Re: TOS: The Rings of Time Review Thread
Wasn't Shakespeare considered to be rather 'pedestrian' in his own time? Not the highbrow entertainment it is today. AFAIK, performances of his works at the Globe were attended by a lot of rabble.
I wondered if this needed clarification from good sources? In his introduction to the
Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, Ernst Honigmann wrote:
"Seven years after Shakespeare’s death his former ‘fellows’ or colleagues published the first collected edition of his plays, the great Folio of 1623, ‘only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare’. [...] This was how one referred to a classic (‘our Virgil’, ‘our Spenser’), more commonly after his death, and Shakespeare was seen as a classic in his lifetime. The anonymous writer of a preface to Troilus and Cressida (1609) said so quite explicitly: the play deserves a commentary ‘as well as the best comedy in Terence or Plautus’." (p. 1)
In a later essay in the volume, John Astington presents the playhouses in the context of London:
"Basic admission to the Curtain playhouse in 1599, Thomas Platter recorded, cost a penny: for that sum one could stand in the yard to watch the play. Seated accommodation cost a penny more, with the very best seats at a total of threepence. To go to the Globe and theatres like it was not especially expensive; prices at the Blackfriars and similar indoor playhouses were always higher – the cheapest admission cost sixpence – with a consequent effect on the social level of the audiences. That Shakespeare’s plays were performed to a socially mixed audience, then, as has often been stated, is broadly true, if we remember that the very highest (a few) and the very lowest (many) would not have been at the Globe. The elite expected that the players would come to them, and the impoverished had no pennies to spare on the theatre" (p. 110).
And then in the next chapter, Anne Barton notes the performance of plays at Westminster & Whitehall, where the royal palace was. During Holiday seasons there would be many masques and contemporary plays performed, wherein acting companies and playwrights presented to the court. Perhaps therein, or from their performances in London itself, the company gained the attention of "George Carey, second Lord Hunsdon, the queen’s second cousin and, from 1597, Lord Chamberlain". Subsequently they were elevated to "James’s own liveried servants, granted their royal patent only a few weeks after he was proclaimed king, [meaning that] Shakespeare’s company enjoyed a certain prestige." (p. 123). Barton argues that Shakespeare did not enjoy the closeness of Ben Johnson to James I, nor to the classicists of court (including Inigo Jones and his stagecraft) - but that his presence and that of the other main companies were required mostly at court because of James's culturally demanding family:
"Queen Anne, Prince Henry, and Prince Charles were theatre-lovers. All three participated at various points in court masques. Anne is even said to have made a one-off appearance at a public playhouse – something neither Elizabeth, James, nor Charles I ever did – and the royal patent issued to the King’s Men [Shakespeare's company] in 1603 was soon followed in 1604 by the designation (though as yet without patent) of the former Admiral’s Men as Prince Henry’s servants, and Worcester’s Men as Queen Anne’s. On a number of occasions, all three companies were to find themselves summoned to entertain a royal audience at court that turned out not to include King James." (p. 124).
Anyway, I hope this adds some greater context to the comments by Christopher and Sho above.
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