Elizabethan theatre

Around 1600 in London, round wooden theatres held three thousand people standing or seated, without scenery and in daylight, and the text had to do everything: night, forest, battle. Marlowe put there a doctor who sells his soul, Kyd invented the revenge tragedy from which Hamlet would come, Jonson mocked heirs waiting for an old man's death, Webster carried horror to an Italian court. Shakespeare wrote for that machine and for a particular company, which explains the speed and the crudity of his plays.

works 5

• TheatreThe Spanish TragedyThomas Kyd · 1587A father finds his son hanged in his own garden and cannot get himself heard.Literature
• TheatreThe Tragical History of Doctor FaustusChristopher Marlowe · 1589A scholar obtains everything he has asked for and sees the day approach when he will have to pay.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreRomeo and JulietWilliam Shakespeare · 1595Two children from two enemy houses bind themselves for life the day after they first see each other.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreVolponeBen Jonson · 1606A rich Venetian pretends to be dying, and those who hope to inherit come rushing in.LiteraturePublic domain
• TheatreThe Duchess of MalfiJohn Webster · 1614Two brothers forbid their sister to remarry and place a man in her household to check on her.Literature