Town that Shakespeare Built, Part Two

The Town That Shakespeare Built, Part Two

Above is the entrance to the main theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Elizabethan. It was designed after the only extant drawing of a theater from that time, The Swan, which may have been used by several theatrical companies of the day, including the company William Shakespeare was affiliated with, The Lord Chamberlain's Men. That group of players became the King's Men shortly after James I came to the throne in 1603. (photo by me.)

	above) the surviving sketch of The Swan, from roughly 1596. It was late in 1598 that Shakespeare's group built the Globe Theater across the bank from London in Southwark. (photo from Wikipedia).

The present interior of the Elizabethan Theater in Ashland. The performances here are only in the evenings, from June to September. Almost all the major productions here are of Shakespeare's plays, although in recent years John Webster's "The White Devil" and Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus" were also staged here. There are two other theaters near-by that make up the other main parts of the festival.

A still from a recent production at "The Lizzie" of "The Tempest" with the critically acclaimed Derrick Lee Weeden (left) as Prince Prospero and Amando Duran as the usurper he seeks revenge upon. (photo from the Medford Mail Tribune).

Actors in Shakespeare's day had to be in companies and be protected by "sponsors" who were noblemen in favor with the crown. Without such protection from a blue-blood, actors were subject to arrest as "masterless men" and could face being whipped or jailed. Religious zealots like the Puritans controlled London's civic affairs and would not even allow public productions within the city limits. Luckily for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, both Elizabeth and James were great fans of the theater. The only hitch was that all plays had to be submitted to a "Master of the Revels" (censor) prior to public performance to ascertain if their were any scenes that might provoke a riot amongst crowds, particularly younger male apprentices. (A very scary thing for the authorities off the day as there were no police forces to prevent the spread of such an event.) Also censorship was hard on any play that in some way, even unintentionally, undermined the status quo of the monarch and his/her court. Ben Jonson and a couple other playwrights were jailed for a time in the late 1590's for writing and performing a satirical play, The Isle of Dogs . It no longer is extant, but was considered by historians a lampoon of some nobility at court, possibly Sir Walter Raleigh's faction and perhaps even the Queen herself. Holy lese-majeste, Batman ! How that one slipped past the old Master of the Revels I'm not sure.

This is a view from the plaza of the outside of the Elizabethan in the Summertime. (from Flickr photos ).