Dramatist, Actor and Poet

As it has emerged from the previous chapters, the so-called neo-Senecan play, suitably adapted, circulated among privileged social classes and academic and learned groups throughout Europe, despite their various political and ideological backgrounds. Compared to it, home-grown English drama existed in a completely different world. I must of course oversimplify, as it would take far too long to deal with those issues in any detail, in this all-too-short chronological summary. In short, the development of public theatres in London in the sixteenth century (with the consequent professionalisation of actors and dramatists) had created a massive demand for new plays, on the one hand, and on the other had given the popular taste for spectacle and action unprecedented centrality. Acting companies were commercial organisations and competed against one another to gain the favour of paying spectators. The audience was notably heterogeneous: playgoers came from the whole range of social classes, from labourers to craftsmen, from prostitutes and pickpockets to gentlemen. Theatrical drama had to capture the imagination of them all. Classical rules were generally ignored; Seneca was mainly considered a source of gruesome details and bloody revenge motives. Catharsis was not systematically pursued. Action was represented mimetically rather than through narrative. In the works of both resident and nonresident poets myths mingled with folk tales, local legends, and the Bible. As tragedy derived from comedy and in its turn developed out of the mystery cycles, it remained a mixture of farcically comic and tragic scenes, in which kings and clowns happily coexisted.