What happened to the Theatre companies during the plague?
Playhouses were closed during plague outbreaks. Crowd control was one of the few effective ways of keeping the death toll down.” The theatres were dark for months and many actors and writers, including Shakespeare and the King’s Men, fled London to tour. The theatres were closed at various times.
What happened to London’s theaters in 1593?
Plague had posed an ongoing danger in England since before the time of Shakespeare’s birth, but a particularly devastating outbreak of the disease swept the country in 1593 and 1594. During especially intense epidemics, the Privy Council would exercise its authority as the queen’s advisors to close all public theaters.
Why did Shakespeare Company lose their theater?
The Globe, which opened in 1599, became the playhouse where audiences first saw some of Shakespeare’s best-known plays. In 1613, it burned to the ground when the roof caught fire during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII.
What does Shakespeare do when the theatres closed in 1593?
William Shakespeare’s poetic output In 1593-4, with the theatres closed, Shakespeare wrote lengthy poems: Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, who was nineteen in 1593.
Why were the Puritans against theatrical performances and performers?
The Puritans disapproved of many things in Elizabethan society, and one of the things they hated most was the theater. Their chief complaint was that secular entertainments distracted people from worshipping God, though they also felt that the theater’s increasing popularity symbolized the moral iniquity of city life.
Why did the Globe Theatre close in 1592?
Between 1592 and 1594, when the theatres were frequently closed because of the plague, he wrote his earliest poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
When did the plague hit London closing the theaters?
1593
A year or so before Shakespeare wrote “Romeo and Juliet,” a powerful plague struck London in 1593. Theatres closed for 14 months and 10,000 Londoners died, says Columbia University professor and author James Shapiro.
Why did Puritans oppose the theatres?