What is the difference between shakespearean plays and modern plays

Rich nobles could watch the play from a chair set on the side of the Globe stage itself, so an audience viewing a play may often have to ignore the fact that there is a noble man sitting right on the stage Elizabethan Era. Theatre performances were held in the afternoon, because there was no artificial lighting, this required the imagination of the audiences during scenes that were to take place at night Elizabethan Era.

Men and women attended plays, but often the prosperous women would wear a mask to disguise their identity Elizabethan Era. Even though women did attend theatre, and even Queen Elizabeth herself loved the theatre women who attended theatre were often looked down upon. In fact if a woman was attending the theatre it was generally assumed she was a prostitute. This is because the theatre was considered an unseemly place, and most people thought that women should be at home with their children Howard Since most theatre performances were often three hours long Henry IV would have been somewhere around two and a half , the behavior of the audience became very rowdy, the audiences did not keep quiet, or arrive on time, or remain for the whole performance they would simply get up and leave whenever they felt like it.

They joined in on the action occurring on stage, interrupted the actors, and even sometimes got on the stage. They also talked during dull moments, and threw rotting vegetables, especially tomatoes at the actors Elizabethan Era. A performance of Henry IV was probably very distracting in a Shakespearian theatre. Shakespeare must have thought so too, moving his play company out of open-air theatres in to perform at Black-friars which were an indoor theatre that was supposed to produce a more refined audience Elizabethan Era.

The upper class spectators probably cheered for upper class characters in plays such as Westmorland or Prince Hal. And of course lower class spectators would cheer for lower class characters, and if these two social classes were ever dueling in a play, it was practical pandemonium in the theatre Audiences.

The audiences would also cheer for the good guys, and boo the bad ones. Though we know a little bit about the behavior of theatre audiences we do not know much about the actual Elizabethan stage, however because plays of this time were written expressly for this stage, we can get an idea by looking at the stage directions in the play Albright Though the theatre seems rudimentary compared to our theatres today, Shakespearian plays were not without special effects.

Special effects were a spectacular addition at the Elizabethan theaters thrilling the audiences with smoke effects, the firing of a real canon, fireworks for dramatic battle scenes and spectacular flying entrances from the rigging in the heavens Elizabethan Era. The stage also featured trap doors to serve as graves, or to allow ghosts to rise from the earth. Even though theatres in Shakespearian England did not employ the use of scenery, theatre companies put a lot of effort into developing their costumes with great care.

An acting company held their costumes to be their most valuable items Hodges The costumes however became a subject of controversy when some aristocrats felt that actors could use them to disguise their social status, outside of the play-house Howard Costumes were also used to disguise the genders of actors.

Even though Historians have managed to reconstruct the appearance of original theatres, even building the New Globe in London, much of the information on how plays were performed during this time has been lost, the only thing that gives us an idea as to how these plays were performed is the stage directions found in the text. The plays were performed daily with a different play every day; because the plays changed daily they needed some way to advertise what was to be shown that afternoon, so Flags were put up on the day of the performance which sometimes displayed a picture advertising the next play to be performed.

Color coding was also used to advertise the type of play to be performed - a black flag meant a tragedy, white a comedy, and red a history Elizabethan Era. It is generally assumed that the play was written and in performance by Lamb 9 , this is not documented. The earliest performance we are certain of took place in when the play was acted in court for the Flemish ambassador.

There were other court performances in and Lamb These performances would have been considerably different than the performances described above. When they did perform for the court, there was a considerable amount of money paid for special effects, and scenery that would not have been used in the normal theatre performances. But the biggest difference in these performances is that they were of course inside and not nearly as crowded and members of nobility were considerably better behaved than the commoners that were found at the play-houses.

So when plays took place at court there was typically no rotten vegetable throwing, and no shouting out by the audience members Gurr Henry IV does not appear to have been popular as a play in court, so when it was seen it was probably with the distractions described earlier. The play was printed in , ,,,, , , and Lamb So more often than not when a red flag was flying over a theatre it meant you were in for a performance of Henry IV. This is thought to be because audiences loved the character of Falstaff, more likely than not they cheered when he was on stage, and laughed at him profusely Lamb In fact the character was such a crowd pleaser that Shakespeare put him in two more plays.

We may not know much about the way that Shakespearian plays were acted or performed or what the theatre looked like exactly. Nor do we actually know precisely how the audiences acted, but thanks to the scripts of the plays, and historical journals we can make some educated guesses. They were influential to the development of musical theatre; see those articles for more information.

Modern drama, which developed around the turn of the twentieth century, focused on alienation and disconnection. Modern drama refers to artistic works such as plays that were written and based on the current events in the 19th and 20th centuries. Contemporary drama refers to the drama that we see today. This form of drama is more action focused. A classical ballet has certain rules that must be followed but a contemporary ballet has none.

In a contemporary ballet there might not be music, costumes, scenery, story or footwear. A classical ballet has five specific ingredients that must be included. It must have music and the music must go with the story.

The first four, character, plot, theme and dialogue remain the same, but the following additions are now also considered essential elements of drama. Convention: These are the techniques and methods used by the playwright and director to create the desired stylistic effect.

Genre: Genre refers to the type of play. Every theatre is unique, but, with few exceptions, theatres, both Western and Asian, can be categorized into four basic forms: arena stage theatres also referred to as theatre-in-the-round ; thrust stage or open stage theatres; end stage theatres of which proscenium theatres are a subset ; and flexible stage …. Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search.

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