Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VI THE COURT THEATER IN THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH So far we have been considering the Shakespearian stage from the point of view of the professional companies and their theaters and public performances. We have not considered the performances of amateurs at court or university, the influence of the court on stage setting or acting, or the dramatic entertainments peculiar to the court. Yet, as we have seen, the Renaissance drama everywhere in Europe was at first an affair of the schools and court. If in England the professional actors finally took possession of the drama, there was a long period extending through three quarters of the sixteenth century in which school and court were the leaders and innovators. After that time, the universities and schools contributed little that was of importance in the history of the stage or the drama; but the court continued to exercise a varied and constant influence on the public theater. Even in a survey of the activities of the public theater, it is necessary to consider the influence of the court, not only on the matters of the stage presentation discussed in the preceding chapter, but also in connection with many matters of patronage and regulation which will come up as we proceed. We turn, therefore, to examine the stage and drama from the point of view of the courts of Elizabeth and James; and to understand the court drama of that period, we shall have to includethe practices of the first half of the century, in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII. COURT SHOWS OF THE EARLY TUDORS Performances at court may be conveniently divided into two classes, (l) shows of various sorts in which the dramatic interest was secondary to that of spectacle, music, and dance, and (2) regular drama. These shows were of many kinds, under m...