English Theatre Essay, Research Paper

How different cultures affected English Theater Theater unites the past and

present in a unique cultural experience. Theatre continues to thrive and has

become an important subject for study in schools and universities. Reaching back

in time and across the world, this ranging new history draws on the latest

scholarly research to describe and celebrate theatre?s greatest achievements

over 4,500 years, from festival performances in Egypt to international

multicultural theatre in the late twentieth century. English theatre has been

changed by different cultures throughout the world. The Father of drama was

Thesis of Athens, 535 BC, who created the first actor. The actor performed in

intervals between the dancing of the chorus and conversing at times with the

leader of the chorus. The tragedy was further developed when new myths became

part of the performance, changing the nature of the chorus to a group

appropriate to the individual story. Aeschylus added a second actor and a third

actor was added by Sophocles, and the number of the chorus was fixed at fifteen.

The chorus? part was gradually reduced, and the dialogue of the actors became

increasingly important. The word ?chorus? meant ?dance or ?dancing

ground?, which was how dance evolved into the drama. Members of the chorus

were characters in the play that commented on the action. They drew the audience

into the play and reflected the audience?s reactions. The Greek philosopher

Aristotle, who observed the basic human tendancy to imitate, recognized the

origins of Greek theatre in the dithyramb, a hymn sung and danced to honor the

god Dionysus. This had evolved from earlier ecstatic dances by female celebrants

of shamanism. A chorus of 50 men and related episodes from the god?s life

performed the dithyramb at annual festivals of Dionysus. The Greeks of Athens

invented Western drama. Athenian playwrights used myths and heroic legends drawn

from Homer and other sources, but shaped them to reflect contemporary issues.

Theatre was a civic responsibility: writers and actors helped the people

confront current political and religious problems. Greek drama was at its height

between 500 ? 400 BC, when three Athenian tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles,

and Euripides, and the comic playwright Aristophanes were creating there works.

Although based on Greek forms, Roman theatre differed in being largely for

entertainment. The farces of Plautus were based on stock characters, such as the

braggart soldier and the scheming slave. Terence included less buffoonery in his

comedies and had a more realistic treatment of character and dialogue. Seneca

wrote violent, blood-and-thunder tragedies that were intended to be recited

rather than performed. Based on the critical theories of the Greek thinker

Aristotle and the Roman poet Horace, the neoclassical ideal was influenced

throughout Europe in the mid- 1600s. Dramatic unites of time, place, and action;

division of plays into 5 acts; purity of genre; and the concepts of decorum and

verisimilitude were taken as rules of playwriting, particularly by French

dramatists. Renaissance ideas came late to England, where medieval influences

were felt well into the 1500s – when Elizabeth I banned all religious plays. The

resulting secularization of theatre, combined with classical ideas from Italian

humanism, led university students and graduates to write for London theatre

companies. Notable among these ?university wits? was Christopher Marlowe,

whose Dr. Faustus is a traditional work, showing elements of the medieval

morality play, but also anticipating Shakespeare in its use of blank verse. The

greatest playwright in the English language, Shakespeare was also an

actor-manager of a professional company. He wrote to be performed; the script

was only important until the actors knew there lines. Shakespeare never bothered

to publish his plays- the first Folio of 1623, which includes texts of most of

his 38 plays, was collected only after his death. His work, covering a broad

range of comedy, tragedy, history, and pastoral, includes such immoral

characters as Hamlet and Falstaff, Rosalind and Lady Macbeth.