Word: elizabethans
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...versa, that made Satan the hero of Paradise Lost), though it has gained great impetus from the horrors of anti-semitism in the twentieth century. The basic font and origin of the trouble with The Merchant of Venice is something nearly unique in Shakespeare--an unresolved tension between an Elizabethan stage convention (the evil Jew) and Shakespeare's own meaning...
...executing the order to expose the queen's baby daughter to fate and the elements he narrates his dream about Hermione, we actually see the queen upstage hovering in the air. Antigonus's departure is accompanied by Shakespeare's most startling stage direction: "Exit pursued by a bear," In Elizabethan days a real bear was used, such as the celebrated Sackerson mentioned in The Merry Wives of Windsor. This practice was revived in the 1948 British production, but it's a risky business. On the other hand, dressing someone up in a bear outfit and parading him across stage...
...then there was the story of Richard Burbage, the original Richard III. An Elizabethan groupie approached him after a performance in the early 1590s and asked him to visit her that night, announcing himself "by the name of Richard the Third." Burbage complied and was greeted by a message from one Will Shakespeare announcing "that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third...
Even so, Wilder claimed no credit for invention. In the preface to an edition of three of his plays, he says, "I am not an innovator but a rediscoverer of forgotten goods and I hope a remover of obtrusive bric-a-brac." In Elizabethan times, after all, Shakespeare's plays were performed with few trappings. One need only read the Prologue to Henry V. which is an eloquent apologia for this manner of staging...
Weymouth, will adorn Longleat House in Wiltshire, one of England's finest Elizabethan mansions, whose stately grounds were laid out by the legendary landscape architect Capability Brown. "Maze King" Bright, as he is known in Britain, will embellish Longleat with a lakefront, three-dimensional maze of yew hedges and no fewer than six covered bridges. The maze, when completed in several years, will be open to the public, but its secret, Bright has sworn, will be known only to himself and the Lord of Longleat...