers this line: “I am not what I am”, which is
the negative of what God says in the Bible (“I am that I am”), therefore implying an implicit God-opposed,
demoniac association. Hence the color paradox being expression of the human nature’s ambiguity and
polyvalence. Iago, the omniscient, controlling citizen, is the villain who operates under the cover of
whiteness. When the Ensign’s plot is exposed, it’ll be Othello to fling himself against the evil white schemer.
The rhetorical figure of paradox is fundamental inside the play’s linguistic structures and adopts ideological
nuances (the ‘noble savage’, racial convivence, etc). This color paradox is extended even to the other
characters: the more Othello believes Desdemona to be unfaithful, the more her candor appears
inexplicable to him.
The time structure Othello has the most linear structure among all Shakespearean tragedies. The first act
is a protasis where narration time and ‘real’ time coincide, and it is set in Venice. The other 4 acts are set in
Cyprus in some 36 hours. Narration time coincides only in the final act; in the central 3 acts there is the
‘tragic/psychological time’. It is a sort of mental extension of the ‘scientific time’ declared in the dramatic
context; the forced projection of the days, weeks and months spent in Cyprus, onto the scene. This device
represents the awareness that the universe inside the tragedy dictates autonomous space-temporal
dimensions. Besides the first sequence, Othello is structurally a continuum. We could identify a second
sequence (from the landing in Cyprus to the arrival of Lodovico) and a third sequence, where ‘real’ and
‘scenic’ time coincide.
The problem of blackness The dilemma about Othello the play and race is often based on an assumption
that Othello’s physical appearance shapes how the play helps us interpret the world. It must be clear that
Othello’s blackness is symbolically crucial to the play and thus the character was meant to be portrayed
with a black skin. For two centuries, white English actors painted their skin black, until Kean entered the
stage as the ‘tawny Moor’. The term ‘Moor’ is generally recognized as of complex indeterminacy , marking a
profound Other to Christian Europe (Barthelemy: “the word can mean non-black Muslim, black Christian or
black Muslim”). On the contrary, “Negro” refers specifically to African, dark-skinned peoples associated
with barbarism. Earlier critical discussions of Othello’s origins revolve around the attempt to solidify the
difference between the two. Othello is described as a well-traveled “stranger, /of here and everywhere”, “a
hybrid who might be associated with a whole set of other terms – Moor, Turk, Ottomite, Saracen etc) in
opposition to Christian faith” (Viktus). Certainly, Shakespeare exploited the indeterminacy of the term
‘moor’ to his own playwrighting necessities. The seventeenth-century critic Rymer believed that, since black
man could not rise to a position of importance in his own world, the audience could not be expected to
believe it on stage. This class and social judgement collides with an equally negative view of Iago who does
not act like a noble soldier. Thus character and class conflate to make Othello a walking oxymoron – a noble
Moor and an improbable husband for her white lady. Their marriage and mutual desire disrupts the
proper alignment of class, race and decorum, degrading them both and the entire play, too. Even though
the editor-dramatis Gildon shares Rymer’s negative view of Blacks, he offers an oblique critique of race-
based slavery in his suggestion that the poet has a “duty” to correct the “barbarity of confining nations to
slavery and contempt.” Both critics notably assume that Shakespeare imagined his character as a dark-
skinned African, even while finding the protagonist offensive.
Coleridge’s analysis Samuel Taylor Coleridge produced some of the most influential criticism of
Shakespeare and Othello. Coleridge’s annotated copy of The dramatic works of Shakespeare contains
extensive manuscript notes by the poet and critic. It includes his famous comments on Iago’s ‘motiveless
malignity’ along with many additional remarks on Othello and other plays. “Coleridge’s lectures never really
adhere to the conventions of an historical overview designed to familiarize [new readers with the work].
[Coleridge’s] method of lecturing and mode of organizing his material, combined with an extempore cast of
mind, ensures that his line of argument is often difficult to follow.” Firstly, Coleridge comments on
Shakespeare’s ‘admirable’ use of Roderigo as ‘the Dupe’ who becomes the first victim of Iago’s ‘art’.
“Admirable is the preparation, so peculiarly Shakespearean, in the introduction of Roderigo
as the dupe on whom Iago shall first exercise his art, and in so doing display his own
character. The first three lines happily state the foundation of their friendship – the purse –
as also the contrast between Roderigo’s intemperance of mind with Iago’s coolness – the
coolness of a preconceiving experimenter. The mere language of protest (“Abhor me”)
causes Roderigo’s continuation of complaint and elicits at length a true feeling of Iago’s
mind, the dread of contempt habitual to those who have the keenest pleasure in the
expression of contempt for the others. Observe Iago’s high self-opinion, and the moral, that
a wicked man will employ real feelings, as well as assume those most alien from his own, as
instruments for his own purpose.
More disturbingly, Coleridge then turns to the question of Othello’s ethnicity. He did for literary reading
what Edmund Kean did for dramatic renderings: he makes a bronze Othello the best vehicle for engaging
the audience’s sympathy and identification. Like many others in 16th–19th century England, Coleridge
makes a troubling distinction between different types of African – the ‘Moor’ and the ‘Negro’. He worries
that Roderigo is creating a ‘wilful confusion’ between the two, since his words imply that Othello (whom
Shakespeare calls ‘the Moor of Venice’) is ‘a Negro – who is not a Moor at all’. The term ‘Moor’ was often
used to describe a Muslim North African, while ‘Negro’ more frequently referred to a sub-Saharan black
African. For Coleridge, a ‘Moor’ could be a convincing tragic hero of noble and military rank, but he
perceived a ‘Negro’ to be of lower status and therefore wrong for this type of play. An oxymoronic ‘royal
Moor’ would not only unacceptably hint at Shakespeare’s ignorance, it would also detract from his status as
universal genius. Coleridge indicates that Othello’s blackness interferes with the concept of art, therefore
becoming a matter of aesthetic judgement. Furthermore, Coleridge comments that a black Othello would
be too “marked” for his presumably white audience. In an earlier lecture (on 9 November 1813) Coleridge
had already rejected the idea of mutual love between a ‘beautiful Venetian girl’ and a ‘veritable negro’.
Such views are perhaps surprising since Coleridge had expressed a strong objection to the slave trade,
which was abolished in England in 1807.
It is a common error to mistake the epithets applied by the dramatis personae to each other
as truly descriptive. It would be something monstrous to conceive this beautiful Venetian girl
falling in love with a veritable Negro. […] Shakespeare had portrayed [Othello] the very
opposite of a jealous man – noble, generous, unsuspicious and unsuspecting. Mr Coleridge
ridiculed the idea of making Othello a negro; He was a gallant Moor, of royal blood, whose
noble nature was wrought on by an accomplished and artful villain, indefatigable in
poisoning the mind of the brave Moor.
These infamous words have raised many a debate, and some critics have later put in question the
authenticity of these passages. It has anyway been credited as an “originating point of reference for most
of the critics who address the issue of Othello’s colour – which means, most critics of the entire work.” As
Pechter put it, “Working on Othello means inhabiting a contaminated site – you want to say the right thing,
but it comes out sounding terribly wrong. We need to show forbearance to our forebears; we are they, they
are we, and we are all together.”
Efforts at containment through investigation of Othello’s complexion are inevitably racializing activities.
Human differences were for Renaissance writers fluid and complex, marked by a host of differences
including language, clothing, etcetera. But as early modern Europe became more and more involved in the
slave trade, these theories of difference hardened, and it became impossible for critics to see Othello as
fully human. Dr Elits insists that Othello is a “moor with Caucasian characteristics”, and distinguishes the
“Negroes”, whose civilization is frozen in the past, from the more active “Moors”. Aligned with his efforts
on Othello’s “moorishness” is a declaration of the purity of the whole play. Since “what makes white
different is their closeness to the pure spirit that was made flesh in Jesus,” purity, conquest and
transcendence become key elements in Elits’s analysis. Located within this urge for transcendence is the
problem of sexuality. Desire, particularly interracial desire, threatens the purity at the very foundation of
whiteness, let alone the nobility of play and playwright. Whitewashing the hero and the script as a whole
allows “transcendental claims to speak for everyone, while being itself everywhere and nowhere” (Hall).
The tragedy Othello, with its violent murder of an innocent woman, forces one’s attention to powerful
extremes/intensity of emotion and sexuality in ways that audiences have found almost unbearable from its
inception. Shakespeare’s work discomfits many elements of its patriarchal and cloistered culture – sexual
desire, the status of the outsider, and so forth. Many critics that ensued the Romantic era tried to soften
and idealize many key elements as to make them less ‘shocking’.

Reception According to Pechter, “Othello has become the tragedy of choice for the present generation.”
Towards the close of the 20th century, Othello began to displace the angst-ridden image of their own
alienation and the mirror for humanity under the shadow of holocaust and nuclear devastation
(represented respectively by Hamlet and King Lear). It became a play about the most malign legacy of
empire – “the first play about colour that ever was written… Othello is about colour, and nothing but
colour.” Its Carlin’s reworking represents a foundational document in the history of ‘race’ that much recent
criticism has treated the play. The very earliest responses pay no attention to, form a modern perspective,
seems Othello’s most conspicuous feature – the interracial love affair at the core of the situation.

From its first performance, sometime between 1601 and 1604, the romantic cast of the story made Othello
of Shakespeare’s most popular and frequently performed plays; yet it’s one of the tragedies challenged by
critics for its plot (too strained), its characters (too improbable), its tale of marital jealousy and murder (too
domestic), especially in comparison with other great tragedies – Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth. Othello has
proved remarkable for its ability to overwhelm audience disbelief and to compel extraordinary
identification with the suffering of its central characters.

In the Jacobean period, Othello was equally well liked at the Globe, where it was probably first performed,
and at the more exclusive Blackfriars, which Shakespeare’s company used as a winter house.
 CARYL PHILLIPS
Caryl Phillips was born in 1958 in a rum shop owned by his mother's family in the British colony of St Kitts.
He was brought to Britain at the "portable age" of four months. His parents arrived in Leeds a month before
the riots in Notting Hill when "black people were being pulled off trains and buses.” Phillips has always
scorned the role of "exotic missionary; my job isn't to explain anybody to anybody.” Phillips says his "focus
on individual lives rather than systems of thought" breaks down barriers of race and gender. While its
starting point may be the black diaspora, his work illuminates relations between black and white, master
and servant, newcomer and "host", men and women. He has written many dramas and documentaries for
radio and television and he has taught at many universities.

Colour Me English
Author Caryl Phillips took as its starting point a moving recollection of growing up in Leeds during the
1970s, and then broadend into a reflective, entertaining and challenging collection of essays and other non-
fiction writing which ranges from the literary to the cultural and autobiographical. Elsewhere, Caryl Phillips
goes on to describe the experience of living and working in America, and travels in Sierra Leone, Ghana,
Belgium and France and beyond. He considers the lives and work of figures. This set of 40-odd essays
always retains at its core the notion of identity: how it is constructed, how it is thrust upon us, how we can
change it. It is about our sense of self, how we fit within society – and how both society and individuals
must adapt to each other in order for both to thrive.
“The title suggests some kind of concern with questions of identity. The types of identity I think
I’m trying to look at in this book are questions of identity to do with nationality – both as a
citizen of the United States and a British citizen still. Issues of belonging, and identity and
participation in society – these are becoming increasingly acute questions on both sides of the
Atlantic.
Phillips stated that many labels are often applied to writers – “I’m called a British writer; - a Post-
colonial writer; - a West-Indian writer; an African American writer; an American writer; a
Black writer; some might even say a woman writer.”
Phillips writes specifically here about racism, exclusion and the experiences of immigrants. He mulls over
topics ranging from personal reminiscences (including living through the terror attacks in New York and a
devastating critique of the poisonous atmosphere created by George W Bush's government post-9/11)
through many other topics that might seem disparate. Anyway, those notions of displacement and
connectedness that are so vital to society and tribal identity run throughout.
This book is as much about writing as it is about race. Phillips explores his own development as a writer and
the struggle of negotiating identities. Seen through this prism, travel is both part of a "long tradition" of
British writers and an attempt to work out where his identity should be placed. He feels he cannot do this in
England, a country that "seemed to revel in its ability to reduce identity to clichés". Phillips’ life as first-
wave immigrant in Uk was undeniably hard and too often, he writes as if little has changed.
It's not unusual to read about the conflicting emotions of black or Asian Britons, but Phillips is thoughtful on
the differences between first-generation immigrants and their children. At a restaurant, his father is
mortified when Phillips complains that the waitress has brought the wrong wine: early immigrants avoid
making themselves conspicuous, while their children are more confident in their surroundings.

The Shelter (1984)

‘Remember a shelter is a temporary place of refuge in a disaster. It cannot be like home.’
(A message from pan-Caribbean United Nations Disaster Relief Organization disaster
preparedness and prevention project. St. John’s, Antigua).
Philips stated that in The Shelter he explored the way of writing and connecting across centuries. The first
half of this play takes place on a desert island in the late eighteenth-century where an upper-class woman
and a black man in his mid-forties are shipwrecked. Both characters will remain unnamed. Alone and adrift
from any societal pressure, they have to work out their relationship to each other. The second half of the
play takes place in a bar in London's Ladbroke Grove in the 1950s. In that period, London was shaken by the
ethnic conflicts between Teddy Boys and Caribbean immigrates. In this act, a black man and a white woman
sit together having a drink and discussing the painful break-up of their relationship, displaying their
“obscene” relationship and feelings. Temporarily safe from all the social and cultural pressure that
surrounds them, both couples can know, listen and maybe understand each other. We, as spectators, can
stop and see all the colours and nuances of a relationship still very troubled. In the first act, after the initial,
temporary social incompatibility:
HIM: I see your father in the face of every white man I discern and I do not want your future husband to
reward me for he has not the money to repay the debt.
And the racial contempt openly displayed by the woman:
HER: I have no desire to talk with you. I feel sure you have not within you the capacity for reason.
HER: Is it your idleness of race prevents your building a boat?
HER: I see you. The awful thickness of your lips. Your tumid nostrils, your teeth like small tusks, your eyes
round and mis-shapened like blackened farthings, your head covered in a bestial fleece (…)

The two start an exchange of view and intimacy through which they can truly confront, far from every
conditioning and hindrance. The setting for incompatibility and contrast becomes shelter for reciprocal
identification and union. The dialectic between intimacy and social status is still present in the second act,
where a black man sits in a bar in Ladbroke with a light-skinned woman, discussing the painful end of their
relationship. Suddenly, the intimacy of their discussion is compromised when it is moved in a theatre. This
new meta-theatrical and public dimension universalizes the tension between the two ex-lovers, elevating
to the status of a paradigm. In the first part the linguistic dynamic is influenced by the inequality between
the characters, and is then simplified in the second act to a series of everyday, usual gestures.
 THE XV CENTURY
Erasmus’s presence in England in 1500 proofs the existence of an existing humanistic heritage that must’ve
captured his attention. Also, it was the prelude to a century of religious, scholastic and social reforms that
would’ve brought the country to the cultural richness the Tudor dynasty witnessed. Humanistic culture
could enter England thanks to Henry VII and his great passion and attention for the Italian culture.
Renaissance was long due in England for some cultural fields, like the visual arts, music and laic theatre –
instead, it was quite on time for literature and translations, thanks to a blooming publishing industry.
William Caxton introduced the first English typographic press in the second half of the XV century, and the
first book to be published was a Canterbury Tales’ edition.
During the XVI century, England saw five kingdoms, such as Elizabeth’s. Not every Tudor was devout to
culture as Henry VII – Henry VIII has been involved for the most in religious conflicts, though he kept on
patronizing humanistic studies and issued an enlightened scholastic reform. After the Act of Supremacy, the
laic grammar schools replaced the old ecclesiastic institutes (although, not much people could profit).
Furthermore, with Edward VI and the widespread “King Edward VI Schools”, a generation of Elizabethan
modest writers had the opportunity to get an education.
The period most associated with English Renaissance is the Elizabethan age. During her reign, the country
hosted some of its most important literary experiments during the most fertile experimentation and
growth in number of literary genres of its history – from epic poetry, to pastoral poetry, to chansonnier;
from essay writing to narrative prose.
The most important phenomenon of the period was the theatre, which began ‘officially’ in 1576, when the
first ‘public’ theatre was built, even though Elizabethan dramaturgy exploded around the end of the
Eighties, with the arrival of the first generation of professional dramatists – the “University Wits”(Kyd,
Greene, Marlowe).
Elizabethan period was the most fertile also for the translation field, especially from the Italian language,
which provided a source of inspiration for English literature and theatre.
The term Renaissance does not suit properly the English cultural contest of the time. The definition most
commonly preferred to define England during the XV (and XVI) century is the more neutral early modern
(as in early modern England).

BEFORE SHAKESPEARE
Morality theatre was born in the XIV century, with allegoric and didactic purposes. Morality plays were
new from the already-existing mystery plays in many ways: 1) the story was not inspired from the Bible, but
instead from medieval sermons and devotional literature; 2) performances could take place on any day of
the year, so actors could go on tour and perform in many, different places, with great benefits to their
careers and profit.
All the characters in morality plays are abstractions of a psychomachia, the most ancient medieval
allegory. This displayed the battle among the seven deadly sins (or Vices*) and the seven virtues for the
control of the human spirit. The main character portrays and represents the entire human race, going
through temptation, fall and soul redemption through penitence. The first morality to have survived in its
entirety is The Castle of Perseverance (1425), while we have only 500 verses of the most ancient play of the
genre, called The pride of life. The Castle is a very long work, with thirty-five characters. The plot tells about
the spiritual parable of the character Humanity, contended by evil and good, from its birth to Doomsday.
The manuscript of the work, called ‘Macro’, shows a map where we can see that The Castle used to
performed in the open air, in a circular space called ‘the place’ surrounded by a moat, with a castle at the
centre. Humanity’s bed was under the castle, and around the place there were five stages, reserved to God,
Meat, the World, the Devil and the Greed.
Theatre during the Tudors’ reign At the end of the XV century, the Tudor dynasty emerged
alongside with interludes, dramatic works inspired directly by morality plays, with which they shared their
didactic purpose. Interludes display the clash between new knowledge and ignorance, as in The Nature of
Four Elements. Some interludes are more political, since their main character is a prince who wants to
achieve good government. After the Reformation, interludes expressed ferocious religious contentions,
showing the battle between Catholicism and the Protestant faith. In the Sixties and Seventies interludes
become social satire and criticise the spreading materialism. As we know, interludes’ world is crowded by
abstractions, but from this point some social types and historical figures become to appear. These works
sharpen the hybrid character of moralities, which blended comic and serious elements. In fact, interludes
are dominated by Vice, unlimited source of comedy. The term ‘interlude’ designs an enormous variety of
texts, with many differences between them, generally short and for the most, displayed in banqueting halls
or at the court. They were performed in squares, churches, yards, motels and monastery halls, too, as in
the inns of court, institutes for lawyers and administrators. The term “interlude” was so (ab)used that
probably it generally used to design a tout court dramatic play – nowadays, it defines all the dramatic works
from 1845 (Henry VII sit on the throne) to 1576 (first public theatre opened in London).
The interlude reveals many, different sides also in its contents, however always sticking in deep contact
with the English political, historical and cultural context of the time (birth of the modern English State, big
religious conflicts). Interludes are always defined by a great topicalityattualità. While moralities aspire to be
universal and timeless, interludes reflects and ignites the historical developments of the big part of the XVI
century, while exposing the new world conception. During the Reformation years, it brought out a true
propaganda, and in its “political period” it gave advice and complaints to the monarch.
Groups performing interludes could be either itinerant or not. The non-itinerant ones were usually engaged
in other activities, too and could be students, or chapel personnel (who organised the religious rituals). The
itinerant troupes were the first ones made up by professionals, in fact, the true actor profession began
precisely with interludes. As the show structure reduced, dramas could be performed by smaller companies
(usually never more than 4/5 people that doubled, i.e. performed more than one character in the same
play). These actors were generally employed by a patron, who could be a nobleman, or a court man, if not
the king himself. Being tied to a patron shortly became a necessity, as it increased the company’s
distinction and made it easier to be hosted while going on tour and to receive a performing authorisation.
During Henry VII John Maywood’s works were performed, alongside with Skelton’s Magnyfycence and
Bale’s King Johan. The six dramas today credited to John Maywood, member of the More circle**, are
divided into two groups: farces (like Johan Johan and The Foure PP) and debates (A play of love). The
Foure PP is a comic discussion between a professional peregrine, an apothecary and a corrupted
indulgence-giver about which is the most reliable way to achieve eternal deliverance salvezza. Even though
the play is quite funny and amusing, it’s filled with references to ecclesiastic authorities and hierarchy that
reveal the fear of a possible religious schism.
Magnyfycence was written around 1516 by John Skelton. It tells of a homonymous prince who’s
manipulated by six evil counsellors (Fansy, Countenaunce, Colyuson, Abusyon and Foly) and falls in disgrace
after becoming a victim of lust and wrath. He’s saved in extremis by Good Hope, Redress, Cyrcumspeccyon
and Perseveraunce.
John Bale’s King Johan is allegedly the first historical drama of English literature. It was much probably a
work of propaganda in favour of Sir Thomas Cromwell, as it described a fervent Protestant dramatization of
Henry VIII. However, the play also aimed at persuading the king to go on with the Reformation.
During Elizabeth’s reign we find another important work of the time – Gorboduc, the first dramatic work
written in blank verses (or non-rimed iambic pentameter), which would have become the dramatic verse
par excellence.

*Vice is the star performer in interludes. It was born from the team of sins inside moralities, but during the
Tudor reign grows independent and dramatic. It started as a moral category, to become a theatrical
category and the principal scheme creator. The Vice directs the action and announces his diabolic
intentions to the audience. It is an allegoric aggressor and at the same time the humourist, a clever
manipulator of human emotions. Although being bound to fail, it is the driving force of the action, seductive
and comic. Paradoxically, even though representing the forces of evil, the Vice is the undisputed idol of the
audience.
**The More Circle, i.e. the circle of intellectuals and literary men that were related or close to the Lord
Chancellor Thomas More, included many personalities from the theatre - John Heywood, who married his
niece, but also John Rastell, More’s brother-in-law and also the first one to publish many works from the
More circle. While Rastell distanced himself from the circle after his conversion to Protestantism, his son
William sticked to it and published many of John Heywood’s works.
SHAKESPEARE’S CONTEMPORARIES Elizabethan theatre is defined from its plurality – not only of
plots and stories, but also of themes and styles. The Elizabethan play writer interacts with a boundless
repertoire of stylistic and thematic sources, and this interaction takes place in a new theatre*, open to a
less-selected (and therefore broader) audience, but restricted by many more composition boundaries.
Poetic model and sources The Elizabethan authors had to choose what to represent – either a new
type of writer or a modern poet. Many of them chose the second path, using the poetic tradition to
legitimate their work from the accusations of the “theatre’s enemies”, who considered play writers as
instigators to sin.
The play writer is also an author in the extent that a theatre work must invoke the spectator’s imagination,
as to see a mind-created scene, rather than the showed one. In fact, the sources’ repertoire of the time was
enormous, and this, added to the belief that source-quoting was fundamental, led to the idea that no more
original works could be created. These materials from the past were cited and applied to the present with
allusions: the past reminds of the present, what’s foreign reminds of domestic affairs, and the private
always mirrors the public – many problems from the Modern Era were concealed behind the individual
struggles portrayed. These allusions allow the writer to tell about religion, politics, society without much
consequences. These imitation, at least in the first phase, was applied not only to themes, but also to
formal and expressive models. Elizabethan writers take their inspiration from countries their nation is in
war with, like Spain and Italy. These sources were re-elaborated through two local traditions, i.e. didactic
and rhetoric. The former includes Bible references and religious texts, like sermons and cycles of prayers,
moralities and mysteries, while the rhetoric tradition was about a range of tropes and figures, Oratorio
genres and various styles. These two traditions were assimilated in two phases, the first was an imitative
one, the second was more about translation.
Imitation: Lodge, Greene, Kyd The great majority of Elizabethan writers came from either Oxford and
Cambridge universities, inns of court or some secondary-school education institute. Hence their knowledge
in rhetoric, classical and national languages. Despite the general trend to highlight the differences between
these authors and Marlowe and Shakespeare, their works ere contemporary to Marlowe’s apex and
Shakespeare’s rise. The creative explosion in Elizabethan theatre is to date between 1586-7 and 1594 (Kyd’s
death). In this period we find George PEELE, anticipator of many Elizabethan trends, such as the plots
inspired by European real crimes, the re-actualization of biblical history and the history play. Peele and
other authors, like Nashe, write also theatre works, but seem to be more involved in prose and poetry.
GREENE’s production looks more consistent, as his eclecticism portrays perfectly the Elizabethan author’s
relationship with models and sources. Analysing his works, there’s an evident juxtaposition between the
high, Italian model and the local inspiration. In every story, characters deploy their allegoric nature through
long debates as in many Italian pastoral and Arcadian scenes, with little animation or action. Therefore
Greene’s works are realized through lyricism and foreign models. The prevail of these models with the
didactic movement peaks with KYD’s Spanish Tragedy. Kyd exploits many thematic and stylistic sources the
great masterpiece of the new public theatre. The story, based on Hieronimo’s vendetta for the murder of
his son, contains all segments from Elizabethan appropriation, such as the apparently foreign context, the
apparently private psychological reflexion, the common themes of court intrigues and vexations on women,
the ghosts’ choir that justify the gore actions of the main character and the metatheatre, which would
become a constant in revenge plays.
Translation: Marlowe & Jonson With the main author of this phase, Christopher MARLOWE, we find
a co-existence of poetic model and many sources. With his academic education and familiarity with classical
tradition, he’s considered a member of the University Wits. His imitation of foreign sources affects for the
most his stories and plots, while his models are mainly classical. Marlowe believes in theatre’s poetic
function and adopts a high style, to the point of hyperbole. His characters have a great stage presence and
are the only ones who can argument their views and ambitions with a great richness of points and rhetoric.
In the Tamerlane, the despot commits all by himself slaughterers, homicides and wars of conquest, with a
glorifying and elated style in blank verse.
At the beginning, Elizabethan polyphony is based on the wide range of stylistic and thematic echoes, but it
eventually changes. Marlowe creates his polyphony around the single text passage, so that in the same
speech the classical, biblical and homiletic tradition merge with the comic and rhetoric element. This
change paves the way for Shakespeare and represents the very beginning of Elizabethans theatre. We can
find this Marlowian polyphony in the Jew of Malta and in Edward II, where the author breaks down
another taboo – the homosexual attraction between two men.
The other great ‘translator’ is Ben JONSON, whose works remind of the classic Italian comedy and divide
the characters in schematic groups, based on the emotions that would explain their behaviour.
With these two authors, the plethora of available sources is adapted to the English audience. With
Marlowe, in particular, through translation we have the creation of a high, poetic and hyperbolic language
with little action – with Jonson, instead, this translation leads to the sort-of mechanic creation of classic
English types and characters based on the classical and renaissance ones. Jonson’s approach would be the
most explored one throughout the first years of XVII century.

*The new public theatre The first English public theatre, The Theatre, was commissioned by James
Burbage in 1576. The most important public theatres were actually built on the Thames’s south side, in the
easy-to-reach liberties, where citizens could enjoy more or less edifying activities. These theatres were the
Rose, the Swan, the Globe – venue of Shakespeare’s theatrical group built by Richard Burbage – the Fortune
and the Red Bull. Usually the theatre had a circular structure with three galleries that fronted on a squared
stage, which faced a courtyard where people could stand to see the show at a low price. The stage had two
doors on its sides for the actors and a balcony. Performances happened in the daylight, without any
possibility to recreate darkness; scenography is made up by signs or symbolic images; feminine characters
are portrayed by boy actors. The author-actor must belong to a company patronized by a nobleman, or he’s
an idler. The texts he writes are read and edited by the company, as the original script is often considered a
mere inspiration for the show to be performed. The finished work must attract every kind of spectator, as
to gain the most consent as possible, and also to pass the censor’s inspection made by the Master of the
Revels.

SHAKESPEARE’S THEATRE There is certainly more than one Shakespeare – he in himself represents a
semantic and cultural galaxy. The Shakespeare brought on scene during the Elizabethan reign is hardly
similar to the one we know today, as everything changed – from scenic strategies and instruments, to the
works themselves and the way they’re absorbed. To read Shakespeare referring to the context in which
they were performed is to make an imaginative effort in the historical and “medial” sense. We must
analyse the action and discourse of the works in a definite physical and artistic environment – that of the
Elizabethan theatre. Shakespeare was a man of theatre in every way. He much probably started as an actor,
so his dramas are the result of his experience on the scene. He was also the co-owner of the Globe theatre,
so he was also an entrepreneur and had therefore a triple interest in the work to be successful. His work
allowed him to get richer to the point where he could afford one of the most expensive houses in Stratford
for his elderly age. This doesn’t mean that Shakespeare’s only aim was to fill his purse – in his works, he
combined perfectly reasons of scene, accessibility with intellectual and rhetorical richness. This was
possible also because the audiences were used to hear long speeches like sermons, and some of them were
also quite educated thanks to the many grammar schools. Shakespeare manages to please both the eye
and the ear while creating poetry on the scene, making it visible, say-able and ‘recitable’. Shakespeare’s
works were born also with the contribute of a trusted group of actors, in fact all of his characters were
designed for a specific actor and a certain physical space – that of the company’s theatre (The Theatre and
the Globe, afterwards). Shakespeare’s extraordinary and undeniable exploration of human subjectivity was
allowed by a theatrical vehicle that put the subject at the centre of the scene. The Elizabethan theatre was
the actor’s dominion, as his gestures, voice, movements were the force that drove the entire show. The
single character was built starting from the geographic, historic and social environment that he created,
from its status and his actions. In Shakespeare, every single line is a contribute to the construction of the
individual’s subjectivity and world. The actor was a character with definite signs and gestures that meant a
certain thing – without any due indication, the actor was up to create the place, time and social context.
This centrality of the actor in creating the fiction has been criticised by man neo-Classical critics like Philip
Sidney, who complains that the actor is forced to compensate the lack of scenic means by asking the public
an effort of imagination. The entire Elizabethan theatre was based on this pact between the actors and the
audience.
The open Shakespearean theatre What truly allows the actor-character to stand out are the three
characteristics of the Shakespearean theatre – Openness, Multidimensionality and Fluidity. Its openness
relies on the peculiar structure of the stage and on the relationship between the scene and the arena in
public theatres. Thrusts stages were generally open and clear, so the only fixed elements were the frons
scenae – the painted bottom of the scene with doors of entry and exit for the actors – and the two wooden
pillars, painted to look marble-made. The advantages offered by this structure were plenty, both to the
actors and to the play writer. The actor received the responsibility of being the centre of public’s attention,
so that the scene was both of scenic action (i.e. based on the actor’s body) and of speech (which gave great
freedom for poetic and dramatic writing). Secondly, it granted complete visual and uditive access to the
audience. Also, the scenic representation has the possibility to proceed rapidly – Romeo and Juliet’s
prologue talk of a two-hour length. This shortness was allowed by the movements of the scenes.
The multidimensionality was based on the structure and articulation of the stage. The scope of the stage
was functional to the dramaturgy, as it represented the greatness of the world and allowed all characters to
be on stage simultaneously (horizontal dimension of the stage). The two doors in the frons scenae hid the
tiring house (the actors’ lock room) and allowed them to enter and exit the scene. Elizabethan plays were
not split in acts and scenes, so the end of a scene and the beginning of another were signalled by the
movements of the actors, like they were “invisible” to each other. The two doors were also used to display
different realities in time and space and time, between characters and between plots. The vertical
dimension of the scene was created through three different areas of performing: under the stage, over the
stage and on the stage. In mystery and morality plays, the understage had a symbolic value, as the area
crowded by demons and hell creatures. Elizabethan actors called the area hell, and by analogy the star-
spangled ceiling was referred to as heavens, with the humanity in the middle. It’s not a coincidence that the
second theatre owned by Shakespeare’s company, the Globe, was a theatrum mundi, a recreation of the
world (or globe) of types and action of the human race. As they say, “All the world’s a stage” – the world
can be easily brought in a theatre because each one of us is an actor playing his or her part. This vertical
dimension is brilliantly exploited in Hamlet, where the main character’s dilemma revolves around his
father’s ghost and its provenience. Also, in the prologue of the tragedy, as Barnardo is about to tell about
the ghost’s appearance, he redresses everybody’s look to the star at the heavens – in that very moment the
phantom appears from hell, arousing doubts about its reliability. The contrast between the stage and the
upper stage (the balcony reserved to musicians and eminent spectators) takes on also social nuances. In
the domestic tragedy Othello, the “high/low” contrast is represented the vertical development of the
scene. While Iago and Roderigo talk and plot from the stage, the called-on Brabantio comes along on the
balcony. Iago forces him to go down, as he reveals that his daughter has married Othello. This decline
anticipates both his own fall and that of Othello’s (both will lose Desdemona).
Fluidity, variable distance & the representation of the I Fluidity is created in the relationship
between the scene and the audience, the actor and the spectator. The stage was 8-foot deep, so the
company could change the distances between action and reception. The actor could create great closeness
to the public on the proscenium, up to physical contact with the groundlings (people watching from right
under the stage). This influenced the Elizabethan and the Shakespearean theatre’s creation of a ‘private’
dramaturgy, where the subject questions himself in a wide, public area. The first drama where Shakespeare
experimented with this personal dimension through soliloquies is Richard III. Another aspect of
Elizabethan theatre’s fluidity was its multi-perspective scene, which allowed every recitative area of the
stage to be exploited. The actor needed to be able to capture the audience attention from every corner of
the stage and to speak to every single part of the crowd.
Women on stage Shakespeare has been the first English playwright to give great dramatic space to
women, and the first to let them walk on the proscenium. This is very important since Elizabethan theatre
preferred boy actors in spite of feminine performers. Shakespeare’s tragic heroines manage to capture the
audience imagination with their great scenic presence – however, the feminine subjectivity is represented
at its best in comedies. While in tragedies women are part of a totality, in comedies they appear show with
great autonomy to be the creators of their own fate. They almost always prove to be superior to their male
counterparts on every level – socially, morally and intellectually. They have a great inner strength, an
extraordinary rhetoric ability and a defiant enterprising spirit. Many Shakespearean feminine characters
(Viola, Cleopatra and others) notably choose to go en travesti as men.
Cross-dressing represents a sort of ‘sub-genre’ and it is fully exploited in romantic comedies, where it
allows the heroines to affirm themselves and, paradoxically, their femininity. Through the temporary
concealing of one’s own sexual genre, cross-dressing constitutes a sort of rite of passage from teen acerbity
to full adult maturity. It happens to create a complicity between the actress and the people in the audience,
the only aware of the trick – the actress asks for the spectator’s support to win her battles, while revealing
her passions and struggles. This expedient reaches a peak in As you like it, where Rosalinda creates a triple
disguise – the boy actor is disguised as Rosalinda, who’s disguised as a boy (Ganimede), who chooses to go
dressed as Rosalinda to comfort the beloved Orlando.

PROSE IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Sixteenth century prose aims at combining business with pleasure, to be both entertaining and edifying.
Didactic works A number of works from English Humanism is more set on their didactic purpose for
power-holding authorities. Thomas More’s Utopia is split into two books, the first one being a strong
criticism of the social, political and religious conventions of the time, the second the description of an
imaginary island where direct democracy is practised. The treaty of moral philosophy The Boke Named The
Governor by Thomas Elyot is aimed at instilling the essential morals in the youngsters destined to hold
important offices.
The sixteenth prose century is heavily influenced by both Humanism and the religious literary production
that accompanied the English translation of the Bible* after the Reformation. The most popular religious
work of the time has been The Acts and Monuments of the Church, a.k.a ‘The Book of Martyrs’ by John
Foxe. The author wanted to replace the old saint’s legends with more modern examples of devotion, telling
what English protestant people had to suffer during the Catholic persecutions. Another sub-genre within
the didactic group gathers the historic works, created to restrain the Protestant iconoclastic fury. Some
antiquarians travelled through England and Wales to save documents and information from destruction,
and their notes served as inspiration for works like Britannia, chorography (historical, geographic and
anthropic study) of Great Britain and Ireland, and The Union of Lancaster and York, which describes all the
historical events of England, from Henry IV to Henry VIII.
Entertaining works During the Elizabethan reign, many works were conceived to entertain the growing
English audience. With The Palace of Pleasure, Painter wanted to tell stories as to give “good examples, the
best to be followed and the worst to be avoided”. Courtly narrative saw a development in the Seventies,
with Gascoigne (The adventures of Master F.J.) and Lyly (Euphues**), who both wrote of a love triangle
with a changeable lady in the middle. Lyly also highlight “how the Englishmen desire to hear finer speech.
The narrative in the 80s was dominated by Robert GREENE. He went through an euphuistic phase, a novel
phase and the pamphlets, such as the ‘repentance pamphlets’ and the ‘cony-catching pamphlets’.

*Tudor Bible The project of an easily-accessible Bible grew in popularity with the Protestant Reformation.
Everyone wanted to convey the Biblical message as faithfully as possible, so it was fundamental to begin
with the Hebrew and Greek originals. William Tyndale translated the New Testament and some books from
the Old one, until he was convicted of heresy and put to death. His pioneering work was included in the
‘Great Bible’.
**Euphuism is a peculiar mannered style of English prose. It takes its name from a prose romance by John
Lyly. It consists of a preciously ornate and sophisticated style, employing a wide range of literary devices as
to expand the potential of English prose and to give it a formal rigour. Euphuism later grew into a true
social phenomenon, as gentlemen and ladies started to write and talk in euphuistic style.

POETRY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Tradition+innovation The combination of innovation and tradition that characterised the Sixteenth-
century poetry could be represented by The Shepheardes Calender. Their author, Edmund Spenser,
introduced himself as “the new poete”, yet with a somehow Classical touch, as the 12 compositions were
eclogues with plenty of explanatory footnotes written by “E.K.”. If in our days “Classical poetry” only refers
to Greek and Latin models, yet for an English writer of the 16 th century that same term referred to Italian
and French poets, as well. Many authors, like Spenser, really felt the need to rejuvenate the English
language – but the process required a long, hard work.
Translation as innovation In order to do so, many “Classical” works were taken as an inspiration and
translated, with an effort to convey into English new literary forms and schemes. Some examples are the
translation of some cantos from the Aeneid by Henry Howard, which represents the first epic poem in blank
verse, and the translation of the Psalms as well. The latter was intended to create a direct contact with the
Holy Scripture, so that a personal and subjective reaction could be felt, and implied a multitude of metric
and rhythmic tropes. Translation, more often than not, was conceived as an interpretation and re-
elaboration of the source text. In this sense, Sir Thomas Wyatt contributed greatly with his translation of
Petrarch’s Canzoniere. He wanted to fit the Poet Laureate‘s themes in an historical-social context that was
completely different from the Italian one, and in the process the letters and the sense were deeply
changed. The final result shared quite little with the original version, as the landscape descriptions and the
spiritual tension of the author were removed and replaced by the dynamism of the hunt and the frustration
and stings of a court fling.
Poetry & court The literary works of the Sixteenth century were influenced by two things in particular, i.e.
the court and the monarch, especially Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. Court life and its dynamics were quite
unstable, hence the perpetual state of uncertainty and unsteadiness of the courtiers and their recurrent
theme, the “Dame Fortune”. Reading Howard’s sonnets we can identify the persistence on Cupid’s figure,
the bow-armed angel who winds up embodying Fate, Fortune, Chance, with a latent dissatisfaction for the
lack of steady reference points. All of this created the ideal context for Petrarchism to spread and the
‘sonnet sequences’ like Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella became the typical English metric form of the time –
the apex would be represented by the conflicted I of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. At the core of Renaissance
English poetry we find the search for personal and universal unity and harmony - the struggle between
Night/Chaos and Light and the aspiration to the reconquer the cosmos. Although the court life, the inner
reality of the poet and the perception of reality (as new geographic discoveries are made) all grow
unstable, poetry seeks to establish an order in this havoc by enclosing this fragmentary mess in metric.
Rhetoric is the rational mean that gives an order to the thought and to the world.
Poetry & poetics Sidney thought poetry to be more important than philosophy or history, as it overcomes
the particular to reach the universal, hence the model-role of the poet, who’s capable of creating new
world and ideals to follow and pursue. Poetry must put in order, and the poet must raise awareness of the
order that he framed. Each one of the stories told by poets are and must be exempli, models to follow.
Poetry must teach and must lead to think and to operate. However, the ideal world described inevitably
clash with the state of physical world, therefore the world is represented as a theatre where men are actors
that play on a stage called ‘life’. The ‘I’ is and continues to be at crisis, and this leads to the separation from
the beloved one. The most important poetic work of the period is The Faerie Queene by Spenser, poem at
one time chivalric, epic-national and heroic-religious. Spenser conceived it as the great poem that England
hadn’t had yet, a celebration of the Tudor dynasty and of the Anglicanism. The work is made by six books,
although being incomplete – the last pieces are dedicated to Mutability, raging in the men’s world and
planning to conquer the world of gods.

TRANSLATION & LITERARY LANGUAGE

Thanks to their continuous direct contact with richer languages, Elizabethan translators contributed to the
development of language. A.C. Partridge wrote that Elizabethan authors ‘had remarkable powers of
intuition. Translation rather than rhetoric has developed their sensibility for the fitness of the words and
their feeling for the rhythm. The same could also be said for later centuries.’ The Sixteenth century has
been full with translation activities, not only from other countries but also from past ages. Some
translations that did have a significant impact on the English language are The Booke of the Courtyer by
Baldassar Castiglione and Ovid’ XV Bookes, Entytuled Metamorphosis.
“Translation is learning it self.” This frenetic translation activity, called the “intertraffique of the minde”
was fueled by the strong popularising demand of the translators and by the low prices of book publishing.
In fact, books were largely available to those ‘unlearned’, ‘unlatined’ or ‘non expert in the tongues’. This
popularising demand met the literacy request of a growing public. New reader wanted to approach
religious texts without any intermediation, therefore vernacular was a must. Sometimes, the didactic
character of the work was extensively expressed by the author. Wilson wrote in The Arte of Rhetorique that
he aimed at teaching his fellow countrymen about Athens and its inhabitants, so that Londoners could have
a model to imitate and mistakes to avoid. Wilson, like every Elizabethan, believed history to be a magistra
vitae (‘life teacher’) who could ‘give lessons to the present’. The democratising demand that pushed the
book translation both horizontally (from literates to illiterates) and vertically (from the past to the present)
went along with a conception of translation as an enriching opportunity both for knowledge (hence the
didactic purpose) and language. The example of Italy showed that it was possible for unlatined people,
regardless of their sex, to become known for their literary works in vulgar and to achieve ‘science’ through
the only mean of their native language. So, translation actually helped knowledge and was knowledge
itself; as Hoby said, “it is learning it self”. HOBY defended translation stating and exhorted the literate of
his time to do it in vulgar, so that “everye manne” could “store” its own language and the English wouldn’t
be considered anymore “barbarous in [their] tunge”.
The augmentation issue This idea was a symptom of the spread feeling of the inadequacy of English
compared to the other vulgar languages; in fact, some translators felt somehow ‘forced’ to create new
words. This “augmentation” problem birthed three schools of thought: 1) “The first, the Neologizers, was
in favour of loan words, especially from Latin.” These scholars (among which there was Thomas Elyot)
were therefore in favour of language borrowings, especially from Latin. 2) “The second, the Purists,
advocated the use of existing English words” for the sake of puritas and perspicuitas (clarity), known
virtutes elocutionis of Classical rhetoric.
3) The third one, “the Archaizers, argued that obsolete English words should be revived.” At the base of this
“inkhorn controversy” (from “inkhorn terms”, scholarly terms created to make the language more
‘eloquent’) there were both the popularising demand of a common language and the nationalistic spirit of
preserving the language from accepting foreign words. The augmentation process finally prevailed. The
translator, while using a “plain” language to appeal his public, conformed to the source language’s rhetoric
richness. By the end of the century, English wouldn’t have been considered “barbarous”, but instead “
eloquent”.

THE ROMANTIC THEATRE

Romantic theatre has sometimes been pledged guilty of causing the end of the great dramaturgic tradition
born in the Classical age. There was in fact a certain incompatibility between Romantic drama and the
necessities of performance, i.e. between poeisis and mimesis. This conflict was witnessed by the fiascos
that the biggest pieces of the time were and by the triumph of closet drama (or ‘theatre of the mind’),
works more apt to be read than performed. So, the Romantic theatre was accused of having caused both
the death of the literary dimension on stage and an excess of literariness that compromised the very nature
of the play.
In the last few years, however, many have started to see the Romantic theatre as a fundamental push to
the birth of the Modern theatre, with such things as the creation of new genres, the entry of women both
on and behind the stage, and the extended production of acting manuals. Furthermore, this period saw the
dawning of theatrical critique with some of its leading spokespeople (Coleridge, Scott, Lamb, Hazlitt). The
audiences had changed, as there had been the entry of lower-middle class, youngsters and women.
Romantic theatre can be defined a great medium, a place of mass and popular entertainment with great
‘opinion-making’ power. The many historical events between the Eighteenth and Nineteenth century –
Revolutions on America and France, the slave trade and the fall of Napoleon – led to a massive change in
the English social pact and the government tried many times to limit the theatre power, for instance with
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus.
Theatres From 1737 on, the low number of available patent theatres didn’t help the world of theatre in
England, yet they sharpened the authorised personnel’s wits. Up until 1847 only legitimate structures could
host spoken drama, while censorship lasted until 1968. Censorship decided which were the plays to
perform, so the censor, i.e. the Lord Chamberlain himself, checked every single page to excluded any script
guilty of “political or religious offence”. The positive outcomes obtained by theatres brought conformists to
condemn them as places of ill repute, especially since the entry of women. The very acting job was often
degraded, and managers did their best to emphasise its intellectual and artistic value. England’s authorities,
while degrading patent theatres, encouraged the illegitimate ones, which were capable of mixing the old
genres to create new shows. Patent theatres followed the example, hence the general atmosphere of
experimentation. Theatre became a social gathering for the ruling class, the audience grew fivefold, many
new unlicensed theatres opened in London and the patent structures were modernised with new mechanic
equipment, rich scenic designs and new playing techniques.
*Legitimate & Illegitimate Theatres After the Puritans had closed theatres, Charles II re-opened them
and put two playwrights in charge of the only acting companies that were allowed to perform: Killigrew for
the “King’s Men” and Davenant for the “Duke of York’s Men”. The only authorised structures were the
Drury Lane and the Royal Theatre in Covent Garden since the Licensing Act was issued in 1737 in order to
stem political satires and burlesque. These kinds of plays were condemned by Sir Robert Walpole and
blocked by censorship. The Licensing Act sanctioned a 50-pounds worth fine for anyone who performed
without Lord Chamberlain’s authorization. So, this law ratified Charles II’s decision to allow spoken drama
performances only in legitimate or patent theatres. This forced illegitimate or unlicensed theatres to draw
on non-spoken entertainment plays, with music, singing or dancing.
Illegitimate theatres could be split into minor houses and penny gaffs (a.k.a. penny theatres). Minor houses
were average-dimension theatres which displayed musical shows (melodrama, burlesque, pantomime,
interludes, ballad opera, hyppodrama and nautical drama).
Their public belonged for the most to the middle class, as high-ranking people preferred attending the
King’s Theatre and the opera. Shows in major and minor houses lasted about 5/6 hours, with three shows,
a long one followed by two shorter plays. For some years, with ‘half-price system’, it was possible to get
into the theatre when the show had started, paying only half a ticket.
The penny gaffs (or penny theatres) were very little theatres run by families or small groups of actors and
they sometimes opened for only a few days. Shows lasted an hour or little less, displaying a farce and a
tragedy to an audience of working class and petite bourgeoisie.
Techniques The evolution if playing techniques witnesses the rapid evolution of theatre. There were
many innovations: the stage moving progressively back, the side doors replaced with bottom stage
accesses, curtain brought down on every act, trap doors and ‘flying machines’ for objects and characters.
Set designs grew more and more realistic with rapid substitutions, noises, bursts, fires and steams, and the
backdrop painting improved, too. Two inventions contributed in revolutionising the scenes: kerosene lamp
and Argand lamp, which was less dangerous than candles and granted more a more intense and stable
lighting. David Garrick advocated for a natural play-acting, historical fidelity for costumes and settings while
also being one of the most important spokesmen of Bardolatry, the ‘Shakespeare fever’ that followed the
re-publication of many Shakespearean works between the second half of the eighteenth century and the
late nineteenth.
Actors, actresses & managers These changes contributed to the birth of a proper ‘star system’ with
great ‘actor managers’. In this renewed scenic place, a new method acting was introduced, tending from
one side to naturalness, and from the other to the passionate histrionics that filled the entire scene. All the
greatest actors and actresses tested their talent with Shakespearean theatre.
Playing handbooks and the passion aesthetic From the middle eighteenth century on, the literary
production of play-acting handbooks thrived. John Hill, in The Actor, stated that the ’understanding’,
‘sensibility’ and ‘fire’ of the actor were to be aimed at conquering the public’s attention and the delusion.
Hill wants the actor to successfully convey each line without losing his ‘delicacy’ and to capture the
spectator’s mind through his own strength and ‘fire’. Both Macklin and Siddons believed that the actor
should observe and analyse the ways people react and communicate, to recreate them in the most faithful
way on scene. Joanna Baillie created the idea of “sympathetic curiosity” – since we live and exist any time
someone else perceives our presence and identifies with our fears and thoughts, through this “sympathetic
curiosity” we are bound to get interested in what happens to the people around us, especially to those who
go through great difficulties. Since each one of us tends to observe through sympathy, in the same time we
live a cathartic experience, as we free ourselves of the same fears lived by the characters on stage.
The tragic & the gothic Shakespeare’s works represented a model on the linguistic side, too. Their
lyrically and powerfully performative language inscribed in its very syntax both the character’s emphasis
and the actor’s body. In the wake of his style, Romantic playwrights adopted blank verse to create a
language both referential and deictic (referring both to what’s inside and outside the context of the play).
At the end of the eighteenth century, with a reformation of the English theatre, Classical genres are
contaminated in order to represent the private and domestic world of feeling and interiority. Plots resort to
fear and surprise effects as to instil compassion, caution and thoughtfulness. Romantics redefined tragedy
to explore the human soul and deconstructed totalizing emotions, with a union of body language and
‘interior’ language. For instance, Joanna Baillie manipulated the Gothic genre so that the fear and
alienation felt by the characters were projected on outside and perceived like living creatures. Theatre
explored the doubts and uncertainty ensued by the end of the aristocratic supremacy and the rise of
bourgeoisie – characters are both mirrors of Romantic frailty and historical entities going through great
changes with ‘no sound identity’.
Historical drama In the Romantic era, on the stage a heated debate took place. Society grew more
interested in its origins, and the Romantic theatre more and more often projected its present on history, in
a search for the ‘spirit of age’. While historians opted for an increasingly scientific approach, literature and
the theatre offered a much more ‘private’ and ‘popular’ version of the events, with half-realistic-half-
fictional characters. Romantic historic drama also wanted to give visibility to minor characters and common
people – poor men, women, social outcasts. As these figures became the new heroes, stories focused more
about the domestic and individual dimension and interpersonal relations. This context promoted the entry
of female playwrights, who greatly contributed to the production of that time and to the consciousness of
their own class and sexual genre. The English national theatre revives during the Romantic age and reflects
upon the great debates on the identity of the newborn country and its necessity to get prepared against
the Republican and revolutionary threats. The English Romantic theatre faced great questions about
identity and politics through the concept of ‘freedom’ – for the oppressed, for the Italian/Greek/Spanish
revolutionaries, from tyranny. The plays could be set in Scotland, England, Ancient Rome, the Vespers’
Sicily, Moors’ Spain et cetera. For what concerns legitimate theatre, these exotic sets and ‘displacements’
were imposed by censorship – British contemporary history could only enter the unlicensed theatres, as
long as it displayed its glory moments.
Comedy The Licensing Act changed indelibly the following comedy production. Traditional comedy split
into satire and farce on one side and sentimental, ‘pathetic’ comedy on the other. The first one went ahead
with the ’laughing comedy’, and along the way transformed into afterpieces that filled the minor houses
with pantomimes, comic operas, etc. in fact, the end of the eighteenth century saw a revival of the comedy
of manners. Sentimental comedy gained in melancholic and moralistic elements. Sheridan built a satiric
comedy filled with misunderstandings and farce points, named comedy of manners. Romantic comedy was
dominated by two women – Hannah Cowley, who often drew upon cross-dressing, and Elizabeth Inchbald.
Inchbald was a member of the ‘Jacobin’ circle with Mary Wollstonecraft and other writers who dealt with
important issues, like the conflict between sensibility and libertinage, liberty and despotism, the differences
between the classes, the genres, feminine education. With Inchbald, comedy hybridized, paving the way for
the bourgeois drama of the nineteenth century. She found the balance between drama, farce and romantic
elements, diminishing the typical sentimentalism of ‘pathetic comedy’.
The spectacular illegitimate theatre Romantic illegitimate theatre crowded the stages with spectacular
performances. Illegitimate genres didn’t last more than two acts and included melodrama, burlesque, farce,
pantomime, interludes, ballad opera, hyppodrama, nautical drama and usually followed the main show.
The most popular genre was melodrama – not very much loved by the critique for its search of
‘sensationalism’ with little realism in the plots. The genre celebrated noble sentiments, the values of
patriotism and justice and dealt with many social problems of the time. It was born with Rousseau’s
Pygmalion, but found its leading figure in the German Kotzebue, creator of ‘pathetic comedy’ or ‘domestic
comedy’. While the critics protested an excessive experimentation, the audience validated it. With a
growing hybridization of the spoken drama, the theatre promoted a great modernization both technically
and in the play-acting for the English drama.

POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
Post-modern & post-colonial After the end of WWII, the (winning) UK faced a period of great changes,
with the factory nationalization and the birth of welfare. From the independency of India in 1947 starts the
colonial disposal. In the following years there has been the Partition of half of the colonies, with the
dismemberment of North and South Rhodesia from Central African Republic and the independence of the
Caribbean countries, while the white dominions (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) maintained their
autonomous status for a number of years. The empire became a commercial Commonwealth, where the US
started to grow in importance. These winds of change started a radical transformation in the Anglophone
literatures that moved in two different directions. The first one concerned the white Dominions, pushing it
beyond Modernism towards Post-modernism. These new theories established new grounds and new rules,
so that the Canadian literature was renewed. However, Post-modern doesn’t necessarily collide with Post-
Colonial in Africa and the Caribbean and Indian countries, who were forced to write in English in order to
achieve international fame in a world they tried to describe.