Mixing of Tones and Subjects

The mixing of genres that Shakespeare and his contemporaries introduced is accompanied in Elizabethan drama by a collision of tone and subjects. For example, many dramatists, including Shakespeare, used both elegant and poetic language as well as more ribald lines in the same play, as opposed to reserving different kinds of language for separate genres. Subjects were also diverse during Elizabethan drama. The same playwrights produced work based on myths as well as plays concerning historical events.

TYPES OF ELIZABETHAN LONDON THEATERS AND PLAYHOUSES  There were three different types of venues for Elizabethan plays: Inn-yards, Open air Amphitheatres and Playhouses. The Inn-yards were the original venues of plays and many were converted into Playhouses. The Amphitheatres were generally used during the Summer months and then the Acting Troupes moved to the indoor playhouses during the Winter Season.

Inn-yards	The early days of Elizabethan commercial theatre. Performances held in private London Inns. Inexpensive. Held indoors or the yard. Audience capacity up to 500
Open Air Amphitheaters	Think of a public outdoor structure like the Coliseum or a small football stadium with a capacity of between 1500 and 3000 people
Indoor Playhouses	A small, private indoor hall. Open to anyone who would pay but more expensive with more select audiences. Audience capacity up to 500

The elizabethan drama after shakespeare

The drama began to decline during Shakespeare's lifetime. Even before his retirement to Stratford other popular dramatists appeared who pleased a vulgar taste by introducing more sensational elements into the stage spectacle. In consequence the drama declined so rapidly that in 1642, only twenty-six years after the master dramatist had passed away, Parliament closed the theaters as evil and degrading places. 

Theaters were not only used to show plays. There was gambling and in some there was even bear baiting. Not only were there objections about the bawdy nature of some of the plays, the rise in crime but there was also the real risk of the crowded theatres encouraging the spread of the plague. The outcry was such that in 1596London's authorities banned the public presentation of plays within the city limits of London. The theaters were forced to move to the South side of the River Thames.

Among those who played their parts in the rise and fall of the drama, the chief names are Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, Webster, Heywood, Dekker, Massinger, Ford and Shirley. 

Ben jonson (1573?-1637). The greatest figure among these dramatists

The value of Jonson's plays is that they give us vivid pictures of Elizabethan society, its speech, fashions, amusements, such as no other dramatist has drawn. Shakespeare pictures men and women as they might be in any age; but Jonson is content to picture the men and women of London as they appeared superficially in the year 1600. His chief comedies, which satirize the shams of his age, are: _Volpone, or the Fox_, a merciless exposure of greed and avarice; _The Alchemist_, a study of quackery (знахарство) as it was practiced in Elizabethan days; _Bartholomew Fair_, a riot of folly; and _Epicoene, or the Silent Woman_, which would now be called a roaring farce. His chief tragedies are _Sejanus_ and _Catiline_.

In later life Jonson was appointed poet laureate придворный поэт, and wrote many masques (драматическое произведение для театра масок), such as the _Masque of Beauty_ and the unfinished _Sad Shepherd_. These and a few lyrics, such as the "Triumph of Charis" and the song beginning, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," are the pleasantest of Jonson's works.