AThousandYearsofBritishTheatreHistory(完美版).doc

A Thousand Years of British Theatre History Author：Milling, Jane (EDT)/ Thomson Originate：Shanghai Library In spite of what the millennium hype of the last twelve months would have us believe, history doesnt arrange itself neatly into nice divisions which coincide with the somewhat arbitrary dating of our calendar, useful though it would be if everything was so tidy! The end of the sixteenth century did not draw a line underneath the theatrical developments outlined in our last feature. On the contrary, what had begun essentially (if we have to have a significant date) in 1574, continued well into the next century. Many of Shakespeares greatest plays were first performed between 1600 and 1611, including Hamlet (1602), Measure for Measure and Othello (1604), King Lear (?1605), Macbeth (?1606) and, of course, The Tempest (?1611). It was in the last year of the century that Shakespeares company moved to the newly-built Globe. It had a massive stage - 43 feet wide and 23 feet deep - and was intended purely as a theatre. It was burned down in 1613 but was immediately rebuilt. Shakespeare was a member of one of the two leading companies, the Chamberlains Men, and in fact had bought a share in the company when it was formed in 1594. He was not, however, their only playwright, for they also performed plays by Ben Jonson, Marston, Dekker, Webster, Middleton, Tourneur, and Beaumont and Fletcher. He was clearly very commercially-aware, for he produced plays to meet the taste of the time. For instance, his response to the revenge tragedy exemplified by Thomas Kyds The Spanish Tragedy was to out-revenge them all with Hamlet, and after Dekkers The Shoemakers Holiday proved so successful, Shakespeare replied with The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which he gave a further outing to one of his characters who had proved so popular with audiences, Sir John Falstaff. James I When James I came to the throne in 1603 after the death of Elizabeth, he took over the Chamberlains Men, renaming t