Incorporating music and dance into theatre

During the Baroque era, London was alive with the arts. Visual art, music, dance, theatre, and other forms of art were often used together to form a cohesive world for the audience to enjoy. Dance was important to society in general, as it was considered part of one's social repertoire to be able to perform dances. Often, music and/or dance were incorporated into a play itself or as another section of an evening's entertainment. Included below is an example of Baroque music and dancing from Jean-Baptiste Lully's opera "Acis et Galatée", composed ten years after The Country Wife in 1686.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvaYhS4ujbA


Baroque Dance: Chacone of Galathee. YouTube. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvaYhS4ujbA>.

Example of complete production look

Above is an example of what a performance may have looked like at a private residence. This picture is a rendering of a scene from L'Avare, a play by Moliere, who was a contemporary of William Wycherley. Note the use of the large space for acting, as well as the costumes, as they would have worn items then in fashion. The color palette is very representative of the time period, evoking a feeling of versailles with the white and gold combination. Also note how the women are dressed in light, feminine, innocent colors, while most of the men are dressed in dark, serious, manly shades. Lastly, examine how even when not in a theatre, large, open spaces were the desired playing places.


Orti, Gianni Dagli. "Scene De Theatre" Print by Anmin-Didot of a Scene From Moliere's "L'Avare" Digital image. Corbis.com. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. <http://www.corbisimages.com/Search#p=5&q=theatre&mt=1&cf=1&s=200>.

Use of Space

As seen in the plan for the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, the theatres popular in this time were very large. One wonderful aspect of the magnitude of these spaces, though, is how the designers still maintained the sense of intimacy seen in the not so long ago Elizabethan theatres. Though the size of the acting areas is huge, the stage still drastically thrusts out into the audience, providing an intimate atmosphere for the actors and audience members. With this size and shape of theatre, new scenery techniques were used, and old ones were improved upon. The use of permanent proscenium arches continued, and on a much grander scale. The wing and drop style of scenery was capitalized upon during this era. Large pieces of scenery were needed to fill the space, so painted wings and drops were used to quickly and easily change locale. In the video below, several theatres from around the Restoration era are examined in terms of space, shape, and scenery used in them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8vaTMiyJLg

History of Theatre 7 - The Arched Spectacle. YouTube. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8vaTMiyJLg>.

Competition in Theatre

Around the time Country Wife first opened, two men were competing for the favor of the King and the people of London. Thomas Killigrew and Sir William D'avenant were both theatre managers during this time, but it was Thomas Killigrew who was the manager to King Charles II. An intense competition existed between the two men, and Killigrew, who owned the Cockpit Theatre at Drury Lane, believed himself to be the only one entitled to run all of the theatre in England. So, he composed a patent, callled the Killigrew Patent. Below is a copy of the patent.

The Killigrew Patent. Thomas Killigrew, assignee. Patent. Print.

Same Old Chess Game

Using a theme of chess throughout a production is not a new idea, nor is it a poor choice. And why is that? How can so many productions use such a common theme and yet still work for all of them? Chess wonderfully mirrors society's constantly changing values, structures, and rankings, and this is a universal theme that stretches beyond a single play or culture, for that matter. A high school history teacher uses the game of chess to teach European history. This gives him the opportunity to explain an event to his students in more than one aspect of history. Society is made up of rules and moral codes that it expects all members to obey, and throughout history, one can find specific eras where the scrutiny of the follow-through of those rules is much stronger. The Restoration theatre and the Country Wife are set in one of these such times, and so fits perfectly with the strict guidelines of the world of chess.

"Chess: Just a game, or rules of society?." Curriculum Review 39.5 (2000): 8. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 8 Mar. 2011.

Queen of the Game

In the original versions of chess in India, the game was based purely on military strategy, so all of the pieces corresponded to the different components and people of an army. But around the time of Queen Isabella of Castille, the look and ideas of chess began to change. In the year 1000 in Europe, the piece of the King's adviser was morphed into the Queen piece. In her monograph, The Birth of a Chess Queen: A History, Marilyn Yalom discusses how this change coincided with the increase in power of women in the world. "Yet, from the twelfth century onward, she seems to have acquired special value, far beyond her limited mobility on the board…The heightened authority invested in queenship during the course of the Middle Ages spilled over to the little queen on the board and paved the way for her to become the game’s mightiest piece...It should not surprise us that the queen’s official transformation into the strongest piece on the board coincided with the reign of Isabella of Castile (1451-1504)". In the world of The Country Wife, men make the rules and women must abide by them. However, under the noses of the men, the women have created their own set of rules and manage to completely dupe the men. So in reality, the women rule the world in which the characters live. In modern day chess as well, the Queen is the most powerful player on the board. 


Yalom, Marilyn. Birth of the Chess Queen: a History. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 2004. Print.

The Rule of Charles II

After Charles II's father, King Charles I, was beheaded during the English Civil War, Oliver Cromwell took over as head of state and created a very strict and regimented England, removing the arts and theatres from society's reach. When Charles II came back to England to claim his place as King, an extensive series of reforms occurred in England. One of the most well-known of these was the return of Charles's beloved theatres to the public. Charles was able to reestablish England as a powerful and capable country with a strong monarchy. The country and society in London that Charles helped create lasted twenty four years, creating a thriving environment for theatre artists to flourish in. Below is a flow chart outlining the steps Charles II took to create such a world and how things shifted after his death in  1685. 

"The English Revolution From the Restoration Monarchy to the Glorious Revolution (1660-1688) - The Flow of History." The Flow of History. Web. 8 Mar. 2011. <http://www.flowofhistory.com/[menupathalias]/fc96c>.

Theatre space

During the time that Country Wife was first performed, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, was arguably the most popular english-speaking playhouse in the world, and the first performance of the show was played by the King's Company in January of 1675. This was the second version of the Theatre Royal after the first burned down in 1674. As can be seen in the picture above, the stage was very large, and was used extensively for The Country Wife and the other shows of the period. At this point in theatre, everything was over the top and extravagant, in stark contrast to the ban and censorship of the theatre and arts in general under the rule of Cromwell.

Theater Royal. Digital image. Web. 8 Mar. 2011. <http://www.doakisland.com/school/Restoration&18th/TheaterRoyal.gif>.

Comedy of Manners Man

William Wycherley was considered rather lewd when The Country Wife was first performed, for scandalous things in the play such as the China scene. As a playwright, Wycherley wrote many plays typical of the time period, in the style of Restoration Theatre and specifically the comedy of manners. The point of the comedy of manners was to poke fun at society's rigid moral structure, and if done successfully, audiences should have left theatres having laughed at themselves as well. Wycherley wrote in this style very efficiently by creating archetype characters with different but distinctive personalities symbolic of society's standards in the period. These would have been easily recognized by their word choice, and more importantly, the asides spoken about the characters by the other characters. Below is a link for a new contemporary film called "Boogie Woogie" It is described as a modern day comedy of manners, which fits, as the plot centers around a group of people searching for love and playing each other's emotions like pieces in a game. Another feature of the comedy of manners plays is the theme that in order to find true love, one must expect a miracle or break the rules laid forth by society. This idea can also be seen in the trailer for the movie.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SzNnR6OElw


Boogie Woogie - Official Trailer. YouTube/Boogie Woogie. Web. 8 Mar. 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SzNnR6OElw>.

Love is Just a Game

The Country Wife by William Wycherley deals with societal pressures and games. The characters of the show are all involved in a game of manipulation of emotions, almost a giant chess match. So, this production will be treated just as such in the manners, concepts, and designs, to create the feeling of a societal game of chess. According to Oxford Reference Online, chess is "a board game of strategic skill for two players, played on a chequered board on which each playing piece is moved according to precise rules. The object is to put the opponent's king under a direct attack from which escape is impossible (checkmate)."
In the Country Wife, each character has a different role in the game, dictated not by their actions, but how society forces them to act. For example, Horner plays the role of one of the Kings, because he maintains so much control over the other characters and is so vital to the continuation of the game. In the world of the play, rules are everything, but it is those who break them that keep a balance between the rules and what is desired.

"chess noun"  Oxford Dictionary of English. Edited by Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2010. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Central Washington University.  11 March 2011  <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t140.e0141910>