Touring troupes of actors performing stock comic characters.
What is Commedia dell'Arte?
100
"Ralph Roister Doister" and "Gammer Gurton's Needle"
What are two early English comedies?
100
A small market town in Warwickshire, England.
What is Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare?
200
Short biblical passages set to music.
What are tropes?
200
The dominant intellectual movement in Renaissance Europe that created tension with established religions, principally Roman Catholicism.
What is humanism?
200
The region of Europe that developed the most sophisticated technology and stage devices for performance in the 15th-17th centuries.
What is Italy?
200
The actor, manager, theatrical entrepeneur who established the architectural model for the public London theatres.
Who is James Burbage?
200
The young dramatist William Shakespeare according to Robert Greene.
Who is "An upstart crow"?
300
Plays commemorating the lives of saints.
What are miracle plays?
300
Used natural lighting and outdoor plazas, with the stage action on raised platforms.
What are the first professional theatres in England, Spain and France?
300
The Swan, The Rose, The Fortune, etc.
What are known London theatres in late 16th and early 17th century England?
300
Young men playing women was the result of this prohibition.
What is the result of the English prohibition against female actors on the stage?
400
The holy feast when the English cycle plays were performed during the 14th to 16th centuries.
What is Corpus Christi?
400
A complex social, economic and political system imposed on the peoples of the Americas and Africa by European religious and political elites.
What is European colonialism from the 15th to the 19th centuries?
400
Ingenous bits of comic business, often improvised, used to entertain public audiences.
What are lazzi?
400
She imposed a law in 1572 decreeing that itinerant actors and entertainers be arrested and punished if they could not demonstrate that they "belonged" to the household of a nobleman.
Who is Elizabeth I?
400
The first of Shakespeare's so-called Problem plays or dark comedies.
What is "Twelfth Night"?
500
Allegorical plays with characters that represent virtues, vices and a "universal" identity such as Everyman.
What are Morality plays?
500
The famous phrase attributed to Louis XIV, the "Sun King", ruler of France for 72 years (1638-1715) that typifies the principle of absolutism (absolute power by the rule of one.)
What is "L'etat, c'est moi" ("I am the State")?
500
Often impoverished, derided and considered suspect.
Who are the professional actors and playwrights in Europe who formed themselves into troupes/ companies?
500
The professional theatre company that produced the plays of Christopher Marlowe.
What is the "Admiral's Men"?
500
"Twelfth Night" is based on these earlier published stories.
What are "Of Apolonius and Silla" and "Gl'Ingannati"?