The Theatres of London and Madrid: Performance Spaces of Shakespeare and Lope de Vega
– by Amy Distell (B.F.A., ’07)Between 1580 and 1680, theatre in Spain flourished. This has become known as the Siglo de Oro or Spanish Golden Age. It is comparable to the Elizabethan theatre between 1585 and 1642, the time of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. It is especially interesting that not only did theatre was flourishing as an art and entertainment form during this same period in both countries, but that the type of theatres actors performed on also were very similar in structure and organization. The first permanent theatre in London was The Red Lion, completed in 1567, while the Corrale de la Cruz, Spain’s first theatre, was built only three years later. While the Corrale de la Cruz was the first theatre built, Madrid’s most famous theatre was the Corrale de Principe. By comparing the Corrale de Principe and the Elizabethan theatres, we can see the similarities and the differences in these playhouse structures.
The Corrale de Principe was one of the most famous theatres of the Spanish Golden Age. Located in Madrid, it was originally constructed in 1583. It and another theatre, the Corrale de la Puente were commissioned and built by charitable brotherhoods, the most important being the Confradia de la Pasion y Sangre de Jesudristo and the Confradia de la Soledad de Nuestra Senora. These brotherhoods originally started the theaters to raise money for hospitals. They started in the yards of their churches and eventually bought land to build a theater. The Corrale de Principe was an open-air, four-story building. The ground level contained the platform on which the stage was situated, some ten feet above the ground. Benches, called taburetes, were for the groundlings to sit on was on the first level, as was the part of the women’s seating area, or cazuela . Because the stage was on a platform, those who sat on the ground level would have looked up onto the stage the entire time. There were two ground-level boxes, as well, one of which scholars assume was a counting house and the other perhaps a refreshment stand, called the alojero . Seats for men and women were separated, and a gate marked the separation. It’s very interesting to note that while men and women had to sit separately, but women could be actresses on the Spanish stage. In the Elizabethan theatres, men and women could sit together, but there were no female performers allowed; male apprentices under the age of eighteen performed most of the female characters onstage, including Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Viola, and Rosalind.
The second level of the Spanish theater had the second level of the women’s boxes, the cazuela alta, at the back. The cazuela alta had a grilled railing across the front, and gradas on the sides of the theatre. Theatergoers paid extra money to sit in the boxes rather than on the ground floor. These seats would have been at eye level with the raised stage. Most of the theatre was open to the sky, but the back of the theatre over the first level of the cazuela was roofed. The cazuela alta had an awning that could be raised in case of rain. There were open balconies with benches on the third and fourth levels of the theatre. These balconies were not as cramped as the boxes on the second floor, although it is thought that the fourth story was only six feet high.
The first Corrale del Principe could hold an audience of 1,047. By 1635, with multiple expansions, the seating had increased to hold 1,937 spectators. The Corrale de Principe flourished until 1735, which it was torn down to begin a new, updated theatre on that site. Today, Madrid’s Teatro Espanol stands on the same ground where the original Corrale stood, maintaining a historical link with Spain’s glorious theatrical past.
At almost the same time as theatrical performance in Spain prospered and flourished, so did performance in England. Permanent theatres began to be built in London, the most famous being the Rose, the Globe and the Hope, mostly located on the South Bank of the Thames River, outside city limits as decreed by law. The Globe, home to the acting troupe to which Shakespeare belonged, was originally built in 1599, using wood from James Burbage’s first playhouse, called The Theater. The organization of the English theatres was basically the same as the theatres throughout Spain. The stage was on a raised platform, about four to six feet above the floor of the pit, and groundlings surrounded the stage on three sides to watch the plays. The second and third levels of the theatres had open galleries (with benches) or closed boxes where people paid extra money to have a place to sit. Seats in the galleries cost 2 pennies, while spaces in the boxes, considered a luxury, cost 6 pennies each. Like the Spanish theaters, the Globe had a roof only over where the audience sat in galleries and boxes, while the yard was open to sun and inclement weather; the stage space had a half-roof called “the heavens.” The theatres of Spain and England were alike in that people paid the least amount of money for the groundling spaces and the most amount of money to sit in the boxes, while open balcony seats were set at a middle price. At this time, too, there was no legal restrictions on audience capacity: spectators were packed into the yard and galleries until no more could fit. The capacity of any public theatre in London was 1,500 to 3,000 people. This resulted in audiences from all classes coming to see the same plays and mixing closely in the theatre spaces.
The sets on the two stages were very similar as well. Much like the Elizabethan theatres, the set on the Spanish stage consisted of a two- or three-story house at the back the stage. Both Spanish and English stages used this stage-house setting as a permanent backdrop, rather than employ the movable sets used in Italian or French theatres of the period. The stage-house would have two or three openings for entrances and exits, and two or three upper levels to use as additional acting spaces. Both stages had trapdoors in the stage floor and reveals, which were small cupboard-like openings in the walls that actors could lean out of, something like windows. Because both sets were permanent facades and not specific to the setting of individual plays, playwrights in both countries used spoken décor to establish the “where” and “when” of a play’s settings.
The biggest difference between the Spanish and English performance spaces was the shape of the theatres. The corrales were long and skinny rectangles, like tennis courts. The Elizabethan theaters were rounded in shape, with eight, sixteen, or more sides. Some archaeologists suggest that the Globe had twenty sides to it : This is why it was sometimes called “the Wooden O.” Another big difference, one that we’ve already noted, was that women weren’t allowed to act on the Elizabethan stage, but that there were celebrated actresses throughout the same period in Spain. Also, seating in the Spanish playhouse divided men and women, while there was no gender division in the seating in London’s playhouses.
The late 1500s and early 1600s were the beginning of an amazing time in European theater. Fifteen to twenty percent of the population in London living near the theatre district was attending the theater on a regular basis, Lope de Vega and William Shakespeare were writing theatrical masterpieces, and theatre conventions were being created that are still in place today. There’s a lot to be learned from the Spanish Golden Age of theatre and La Discreta Enamorada is a perfect example of Spanish Golden Age theatre.