The plots he dramatized were taken from the same histories and story collections that

provided quarry for his fellow-playwrights. His choice of subject and theme was as much
determined as was theirs by theatrical demand; his treatment of his materials and his
dramatic technique, in the last analysis, were no different from theirs; and he probably
shared their tastes in more respects than has sometimes been supposed. As one of the
most popular playwrights of his day, Shakespeare cannot be thought of as an isolated,
aloof figure with ideals and theories that were magnificently indifferent to those of his
contemporaries and the audiences for which they catered. Hence, to understand
Shakespeare's art, some attention must be given to the dramatic traditions of the age in
which he worked and to the accepted practices and conventions by which he and his
fellow-dramatists were conditioned.
In Shakespeare's day, the drama was essentially a fresh and a new art. Playing, to be
sure, is as old as time, but, when Shakespeare was born in 1564, there were in England
no permanent theatres; professional acting was still indistinguishable from minstrelsy
and mere vagabondage; and, indeed, drama that had freed itself from moral,
educational, or controversial bias might al- most be said to have been non-existent. Not
until Elizabeth had been on the throne for more than a quarter of a century, providing
England with the security of a long reign and a stable government, did the arts begin to
flourish in her kingdom, and a vigorous national drama become possible. Yet both the
drama and the theatre that Shakespeare knew had their roots deep in the past and could
never have been what they became except for centuries of medieval preparation.
MIRACLE PLAYS
In its earliest form, the drama had no separate existence, but was closely attached to the
church service.

MORALITY PLAYS
The morality was a single play complete in itself rather than one episode in a long series.
Unlike the miracle play, the morality was less concerned with the Bible than with ethical
doctrine and the spiritual conflict between good and evil in the soul of man. To make this
conflict vivid, the morality play depicted on the stage abstract virtues and vices and
exhorted men to right living by parable or example. At their best, the moral plays are
represented by The Summoning of Everyman ( fifteenth century), which with Pride of Life
( fifteenth century), the earliest in England, is a kind of dramatized Dance of Death with
universal significance. Less effective is The Castle of Perseverance ( fifteenth century),
which, represents the soul of Mankind alternately won over to evil and to good,
beleaguered by the forces of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil, overthrown by Death,
and finally tried before God with Justice and Truth as accusers and Mercy and Peace as
advocates. Although the moralities had lost their popularity by the time Shakespeare
began to write, Elizabethan audiences were familiar with them, and all Elizabethan drama
has its roots in these early plays as well as in the miracle cycles. Morality elements also
appear in many true comedies and tragedies. Both Good and Bad Angels and the Seven
Deadly Sins survive in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, and the character of the tragic conflict in
this play is constantly reminiscent of the moralities. Shakespeare, likewise, felt the
influence, and his allusions to the morality plays are frequent. Thus, Hamlet describes his

uncle as "a very Vice of kings . . . a king of shreds and patches" (III, iv, 98 ff.), in
reference to the motley garb that frequently distinguished the Vice. Falstaff refers to
Justice Shallow as a "Vice's dagger" now become a squire ( 2 Henry IV, III, ii, 343);
Jaques's Seven Ages of Man speech (As You Like It, II, vii, 139 ff.) recalls the morality,
and allusion to Good and Bad Angels are frequent. Of greater significance are the scenes
and characters which Shakespeare obviously conceived of according to the familiar
morality formula. The drunken porter in Macbeth who imagines he is porter at Hell Gate
is likewise in the morality tradition. Even more important are several characters in
Shakespeare that have morality functions. Falstaff, for example, is "that revered Vice,
that grey Iniquity, that Father Ruffian, that Vanity in years" in theHenry IV plays (Part 1,
II, iv, 499), and he is occa sionally referred to as a misleader of youth ( l Henry IV, II, iv,
509; 2 Henry IV, I, ii, 185). The embodiment of worldliness and sensuality -- glutton,
lecher, braggart, sluggard, and coward-Falstaff is all of the Seven Deadly Sins rolled into
one, and, characteristically, he threatens to run Prince Hal out of the kingdom with a
dagger of lath ( l Henry IV, II, iv, 151). Richard III, on the other hand, represents the
sinister side of the Vice as he mutters aside:
Thus, like the formal Vice, Iniquity, I moralize two meanings in one word. (III, i, 82.)
THE TUDOR INTERLUDE
Brevity and indoor performance before a small audience were all that distinguished the
interlude from other plays. Certainly, throughout the sixteenth century, interlude is
almost synonymous with play. Some scholars have argued that the term refers to the
intervals of banquets during which these plays were performed;

Early sixteenth-century audiences, as was natural, showed a marked preference for

humor on the stage. It is not surprising that more than thirty years of Elizabeth's reign
were to pass before a widespread popular interest in serious drama could develop, nor
that, for a time, the early tragedians wrote for a limited audience of scholarly enthusiasts
and established traditions of classical drama which were wholly independent of the
popular stage. Only in the last decade of the sixteenth century, when playwrights sought
native subjects, did tragedy become at once popular and artistic.
The ultimate models of Elizabethan tragedy were the plays of the Latin philosopherdramatist, Seneca the Younger ( 4 B.C.-65 A.D.).
As in many of the medieval De Casibus stories, crime and its retribution is the burden of
each of Seneca's plays, and his themes were among the most sensational ones of incest,
adultery, unnatural murder, and revenge in the whole of classical mythology. Nine of the
ten have a revenge motive. Each exhibits a hero in conflict with one or more opponents;
principal characters usually appear with a friend as confidant; and prominence is given to
supernatural visitants-furies, deities, and ghosts. In style, the Senecan drama is
characterized by artifice, rhetoric, and sententiousness. The action is slow and divided
into five acts; much of these dramas, especially the scenes of horror, is presented
through long declamatory speeches by messengers instead of shown on the stage. There
are elaborate analyses of moods, passions, and forebodings, and choruses interpreting
the action are frequent. English Senecan drama may be divided into two main classes:

(a) the more or less academic imitations written either as closet drama or for production
before a cultivated audience at the Inns of Court, the universities, or Whitehall, and (b)
the less pure imitations designed for the popular stage.
In the former category belongs the first English tragedy, Gorboduc, or Ferrex and
Porrex, which was first acted by members of the Inner Temple during the Christmas
revels in January, 1562, and later before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall (Thomas Norton
and Thomas Sackville, the latter of whom had an important part in the writing of The
Mirror for Magistrates (first published in 1559), a collection of stories of the falls of
princes which was to open to the tragedian the inexhaustible well of British history and
legend. The subject of Gorboduc is English and deals with the dissension, murder, and
civil war that grow out of the division of the kingdom between the king's two sons. But,
except for its disregard of the unities, the model of the play is Senecan).
It was Thomas Kyd ( 1558-94) who, more than anyone else, popularized Senecan
tragedy on the public stage. His Spanish Tragedy (c. 1589) is a play in which romantic
intrigue, blood, and revenge mingle to produce good theatrical melodrama in the story of
the vengeance of a father for his son. in which besides the central theme of the play is
Senecan-its rant and bombast, its use of both chorus and vengeful ghost, its
sensationalism but The Spanish Tragedy ventured upon one important departure from
the strict Senecan decorum. With the true instinct of the dramatist for action, Kyd
produced his murders on the stage instead of merely reporting them, and so established
a tradition that took a long while for good taste to restrain. Certainly, Kyd set the fashion
which made Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus and Hamlet possible and contributed
elements of Richard III, Julius Csar, and Macbeth.