The production of Julius Caesar gives a lot of ideas for staging as it has various parts throughout the play where levels and audience interaction can be used(The picture to the left is of how the stage was set up for the current production). Not too much is known about the original staging or the production because of the lack of documentation in that era, luckily a passing tourist and diarist made an entry about seeing the production and remarking upon it. From the trip with my class to the globe to go and see the production there I know that in a more modern representation they used Mark Anthony's podium as a very court like box, they included the audience at the beginning by bringing large boxes and yelling about Caesar in support of him. Before the show we were given a small talk about the Globe and how the original production might have been staged, there is the thought that for the speeches to the people of Rome that are spoken by both Mark Anthony and Caesar might have been performed from the balcony on the stage being a very ideal place to address not only the actors playing the people of Rome but also the audience and the way the stage is set out it would also allow their voice to be carried throughout the theatre. The play is based upon the original Julius Caesar and how he ran Rome and his assassination after his friends and advisors felt he as one man held too much power, Shakespeare found his information initially about Caesar, Brutus and Anthony from Plutarch's Lives in North's English translation. Shakespeare also used books like the bible for inspiration and using his own experiences from having been on stage himself as well as writing created a play that was not only visually pleasing for the audience but gave the actors so many strong emotions to play on and use to enhance the play.The play was important because what had happened with Julius Caesar was still very prevalent to the Elizabethan public it was a common tale and to have that brought to them and shown as a production would have been talked about. The fact that there wouldn't have been any set for the play was quite interesting considering a lot of the public would have had preconceived ideas about how it would have looked, the point of no set meant that it would be a lot easier for the average person to interpret it how they liked and make the show what they wanted to. Props such as swords and letters would have been used to bring the violent element of the play to light when Caesar gets assassinated and using the Mark Anthony speech when he is talking about the will to draw the audience to a focus point. Costumes would have been used to show the different levels of status in the play between the characters and illustrate the personality of a character too giving the audience a clear idea of where each character sat within the hierarchy of the play. The political themes of the play lie in that it was better for Rome when they had a monarch, it was a way for Shakespeare to suck up to Queen Elizabeth and gain her approval for his work. It also meant that the audience would be thinking that it was a good thing that they had a monarch, and weren't letting history repeat itself. The politics involved in this play were purely to get a lot of favour from the people who held the power of it's day, it would also ensure that William Shakespeare had free clearance to keep putting his plays out there.
The theatre in Elizabethan times was a real social thing it was available to all levels of society, the levels were stills shown within the theatre not only as to where people sat but also in the prices of the tickets. The different levels of seating were divided as such, the yard is for the standing public who would come on the day, the lower upper and middle galleries and the Lord's rooms. The yard would have had the everyday men and women, the galleries would have housed those who could afford the seating and were higher up in the class system, the Lord's rooms were for the Lord's of the courts to be seen in their extravagant outfits, they were situated to the sides of the stage to allow the public to see their finery and show off their status. Shakespeare was alive and working during the reign of two monarch's, Elizabeth I and James VI and I. The religious differences between these two times changed dramatically, the country went from Elizabeth I's time where most nobles were still Catholic and so in turn were a lot of the commoners, even though the protestant's were beginning to gain more support and so the Queen showed her dislike for them. When James VI and I took the throne in 1603 the puritans began show their want for reform in the country's religion, in 1604 James VI and I called a conference at Hampton Court to allow the Court to hear what Puritan leaders had to say about their religion and so began their climb in the world of religion.
Theatre has changed in many ways since the days of Shakespeare, it has evolved to allow almost anything to be performed without having the writer beheaded for a treasonus theme in the play. In the Elizebethan era only men were allowed on stage because it was not respectable for a woman to be on the stage, now we have not only women on the stage but women playing the male roles, I recently saw a production of Henry IV that was an all female cast and set in a prison of modern times. The price of a seat in a theatre now costs a lot more than it used to and most wanted seats have gone from being behind the stage to be seen and admired in all your finery, to the front row of the upper circle to gain the full view of the stage. Ticket prices used to range from 1d to 5d which would now translate to roughly £0.52 to £2.61 which really wasn't much whereas now we would pay between £30 and £100 for a good west end theatre ticket. Plays in the late 1500's and early 1600's would only play for at most a few days and then a new one was expected of the public, now we have plays that will run for several months at a time and even musicals that have been running for decades. There are more things for the public to do now rather than just going to the pub and the theatre, the theatres now also are indoors whereas the shakesperian theatres were outdoors and because of lighting were only performed during the day (candles were dangerous with thatched rooves and wooden structures) and sometimes due to weather conditions they would postpone shows as with no roof a lot of their audience would have been uninterested in being drenched at what is supposed to be a fun event.
This is a link to a Youtube video that explains the outline of the play.
The link to the RSC website
