Global war
ROY STRONG
Theatre of the World Frances A. Yates (Routledge and Regan Paul 42s) Anyone who blasts the Shakespeare indus- try to the ground deserves a very special prize. As one who has dragged his weary way through a great deal of what falls off the production line, I have rarely encoun- tered a field in which so much is regularly manufactured from so little. Out of a few unreliable topographical engravings, a draw- ing from memory by a visiting Dutchman, and some building accounts, the theatre of the age of Shakespeare has been discovered in every style from Scottish baronial to 'twenties pub Tudor. For those who like a good old academic squabble, few subjects can beat this one, Dr Yates's Theatre of the World doesn't simply flutter the cobwebs in the major factories for the Bard, it swipes away with a knock-out blow, concealed in a velvet glove, most of the premises that have kept the industry going.
As with all her books, it is the basic idea which most excites her: what was the intel- lectual background and context of those who lived in Elizabethan arid Jacobean Eng- land and created this unique European phenomenon, the public theatre? As she modestly says, dissociating herself gently from the Shakespeare workers' union, her book `is not the work of a group, but of an individual pursuing in isolation certain argu- ments which run somewhat contrary to the accepted views'.
The book combines immense learning with the racy style of a thriller; we hurtle along complex lines of thought which prove that Vitruvian theories were widely known in Elizabethan England. Vitruvius, as revived and expounded by renaissance theorists, not only propagated the classical style but, more important still, a series of basic ideas about the nature of a building. These linked architecture to the whole renaissance world picture—buildings being erected according to musical proportions reflecting the heaven- ly music of the spheres, and based also on man the microcosm, the 'little world', occupying the nodal point on the great chain of being, who could sink to the beasts or rise to the starry firmament. That Eliza- bethan poetry and drama rest on these cos- mological assumptions is common know- ledge. That the Elizabethan stage in its physical presence should be similarly related is an idea sihich, once stated, seem, so ob- vious that it is curious no one has thought of it before. The reason is that no one could explain hors the Elizabethans knew about Vitruvius and, through him, the architec- tural principles of the age of humanism This is where Dr Yates conies in and sheds a brilliant shaft of light.
The tiio major characters in the plot are that strange Hermetic-Cabbalistic 'con- juror'. John Dee. and his successor. Robert Fludd. Both were concerned with what we call the Vitruvian subjects, that is those areas of actin ity in which an architect was held to he skilled, subjects concerned with mathematical number and proportion. John Dee's Pre/we to Euclid (1570) was aimed at the new rising artisan classes of Elizabethan England, interested in the science of mecha- nics. In it he expounds all the basic assump- tions of number, harmony and proportion in the Renaissance Pythagoro-Neoplatonic tradition and its relation to the theories of macrocosm and microcosm. And since, as Dr Yates demonstrates, the hook was widely popular, we can no longer maintain the old attitude that the Elizabethans were unfami- liar with the basic assumptions of renais- sance classical architecture. And Dee's ex- position is taken up in Jacobean England by his disciple. Robert Fludd.
Fludd's immense hook includes in the sec- tion on the art of memory an engraving of a stage inscribed Theatrum Orbis. the 'Theatre of the World' --- or, indeed, the Globe Theatre. Dr Yates argues with considerable conviction that this was Shakespeare's stage
with its gallery and entrances. Without doubt, it is the only known illustration in detail of a public stage; that it was a real and not an imaginary illustration is borne out by Fludd's statement that he used only actual buildings. The arguments over the exact interpretation of this engraving will obviously grind on for ever.
Instead of the usual heavy saga concern- ing moveable pageant cars, inn yards and baronial halls, Dr Yates starts with the thought context in which the English public theatre was seen at the time. A visitor in 1600 says the theatres were 'built of wood after the manner of the ancient Romans', and de Witt drew his famous illustration of the Swan because it resembled 'Roman work'. Dr Yates goes on to demonstrate that, contrary to what everyone had thought, the Elizabethan theatre in its 'idea' was a revival of the ancient theatre, as described by Vitru- vius and glossed by the Renaissance theor- ists from Alberti onwards. It was a theatre of sound, a 'theatre of the world', built on harmonious numerical proportions stem- ming from the central intellectual attitudes of the Renaissance, above all those of macrocosm and microcosm.
The theatre was basically circular—or comprised a circle placed within an octagon —as in the ancient theatres: on to this de- sign equilateral triangles might be inscribed and Vitruvian man with outstretched arms superimposed. It was open to the sky,• like ancient theatres. and had a star-spangled painted 'heavens' which might have been a bungled version of the vela of antiquity. But what is important is the idea — the attempt by patrons and more particularly by artisan- architects in the Euclid-Dee tradition to re-create a classical theatre in London.
The propagation of the Vitruvian sub- jects was given by both Dee and Fludd a strong magical tinge. They were concerned with 'power', with operating the cosmos to the ends of man through knowledge of num- ber and proportion, the key to the cosmic harmonies. Dr Yates points out that it is within this context that Inigo Jones emerges. He is an 'operator' in the Dee tradition, applying the principles in other spheres those of architecture and festivals—for, as she says, the new mechanics were first used less in the field of industry and science than in the theatre. It was on the court masques that James I and Charles I lavished their money. These made use of vast machines in which gods and goddesses floated; the har- mony of the cosmos was linked to the Divine Right of monarchs. The court spec- tacles were not popular theatres, rather theatres in which, by means of the 'magical' new machines, the good influences of the heavens might be drawn down on the Crown.
It is pertinent to note that Dr Yates is not alone in reaching her conclusions. If one sees Pericles at Stratford this year, Terry Hands's programme notes lean heavily on the work of Renaissance scholars connected with the Warburg Institute (to which Dr Yates belongs). In the production itself, one first sees the vast figure of Vitruvian man, arms outstretched within the cosmic circle. This fades to reveal a theatre of the world, a sounding box with doors below and doors above, walls in which windows and a gallery may be created at will. It works marvel- lously well for Pericles. How long will it be before the Royal Shakespeare Company gives us Shakespeare in the Theatre of the World? Let us hope we do not have to wait too long before Dr Yates's brilliant book reverberates on the theatre of today.
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