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| Amphitheater |
During the Middle Ages, sacred stories and plays with Christian themes—called morality plays— were performed in or near churches. By the time of the Renaissance, special houses were built for the performances, and these buildings came to be known as theaters.
Perhaps the most famous theater in history was the one built in the late 1500's on the south bank of the Thames River, across from London. This octagon-shaped theater was called the Globe. Here most of William Shakespeare's plays had their earliest performances.
Londoners flocked to see the latest comedies and tragedies of writers like Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson. These writers no longer wrote morality plays. Imitating the models of classical Greece and Rome, they created dramas that were full of romance, humor, violence, and despair.
Plays had to be seen in the day-time, when there was enough natural light to iIluminate the stage. The center of the theater was open to the sky, and that was where the ordinary tradespeople sat or stood, ready to be rained upon if the weather turned bad. Nobles and rich merchants sat in boxes round the side. The stage itself, where the actors performed, was covered by an overhanging roof.
The human emotions explored by the plays of this period are so profound and universal that many of the plays continue to be performed. Love, ambition, madness, revenge—these were the themes of ancient Greek dramas as well as the works of modern playwrights. Our enjoyment of the theater is one way in which we are closely linked with our ancestors.
