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| A large arena in Constantinople. The Byzantine equivalent of the Circus Maximus or the Colosseum. |
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| Charlemange became the most powerful secular ruler in Europe after the chuch's power was centralized in Rome under the pope |
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| professional storyteller or public entertainer in medieval France. musician, juggler, and acrobat, as well as reciter of such literary works as the fabliaux, chansons de geste, lays, and other metrical romances that were sometimes of his own composition. |
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| The earliest known female dramatist. A nun who lived and worked in a Benedictine abbey in Saxony led by women of noble families. |
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| Extended musical passages |
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| A trope whose first words mean "Who do you seek?" Used around Easter. |
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| A book by Ethelwold, intended to establish clear goals and rules of conduct and procedure for monasteries. Among other things, it described how the Quem Quaeritis trope was to be performed |
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| Developed from the tropes. Based on biblical stories. Usually focuses on the resurrection and not crucification. Performed in monasteries first, then moved to the church and grew complex. Part of a religious ceremony. |
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| Scenic strucure depicting some locale needed for a biblical tale. |
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| Indoor v. Outdoor staging of Liturgical Drama |
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| The mansions were all on view at the same time in both. Outside, mansions would have to be set up. Inside, they used parts of the church. |
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| Religious vernacular drama |
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| Latin was the language of high learning, but not of the common folk. So, plays transformed into being performed in the common language. |
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| Dramatized series of biblical events. Sometimes dramatized other stories connected to biblical figures. Staged independently from religious ceremony. |
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| When a number of plays were presented in a sequence. Huge undertakings. May go on for a month. |
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| A favorite occasion for cycle plays. The week after Trinity Sunday. It was intended to remind laypeople of the doctrine that the bread and wine of the mass become the body and blood of Christ. |
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| Presenting characters and events outside their proper historical sequence. |
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| Spectacle in Medieval drama |
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| They would make it rain on stage or add comedy. Some of this stuff would still seem spectacular to us today. |
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| Episodic v. Climactic drama |
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Clmactic drama started at the climax and worked its way to the end.
Episodic drama would just freely play with the pacing and plotting. It could start at the beginning then jump to some other place in the story. It could also follow multiple storylines at the same time. |
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| When a theme is looked at from two or more points of view so that the whole becomes greater than it parts. |
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| Religious guilds or clubs that produces mystery plays on the continent of Europe |
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| In northern England, these produces the mystery plays. The play was usually given to the one that seemed "appropriate" |
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| Characteristics of cycle plays |
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| Usually produces once every 2-10 years; productions were complex to mount. Performances often began early in the day and, after a break for lunch, continued until late afternoon. |
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| choosing people who have certain qualities in real life to play characters with similar qualities. |
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| Rehearsing and acting in cycle plays |
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| There were many many rehearsals. Actors were amateurs. doubling roles was not uncommon. |
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| Costuming conventions in cycle plays |
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| Actors provided their own costumes. Common characters wore contemporary clothing. Or maybe it wasn't. It wasn't really uniform. |
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| Pageant master and his duties |
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| The person who organized and oversaw a production. He would oversee the advance preparations and the logistics of seeing that the plays unfolded on schedule. |
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| audiences would assemble in various places and the play would be set up on a wagon which moved from locale to locale, so that the play could be presented separately for each audience area among the route. |
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| A two story structure on four to six wheels with the bottom level serving as a curtained dressing area and the second level containing scenery and acting space. |
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| A series of small scenic mansions stood side by side. |
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| A stage in cornwall, England. It was circular with earthen embankments approximately 10 feet in diameter. |
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| Neutral, non-localized platform stage |
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| Shifts of locale could be created in the imagination of the spectators rather than by changes of scenery. |
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| Special stage effects that were enormously popular and ingeniously worked out. |
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| Hired to oversee the stage effects |
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| Characteristics of Morality Plays |
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| Teach a moral lesson using allegorical characters. Struggle of good v. evil for the soul of the main character; Main characters are ordinary men and women facing moral or religious dilemmas. |
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| Characteristics of Secular theatre |
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| Popular entertainment. Often comic and sometimes irreverent. Rose out of the secular entertainments such as May Day games. |
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| dramatized the heroic exploits of folk heroes |
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| comically depicts universal human weaknesses. Also seems to have been influenced by such church related events as the Feast of Fools and the festival of the Boy Bishop. |
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| France's first cousin to farce. Means "foolishness" or "nonsense." Short sketches were often critical of the church or religious figures. |
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| A short dramatic piece staged between the courses of a banquet |
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| Allegorical, biblical and mythological dramatizations were staged along town routes. They were pantomimed tableaux with occasional narration. |
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| Wealthy merchant-princes gave financial support to artists. |
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| Focused on people rather than gods. They were preoccupied with describing humanity and human powers and they studied the Greeks and Romans |
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| Religious Italian plays written in the medieval style. Based on biblical stories and lives of saints. |
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| Often cited as the first tragedy of the Renaissance. Presents the story of a tyrannical contemporary ruler of Padua. |
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| Short pieces depicting mythological tales. Presented between the acts of full length plays. |
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| The Italian imitation of Greek satyr plays. The subject is romance. Not overly bawdy or sexual. Usually dealt with lovers who are threatened at often at odds with each other. |
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| All music, all the time. Grand productions; huge sets; lavish costumes; a real splash for eyes and ears. Subject matter often silly and romantic: Jilted lovers is a favorite theme. Contained recitatives |
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| The text of an opera. Often secondary to the music. |
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| a solo song accompanied by the orchestra. |
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| Established the supremacy of the aria. |
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| Characteristics of French opera |
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| Insisted on textual clarity and incorporated ballet. |
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| The first master of French opera |
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| Characteristics of commedia dell'arte |
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| Improvisation based on common stories, adjusted for local color. Usually outdoor, wherever space was available. Made up of stock characters who were almost always masked. It was low-brow theatre. |
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| Characteristics of commedia companies |
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| Usually professionals. Each troupe was made up of about 7-10 people. The most successfule were often organized by families. Based on a profit-sharing plan. |
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| Short scripts without dialogue. Provided plot outline. |
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| Characters that were basically the same in every Commedia scene. |
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| a lecherous, miserly old Venetian. Fond of reciting proverbs. Womanizer |
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| A foolish pedant who was always involved in his neighbors affairs. Fancies himself a lady's man, but never gets the girl. Pantalone's friend |
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| The braggart Warrior. Cowardly in battle. Fancies himself a great lover, but the ladies don't. |
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| The most popular of the comic servants. Cunningly Stupid. Acrobat, trickster, dancer. |
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| Servants in a commedia play. Sometimes sly and sometimes stupid. |
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| Repeated bits of physical comic business |
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| The manuscripts put together by commedia actors which contain jokes, comic business and repeated scenes and speeches. |
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| Characteristics of commedia costumes |
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| All wore traditional costumes so that audiences could recognize them right away. Masks, covering either the whole face or part of the face, were an essential element of commedia costumes. |
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| A wooden sword used in comic fight scenes. Made of two thin slats of wood so that when a performer was thwacked with it, the effect was greatly exaggerated by the sound of the wood smacking together. |
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| An essential element of commedia costumes. Allowed play goers to immediately recognize a character. The young lovers did not wear them. |
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| Members of the company shard in its profits as well as its expenses and losses. |
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| The most acclaimed commedai dell'arte troupe in Europe. Formed about 1569, reached its greatest renown after 1578. |
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| A member of the I Gelosi Commedia troupe. Originally played the male lover, but then switched to his most famous role, the military figure Captain Spavento. At the age of 16 he married Isabela Canali |
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| The male lover/The female lover. |
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| Married Francesco Andreini. and began her stage career as I Gelosi's female lover. Poets of Italy and France wrote verses praising Isabella's beauty and charm, but she was also known for her wit, intelligence and virtue. Also wrote her own sonnets songs and pastorals. |
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| One of Francesco and Isabela's sons. Became a renowned commedia actor and an author. Around 1605, he organized a company known as Comici Fedeli with several actors who had been members of I Gelosi. |
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| The Oldest Surviving theatre constructed during the Italian Renaissance. Designed as a miniature indoor Roman theatre. |
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| The architect who designed the Teatro Olympico. Influenced by his reading of the Roman Vitruvius. |
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| A tiny 250-seat theatre in Italy. It only had one background vistawhich extended from one side of the stage to another. In some ways it was a smaller, much more intimate version of the Teatro Olympico. |
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| Responsible for the most notable theatre building of the Italian Renaissance, the Teatro Farnese. |
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A typical court and academic theatre auditorium, with raised horseshoe seating accommodating 3,500 spectators and a semicircular orchestra in front of the stage.
Most notable for its proscenium-arch stage. Probably not the first of its kind, but notable in that it is the only one still existing. It is the prototype of the Proscenium arch stage. |
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| A place in which the audience members stood. It was an open area on the house floor extending to the side and back walls. |
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| The seats in the tiered seating area frequented by the upper classes. |
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| The upper tiers. Had open bench seating. Very inexpensive. |
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| The rediscovery of this text led to the design of Italian Renaissance theatres. It's a roman text on architecture which deals extensively with theatre design. |
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| Importance of perspective drawing |
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| With the use of this, scenes onstage, although painted on flat surfaces could achieve an illusion of depth. |
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| The person who detailed many of the early methods for creating perspective settings. An Italian architect, painter and designer was an important figure in the history of scene design. |
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| Serlio's 3 basic settings for drama |
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1) A tragic setting, showing a street of stately houses.
2) a comic setting, showing a common street scene.
3) A Pastoral setting, showing trees, hills and cottages. |
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| Flats hinged in a a fixed position and painted in perspective - placed one behind another on both sides of the stage. Each wing would give the appearance of a house and would have some three-dimensional ornamentation |
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| A set enclosure that was painted. |
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| Two set enclosures that met in the middle. |
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| Slightly inclined or slanted so that the bottoms of the wings slanted upward. Added to the illusion of depth. |
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Non-angled wings. Were made possible through advancements in art, specifically in perspective painting and drawing.
A series of individual wings on each side of the stage, parallel to the audience, placed in a progression from the front to the back of the stage and enclosed at the very back by two shutters that met in the middle. |
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| A strip across the top of the stage. |
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| The earliest method of scene shifting for flat-wing settings. Wings and shutters were placed in grooves in and above the stage floor; the grooves allowed these elements to slide offstage easily and quickly. |
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| Nicknamed the "Great Wizard" for his many spectacular stage settings and scene changes. His method of shifting scenery became standard throughout continental Europe. |
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| Poles were attached to scene flats; these poles went below the stage floor, where they were connected to wheels that ran the tracks. In this way, flats could be moved offstage smoothly. |
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| Produced an effect of three-dimensional trees and shrubs. |
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| Flying machines in Italian Renaissance theatre |
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| A door in the floor that people could appear from or disappear into. |
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| A neoclassical ideal that meant all dramatic characters should behave in ways based on their age, profession, sex, rank, etc. |
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| All drama was to be "true to life." This meant ghosts and supernatural events were forbidden. |
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| Required that the dramatic action in a play should not exceed 24 hours. Based on the neoclassical belief that audiences could not accept a long passage of time as "truthful" |
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| Restricted action to one locale. |
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| Required one central story, involving a relatively small group of characters. This means there could be no subplots. |
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| A plot that is not the main plot, but also serves an important role. |
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| A french word meaning "Type" or "Category" Tragedy dealt with royalty, Comedy with common people. Tragedy must be resolved badly, comedy must be resolved happily. The two shall never mix. |
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| a monologue through which a character reveals thoughts by speaking them aloud. Banished by the neoclassicists for being "untruthful" |
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| Analyzes what has gone before. Attempts to tell us what type of drama was written, how it was put together, what it means, etc. |
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| Argues for a certain point of view, sets down rules and prescribes formulas. |
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