Theater can be a form of literature because it tells a story, one that performers act out rather than simply narrate. The earliest records of theatrical performances come from ancient Egypt beginning around 2500 BCE. Like later forms of theater, these performances emerged as part of religious rituals for the gods. They could include dance, music, and other elements meant to please the gods as well as entertain and educate the audience. A passion play is a play about the life of a god, and the earliest recorded Egyptian passion play tells the tale of the god Osiris.
Greek Theater
Western theater history began with the ancient Greeks around the 6th century BCE. Before formal, written plays emerged, the ancient Greeks performed rituals to honor Dionysus, god of wine and fertility, and to express gratitude for a bountiful harvest. Gradually, the theatrical process became more formal as people built amphitheaters to house the plays. Actors performed scripted plays for the public, and often wore stacked shoes to appear larger as well as large masks to depict their characters so that patrons could see them from a distance. The masks traditionally depicted faces appropriate to the type of play. The two main types of Greek plays were tragedies and comedies. Sophocles, best known for his play Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King), was one of the most important tragic playwrights at the time.
Roman Theater
As Rome rose to power in the 3rd century BCE, the Romans copied and adapted much of Greek culture as their own. This was true in theater; amphitheaters and plays were almost direct copies of Greek models. Plautus and Seneca the Younger were two successful Roman playwrights. The comedies of Plautus featured stock characters and sexual intrigue. The tragic plays of Seneca were traditionally read to small, private audiences rather than performed in public.
Medieval Theater
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During the Medieval period in Europe from approximately the 5th century CE to the 14th century CE, the Catholic Church frowned upon formal theater, but people continued to perform folk plays celebrating pagan festivals of seasonal birth and rebirth. To discourage these pagan practices and to interest and educate an illiterate audience about Christian ideas, the Church began incorporating theater into the Mass and liturgical drama was born. Mystery plays depicted Biblical events such as the Nativity, while miracle plays depicted the lives of saints. Liturgical drama became so popular that eventually, performances moved outside of churches. Traveling companies of professional players performed these plays in innyards and other public spaces. Morality plays, dark allegorical plays which in many ways were sermons acted out on stage, also appeared.
Renaissance Theater
The period known as the Renaissance (or "rebirth") in Europe began around the 14th century CE, primarily in Italy. A renewed preoccupation with Greek and Roman artistic accomplishments resulted in an increasing interest in artistic expression focusing on humanity rather than religion. This focus was inevitably felt in the theater, which again became a form of popular entertainment. New theatrical forms appeared, beginning in Italy, including elaborate pageants or processions as well as the beginnings of opera. Commedia dell'arte or "theater of the professionals", was probably the most popular form of Italian Renaissance theater. Commedia dell'arte focused on the actors rather than the script. Actors specialized in playing stock characters, such as Pantalone, a miserly merchant, and a mischievous servant called Pedrolino, and wore half masks to identify their characters. The actors worked from a plot outline and then improvised as they went along. Commedia dell'arte focused on comic routines featuring song, dance, and acrobatics.
Elizabethan Theater
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The theater that emerged in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603) was one of the highlights of the Elizabethan age, one of the most creative periods in the history of theater. The queen and her court sponsored theatrical performances. At a time when religion was a very divisive issue and the first feelings of English nationalism appeared, playwrights avoided controversial religious topics and frequently found their subject matter in the history of England. The theater was both entertainment and an expression of national pride.
The three most important types of plays were histories, tragedies, and comedies. Playwrights took ideas from classical and medieval sources and freely adapted them for their audiences. They believed poetry was the appropriate form for artistic expression, but rhymed poetry did not lend itself to the natural phrasing needed for acting. As a result, blank verse, a form of unrhymed poetry, became the standard style of writing for Elizabethan plays.
The most famous Elizabethan playwright, indeed the most famous of all playwrights, was William Shakespeare. He was a partner in the Chamberlains' Men professional acting company and wrote plays for the company. He frequently took old plays and poems and revised them to create some of the finest plays ever written. Performers continue to stage his tragedies, like Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, and comedies, like A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest, today. The two most important Elizabethan playwrights after Shakespeare were Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson.
Restoration Theater
In 1642, Puritans gained control of the English government. They considered all forms of "frivolous" entertainment to be immoral, and legally closed public theaters. Although private play performances continued, they banned public performances. When Puritan control of the British government ended in 1660, the Stuart monarch King Charles II ascended the throne and transformed the British court. King Charles II was well known for his lavish and immoral lifestyle, and his tastes permeated high society. When the king ordered theaters to reopen, plays reflected society's new values and tended to be comedies that featured witty dialogue and sexual intrigue. For the first time, women appeared on the stage as performers.
Modern Theater
The Industrial Revolution, which reached its height in the 19th century CE, helped change the face of theater. Playwrights wrote plays that both reflected the values of the day and openly criticized the inequities occurring in a newly industrialized and urbanized world. A form of theater called realism focused on stories featuring middle-class characters and attempted to depict life as it really was. Naturalism in the theater was a form of realism focusing on the lower classes; it tended to be more clinical in its approach, and naturalistic plays were dark and pessimistic.
Experimentation with new ideas also abounded in the theater, and performers sometimes did away with the traditional shape of the theater with a stage in front of an audience in favor of avant-garde performances. Also, playwrights crafted highly symbolic plays that did not feature traditional plot structures. They frequently created works that commented, often negatively, on social issues of the day and the place of humanity in society. These trends have continued well into the 20th and 21st centuries.
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