Sulphur has a rotten egg smell, while saltpetre made from dung smells bad when mixed up and even worse when set alight. Both were used to make gunpowder. Good spirits and gods and goddesses usually entered through a trapdoor in the Heavens. The actors were lowered on a rope or a wire. Evil spirits and devils came up from Hell, under the stage, through a trapdoor in the stage.
Companies often set off firecrackers when devils appeared or magic was used. Firecrackers were made by filling rolls of thick paper with gunpowder, which produced sparks and then a bang.
You could buy gunpowder from grocers or ironmongers. In one production of Dr Faustus the actors playing devils even put firecrackers in their mouths to suggest they were breathing fire! Theatre companies used smoke mostly as a magic effect, although it was sometimes used to suggest a fire.
They could make black, white, yellow and red smoke — depending on the chemicals they mixed together. They used real fire as little as possible, it was very dangerous in a wood and thatch building.
If they needed flames they burned strong alcohol mixed with a variety of salts, depending on the colour they wanted the flames to be. Want to download these resources and more? Sometimes, an actor might already be in the discovery space, ready to perform, when the curtains are drawn, says English literature teacher Warren King on his website No Sweat Shakespeare.
Shakespeare captured his audience's attention by incorporating sound into his plays, such as fireworks, drumming and powder-loaded cannons , suggests Larque. He also used special effects, such as trap doors, flying entrances and false ceilings to make his plays more visually appealing, according to PlayShakespeare.
Actors were harnessed to wires and ropes so they could be lifted onstage -- or ushered offstage -- in dramatic fashion. Some of Shakespeare's plays were violent, intended for adult audiences only, so the props included animal blood, animal bones, fake human heads and animal intestines. The objective was to incorporate gruesome, yet realistic, elements into the play. As curriculum developer and educator, Kristine Tucker has enjoyed the plethora of English assignments she's read and graded!
Her experiences as vice-president of an energy consulting firm have given her the opportunity to explore business writing and HR. Tucker has a BA and holds Ohio teaching credentials.
At the time, the City was controlled by the Puritan leaders, who despised and distrusted theater. They insisted that we must be what God has commanded us to be—our vocations, our calling—but theater teaches us to transform into or pretend to be that which we are not. On stage, commoners pretend to be lords, ladies, kings, and queens. To the Puritans, this was deeply upsetting, even sinful, and so they outlawed theater within the city limits. In response to the cultural and political climate, Shakespeare and his colleagues built their theaters across the river, on the South Bank of the Thames.
It was also the section in London of the bear-baiting pits: they would stake a bear in the middle of a pit, then unleash hounds to attack it and take bets on how long it would take the dogs to tear the bear to pieces. Here, too, were the gambling dens, the seedy taverns, the brothels, and the whorehouses.
In short, this was the area of license and illicit activity. Here is where Shakespeare was at home. But it does mean that Shakespeare was more at home with the tavern keepers and the prostitutes than with the upper class and the nobility. He could, at the very least, traverse both the high and the low of society, something to keep in mind as we study his plays. In Henry IV part 1, Prince Hal hangs out in the rough tavern world with Falstaff and the other criminals and prostitutes because he knows a good king must know all the levels of his kingdom.
We can think of Shakespeare in the same way: He wanted to know every aspect of his society so that he could present it truthfully on the stage and hold the mirror up to nature. The theaters would cater to a very mixed audience. There could be as many as 3, spectators for any play, a huge number for a city of about , people, as London was at this time. Many classes would mingle here, from wealthy landowning gentry to the emerging middle class down to the poor, who could enter the theater for a mere penny and stand on the ground in front of the stage and cheer, boo, and catcall their way through an entire play.
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