Deck 5: Creating a Professional Theatre:elizabethan England, Italian Commedia Dellarte, and Seventeenth-Century France

Question 1

_____ Many credit Carlo Goldoni (The Servant of Two Masters) with refining and reforming commedia in the 18^th century. What did Goldoni NOT do?

A) Heighted the use of improvisation
B) Treated the middle-class characters, like Pantalone, with greater sympathy
C) Avoided the use of blatantly smutty jokes
D) All of the above
E) None of the above

Answer 1

A

Question 2

_____ The proscenium arch was invented to frame the stage picture

Answer 2

True

Question 3

_____Which is NOT an Elizabethan theatrical convention?

A) The use of spoken décor to help establish particular locations
B) Realistic staging
C) The use of Soliloquy
D) The presence of a neutral façade
E) All of the above
F) None of the above

Answer 3

B

Question 4

_____ Elizabethan theatre was a shift from professional, secular and regularly performed theatre to communal, religious and occasionally performed theatre

Question 5

_____ Elizabethan theatre companies were fully financially supported by a noble patron

Question 6

_____Which is a new feature introduced to the English stage during the Restoration?

A) The practice of seating audience members on stage during public performances
B) The use of women to play the female roles in public theatre performances
C) The inclusion of elaborate intermezzi in public theatre performances
True/False

Question 7

_____ Which did NOT influence the development of Elizabethan drama?

A) Competition for a limited audience
B) The short lifespan for continuous performances of the same play
C) Strict adherence to neoclassical unities of time, place, and action
D) The regular basis of performances over a playgoing season lasting several months

Question 8

_____ Shakespeare was the only significant dramatist of his time

Question 9

_____ The Elizabethan staging conventions were an adaptation of medieval staging conventions

Question 10

_____ Which was NOT used in association with perspective scenery?

A) The discovery space
B) Wings
C) Borders
D) Shutters

Question 11

_____Which is NOT one of the three stock character types commonly found in commedia dell arte?

A) Princes
B) Masters
C) Servants
D) Lovers

Question 12

_____ Tartuffe is organized in "french scenes:" wherein dramatic action is developed as characters enter and exit a central location

Question 13

_____ "Molière" was:

A) The name of a French Cardinal who championed the neoclassical style
B) The name given for the elaborate costume worn in French plays set in the classical period
C) The stage name of a leading French actor, playwright, and head of a prominent theatre company
D) The title of the most popular French domestic comedy in the 17^th century

Question 14

_____Which audience area had the least expensive admission price?

A) The Boxes
B) The Pit
C) The Gallery
D) This is a trick question - there was only one general admission price for any audience area

Question 15

_____French neoclassicism advocated all of the following EXCEPT:

A) Adherence to the Unity of time, place and action
B) The mixing of tragedy and comedy in the same play
C) The use of lower to middle-class characters for comedy
D) The goal of using theatre to teach as well as to entertain

Question 16

_____ In France costumes were provided to the actors by the company manager

Question 17

_____ The acceptance of perspective scenery signaled a movement away from the formal and architectural stage in favor of the representational, pictorial stage

Question 18

_____ Opera emerged as an attempt to recreate the relationship between music and speech found in Greek drama

Question 19

_____ An Intermezzi is:

A) A duet for lovers in Italian opera
B) Improvised comic business invented and performed by traveling commedia troupes
C) Court entertainments based on myth or legend typically designed to pay an elaborate compliment
D) The name given for the actresses who played young boys on the French stage

Question 20

_____ French actors in the 17^th and 18^th centuries were hired according to "lines of business" - or the type of characters they traditionally played

Question 21

Why doesn't Hamlet kill Claudius sooner than he does? Was Hamlet wrong to hesitate? If so, why? If not, why not?

Question 22

In Tartuffe, a hypocrite is able to take advantage of Orgon's gullibility using shows of piety. At the end of the play, how has Orgon changed and in what respects may he be seen to remain the same?

Question 23

Describe the differences between the staging practices of the Elizabethans and French neoclassicists. How do the goals and cultural contexts of each group reflect their practices?

Question 24

Many scholars believe that Molière was influenced by the years his troupe spent sharing a theatre with a commedia dell arte troupe. Do you see any influence of commedia on Molière's Tartuffe? If so, in what ways? If not, why do you believe others have made this connection?