It's all History
This sweeping religious upheaval from the 16th century challenged ecclesiastical authority and reshaped the cultural landscape in which Elizabethan theatre thrived.
What is the Reformation?
This playwright is the author of plays such as King John, Henry VIII, and Pericles, Prince of Tyre.
Who is William Shakespeare?
This stage configuration, used in open-air theatres like the Globe, extended into the audience space and encouraged direct interaction between actors and spectators.
What is the thrust stage?
This dramatic genre, exemplified by plays like Titus Andronicus and The Spanish Tragedy, revolves around a protagonist’s quest for vengeance, often leading to a bloody and tragic conclusion.
What is Revenge Tragedy?
These written instructions in a script guide the actors’ movements, tone, and interaction with the setting, helping to shape the visual and emotional atmosphere of the play,
What are stage directions?
This monarch, known as the ‘Virgin Queen,’ left no direct heir, a fact that fueled political anxiety and influenced succession-themed dramas like King Lear.
Who is Elizabeth I?
This early modern playwright inspired Goethe’s seminal tragedy Faust.
Who is Christopher Marlowe?
Because women were legally barred from the public stage, female roles in Early Modern drama were performed by these pre-adolescent performers, trained in voice, movement, and costume handling.
Waht are boy actors?
This set of historical narratives was used to glorify, symbolically legitimize and reinforce the political authority of rulers like Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in plays and public life.
What is the Tudor Myth?
This dramatic device, where a character speaks alone on stage, offers insight into their private thoughts, often exposing internal struggles, such as in Macbeth’s reflection on his guilt.
What is a soliloquy?
In Early Modern England, questioning the monarch’s legitimacy or staging plays that depicted the overthrow of a ruler could be considered this capital offense.
What is treason?
Drawing on antiquity, this early modern playwright popularized the comedy of humors.
Who is Ben Jonson?
Unlike court performances, these venues such as the Fortune and the Swan were commercial enterprises that charged admission and were open to all classes.
What are pubic theatres?
This type of medieval drama personified moral qualities like Vice and Virtue to teach audiences how to live a good Christian life.
What is the Morality Play?
This literary device, where the audience is aware of crucial information that the characters are not, creates suspense and often tragedy, as seen in Oedipus Rex when Oedipus unknowingly fulfills the prophecy.
What is dramatic irony?
This 1453 event marked the end of the Byzantine Empire, triggered a wave of classical scholars fleeing to Western Europe, and helped fuel the humanist revival that shaped Early Modern drama.
What is the Fall of Constantinople?
This author of Arcadia, also wrote a series of plays and masques, which are hardly known today.
Who is Sir Philip Sidney?
Responsible for licensing plays and censoring politically or morally sensitive material, this official served as the Crown’s theatrical gatekeeper throughout the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.
Who is the Master of the Revels?
A lavish courtly entertainment combining music, dance, and elaborate spectacle, this form of drama was especially popular during the reign of James I.
What is the Masque?
In drama, this term refers to the portion of the play where key background information, including character motivations and setting, is introduced to the audience, not necessarily at the beginning.
What is exposition?
This hierarchical cosmological model, which placed every creature and object in a fixed order from God to inanimate matter, underpinned Early Modern conceptions of order.
What is the Great Chain of Being?
The fact that plays like The Two Noble Kinsmen and Timon of Athens show stylistic features of more than one playwright is evidence of this common Early Modern theatrical practice.
What is collaborative authorship?
A popular form of blood sport and entertainment in Early Modern London, this brutal spectacle often took place in venues adjacent to theatres like the Globe, highlighting the diverse and sometimes violent tastes of the time.
What is animal baiting?
This genre, which blends elements of tragedy and comedy, often involves magical elements, improbable plots, and a focus on reconciliation and love, as seen in Shakespeare’s The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale.
What is Romance?
This device involves a character describing events that are happening off-stage, providing key information to the audience and other characters.
What is teichoscopy?