What historical facts can reflect the Elizabethan period?
What are main literary features of this period?
How many literary periods was Shakespeare’s life arranged into? What were they?
The elizabethan drama
The tragedy is a drama in which the characters are the victims of unhappy passions, or are involved in desperate circumstances. The style is grave and dignified, the movement stately; the ending is disastrous to individuals, but illustrates the triumph of a moral principle.
Comedy is a type of drama in which the elements of fun and humor predominate. The style is gay; the action abounds in unexpected incidents; the ending brings ridicule or punishment to the villains in the plot, and satisfaction to all worthy characters.
Strictly speaking there are only two dramatic types, all others, such as farce, melodrama, tragi-comedy, lyric drama, or opera, and chronicle play, being modifications of comedy or tragedy. The historical play, to which Elizabethans were devoted, aimed to present great scenes or characters from a past age, and were generally made up of both tragic and comic elements.
Theater of Imagination
Compared to some of the theatrical performances of the 21st century, Elizabethan theater had little in the way of sets or props, or even artificial lighting. This was a disadvantage in that performers had to rely on natural light, but also contributed to the style of Elizabethan drama. For a start, since there was little need to change sets between scenes, plays proceeded in a very fluid fashion, with each scene directly following another. Playwrights had to utilize evocative language to create the mood and present the action rather than relying on props and stage backgrounds.
Costumes
Elizabethan drama didn’t use expensive costumes for its performers, and many wore contemporary dress. When it came to representing characters from historical periods or other countries, actors would don easily recognized costumes to convey who they were. For instance, an actor playing a Roman would wear a sash to represent a toga.
Contact with Audience
Although Elizabethan drama was scripted and the lines learnt by the company performing the piece, the period’s theater was not acted in a vacuum. Since the audience, even in a specially built theater, would surround the stage or performance space, the acting company would interact with those watching. Sometimes the audience would loudly comment on the action while some scripts contained allusions to contemporary politics that the audience would understand. The characters in Shakespeare’s plays that speak in soliloquies -- directly to those watching -- are another result of this relationship with the audience.
Forms
Two of the more well known dramatic forms from the Elizabethan age are comedy and tragedy. Traditionally, comedy dealt with bawdy language and low-class characters, while tragedy was concerned with questions about humanity and noble characters, but playwrights such as Shakespeare and his contemporaries didn’t always separate the two genres in their work. Meanwhile, in the early Elizabethan period, many plays were of the mystery genre and concentrated on retelling Biblical stories or tales of saints. These mystery plays were often performed by travelling companies of actors and would coincide with religious festivals.