The swan theater

London 1593: The Place of the Stage

Do they [i.e. plays] not maintain bawdry, insinuate foolery, and renew the remembrance of heathen idolatry? Do not they induce whoredom and uncleanness? Nay, are they not rather plain devourers of maidenly virginity and chastity? For proof whereof but mark the flocking and running to Theatres and Curtains, daily and hourly, night and day, time and tide, to see plays and interludes, where such wanton gestures, such bawdy speeches, such laughing and fleering, such kissing and bussing, such clipping and culling, such winking and glancing of wanton eyes, and the like is used, as is wonderful to behold. Then these goodly pageants being done, every mate sorts to his mate, every one brings another homeward of thei r way very friendly, and in their secret conclaves (covertly) they play the sodomites, or worse. Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses , (1583)

Theater as “play”

Dating ShakespeareA. Born 1564; Dies 1616B. Writes during the Elizabethan (1558-1603) and

Jacobean (1603 - 1625) periodsC.Writes during the RenaissanceD.Writes during the early modern periodE. Does not write Old English (Beowulf, e.g.: Hwæt!

We Gardena in geardagum ) or Middle English (Chaucer, e.g.: Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote) but Early Modern English

Who are you?

Modern Pre-modern

Indvidual Subject (thrown under)

Citizen

18th c. New England Primer

The Renaissance: God creates Adam

From the Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted by Michelangelo (1512)An image of the Renaissance: God transfers the divine spark of creation to Adam, and his descendent the artist, who mirrors God's creation by creating the painting of it.

"Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection [to the world as it is] lifted up with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew, such as never were in nature. . . . Neither let it be deemed too saucy a comparison to balance the highest point of man's wit with the efficacy of nature; but rather give right honor to the heavenly Maker of that maker, who having made man to His own likeness, set him beyond and over all the works of that second nature [i.e. the world]: which in nothing he showth so much as in poetry, when with the force of a divine breath he bringeth forth things surpassing her [i.e. nature's] doings." Sir Philip Sidney, A Defense of Poetry (pub. 1595)

The Renaissance

Rules/Roles: Absolutism and Order

The Wife's Duties

To her silence and patience she must add the acceptable obedience, which makes a woman rule while she is ruled. This is the wife's tribute to her husband. For she is not calledhis head, but he is called her head. --Henry Smith, A Preparative to Marriage (1591)

Disorder: Social Mobility

The motto is "non sans droict" ("not without right"); mocked in a Ben Jonson play as "not without mustard"; one of the examples from a complaint about the herald involved creating false genealogies.

Disorder: Gender

The cucking stool

Him and her

Arthur overlooks Lancelot's adultery with Queen Guenever “for Sir Launcelot had done so much for him and the queen so many times, that wit ye well [know you well] the king loved him passingly well."

--Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur (1485)

Marriage or Friendship?

Thus I have chalked the way, to prepare you unto Marriage …. Remember that this day ye are made one, and therefore must have but one will. And now the Lord Jesus in whom ye are contracted, knit your harts together, that ye may love one another like David and Jonathan. --Henry Smith, A Preparative to Marriage (1591)