Shakespeare's Audience

Today we normally study Shakespeare by reading a written text. However, we must remember that Shakespeare wasn’t writing for today’s audience. He was writing mainly for the mass population who attended his plays. Many of them could not read or write. Hence, it was unlikely that these ‘groundlings’ as they were known then, understood the difficult verse passages in Shakespeare’s plays. However, many researchers assumed that they continued attending the performances because they enjoyed the glamour and glitter that Shakespeare depicted in his plays through many scenes illustrating the life of the royalty or the rich. Many researchers have also hypothesized that the experience of visiting a theatre and watching a play during the Elizabethan period was quite different from our present day experiences. The audiences during Shakespeare’s time were thought to be very active and unlikely to be as quiet as modern audiences are. Rather, it is believed that they behaved like the crowds at modern day open-air rock concerts, where they were able to buy food and drinks from peddlers, exchange the news of the day, and boo and hiss the actors. In general, the audience back then could be very noisy and rowdy rather than being expected to be polite and quiet.

Apart from the commoners, Shakespeare’s audience was also made up of many other social classes. This was unique, as it was still an age where the nobility held great control over the commoners. However, the Globe Theatre became a sort of ‘democratic institution’ because it admitted anyone who paid, be they rich or poor, royalty or commoner. During Shakespeare’s time, public attitude towards the theatre also changed greatly. It was once considered disreputable and frowned on by the Puritan authorities who feared that people would be distracted from their religious teachings by the theatre. However, even Queen Elizabeth herself eventually patronised the Shakespearean theatre, hence making it a true microcosm of society.

Due to the mixture of social classes, we now see why Shakespeare’s plays are so diverse. He uses bawdy, simple and funny language that was also mixed with lengthy passages of verse that resembles poetry in order to appeal to both the commoners and nobility in the audience. Also, his plays frequently brought up the idea of religion and pagan ideas as well as different scenes of royal life or commoner life to appeal to the different social groups in his audience as well. This is definitely something filmmakers can learn from today, making their plays interesting yet accessible for all audiences!