The Playworld and

Shakespeare in Love
The art of storytelling
WEEK 10
11/3/2022
Mid-Semester Grades
• Assignment 80% - Participation 20%
• Attendance grade was NOT included
• Assignment grade includes:
• Visual storytelling assignment 10pts
• Midterm assignment 20pts
• Participation grade was based on class participation. The baseline grade
was 16/20, and points were incremented depending on your level of
participation (+2 if you answered both pre/post-discussion questions).
Elizabethan Theater
• Refers to the style of performance plays that blossomed during the reign of Elizabeth I of England
• Witnessed the first professional actors who belonged to touring troupes and who performed plays of blank
verse(non-rhymed lines) with entertaining non-religious themes
• The first purpose-built permanent theater was established in London in 1576 CE by James Burbage, and
others followed so that drama simply to entertain became a booming industry. Theatres showing plays daily
led to permanent acting companies which did not have to tour and so could invest more time and money
into wowing their audience of both sexes and all social classes.
• People, most of whom stood throughout the play, talked back to the actors as if they were real people.
• Adolescent boy actors played female roles, and the performances were held in the afternoon because there
was no artificial light. There was also no scenery to speak of, and the costumes let the audience know the
social status of the characters. Because sumptuary laws restricted what a person could wear according to
their class, actors were licensed to wear clothing above their station.
Elizabethan Theater
Elizabethan Theater Playwrights
• The most celebrated playwright of the period was William Shakespeare (1564-1616 CE)
• The first great playwright of the Elizabethan age, however, was Christopher
Marlowe. Many scholars believe that Marlowe might have rivaled Shakespeare
had he not been murdered when he was 29 years old in a fight over a tavern bill
in 1593.
• Marlowe was the first to change the conventions of the early Elizabethan plays
with Tamburlaine the Great, Dr. Faustus and The Jew of Malta. Marlowe used blank,
or unrhymed verse in a new, dynamic way that changed the very psychology of
dramaturgy.
• Other dramatists of the late Elizabethan period, which continued after her death,
included Ben Jonson, John Webster, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher.
Richard Burbage also acted in the plays of Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher as
well as Shakespeare.
Shakespearean Five Act Structure
• Act 1: The Exposition – The audience learns the setting (Time/Place), characters are developed,
and a conflict is introduced.
• Act 2: Rising Action – The action of this act leads the audience to the climax. It is common for
complications to arise, or for the protagonist to encounter obstacles.
• Act 3: The Climax – This is the turning point of the play. The climax is characterized by the
highest amount of suspense.
• Act 4: Falling Action – The opposite of Rising Action, in the Falling Action the story is coming to
an end, and any unknown details or plot twists are revealed and wrapped up.
• Act 5: Denouement or Resolution – This is the final outcome of the drama. Here the authors
tone about his or her subject matter is revealed, and sometimes a moral or lesson is learned.
Shakespeare’s 5 Act Structure – R&J
• Act I – R&J meet
• Act 2 – R&J marries
• Act 3 – Mercutio dies; Tybalt slain;
Romeo exiled
• Act 4 – Juliet must marry Paris so she
drinks sleep potion and fakes death
• Act 5 – but Romeo does not get the
message and kills himself; Juliet also
dies; the two families reconcile
Prologue
Enter Chorus.
 Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’ strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
Chorus exits.
Shakespeare in Love
• Genre: Romance, Dramedy, Period
• Logline: The world's greatest ever playwright, William Shakespeare, is
young, out of ideas and short of cash, but meets his ideal woman and
is inspired to write one of his most famous plays.
Three Act Structure of Romance
3 4
5
MDQ Crisis 위기
Super Objective The Fall
Thesis Climax
Peripeteia
2 Declaration
Friends, Enemies 2 막 반전
1 and Tests All is Lost
The Three Dates The Breakup

Point of Attack Mid-Point

Relationship begins I-need-you-but-can’t-
Inciting Incident have-you/Pulling
Boy meets girl back together

ACT 1 ACT 2 ACT 3

Discussion question
• Analyze “Shakespeare in Love” using both the Three Act Structure and the
Shakespearean five-act structure. How do they align? How are they different?
For next week…
• TUESDAY: Read Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw (at least Act I),
and answer the pre-class discussion question.
• THURSDAY: Watch My Fair Lady (1964) and read Pygmalion (try to
read at least Act I)