English Renaissance theatre covers English drama from 1558 to 1642, incorporating Elizabethan theatre under Elizabeth I, Jacobean theatre under James I, and Caroline theatre under Charles I. William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Ben Jonson were its most prominent playwrights, but hundreds of other writers helped create a remarkably varied dramatic culture.
Theatre skills were cultivated in grammar schools, where students memorized and performed Latin and English texts. Choir schools supplied boy actors for court and public performances, while universities and the Inns of Court developed academic dramas, masques, debates, and performances influenced by rediscovered classical works.
Commercial theatre expanded after London authorities restricted playing within the city. Permanent playhouses arose in surrounding liberties, beginning with The Theatre in 1576 and followed by the Curtain, Rose, Swan, Globe, Fortune, and Red Bull. These public theatres generally had timber-and-plaster, three-level structures surrounding an open central yard. Wealthier spectators watched from galleries or even from seats beside the stage, while poorer viewers stood in the pit. Smaller enclosed theatres, including Blackfriars, offered artificial lighting and a more elite atmosphere.
Acting companies worked through repertory. They performed different plays almost every day, used role doubling to manage limited casts, and relied on all-male performers, with boys playing female characters. Scenery was sparse, so costumes conveyed setting, identity, and social status.
Playwrights wrote histories, tragedies, comedies, city comedies, tragicomedies, masques, pastorals, and biblical dramas. Many collaborated, earned modest fees, and surrendered ownership once a company purchased a play. Only a fraction of the roughly 3,000 plays written for the stage survived in print.
In 1642, amid civil war and Puritan opposition, Parliament ordered public plays to cease. Some drolls continued during the Interregnum, but full theatrical performance returned only after the Restoration in 1660.