Evolution of the Audience: Changing Role in Dramatic Performances

This essay explores the changing role of the audience in drama, examining how audience participation and expectations have evolved over time. It begins by discussing Shakespeare's Hamlet and how the play engaged the Elizabethan audience through references to religion, medicine, and contemporary social issues. The essay then shifts to the Jacobean era, focusing on the rise of masques and the unique participatory role of the audience, particularly in royal court performances. Finally, it delves into Brecht's alienation effect, as seen in Mother Courage and Her Children and Edward Bond's Lear, which aimed to create a critical, rather than emotional, engagement with the audience. The essay illustrates how playwrights have adapted their works to influence and interact with audiences, reflecting the social, political, and cultural contexts of their times.

Running head- CHANGING ROLE OF AUDIENCE IN DRAMA
CHANGING ROLE OF AUDIENCE IN DRAMA
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Introduction
Audience means a group of people in any kind of performance or show who come to see
any work of art or sports or theatre and such activities. The role of audience is like that of
consumer of a product. Without audience, there can be no performance. Television and movie
audience differ from theatre audience because screen audiences are passive audience. Their
responses do not have any impact on the performances (Heim 2015). However, it is not so with
theatre audience. They are active participant of theatre their responses have an impact over the
actors enacting on stage. In a piece of literature like dramas, the playwright writes a drama
keeping in his mind his audiences. The audiences are the primary critic of any art. The
audiences’ role and demands keep changing over the years. For example, Shakespeare wrote his
plays keeping in mind the then monarch of England queen Elizabeth.
William Shakespeare is one of the most renowned playwrights to have ever lived even
until this day. One of his most famous plays was, Hamlet Prince of Denmark. The play was
believed to have been first performed in 1601 and it remains well known even to this day.
Shakespeare’s dramas are meant to be performed on stage and so was Hamlet. Shakespeare’s
Hamlet called the Mona Lisa of drama by TS Eliot is one of the most widely acclaimed and
renowned drama on the English stage (Bennett 2013). Throughout the play, the audience
connects themselves with the protagonist prince hamlet. His wit, intelligence compel the
audience to feel sympathy for the young prince. Shakespeare’s plays were written and performed
to influence the audience and provoke their thoughts and debate and the cultural and social
events of the contemporary age. Hamlet was Shakespeare reflection of the issues of the
contemporary times in the Elizabethan age and politics.

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Hamlet’s conversation with Claudius in act IV scene III was meant to directly target the
contemporary Elizabethan audience by the repeated allusions to God, contemporary medical
science and religion was a vital aspect of the Elizabethan England. In Hamlet’s repeated
reference to God in act IV was important to show that the people of the age still believed in God
whether catholic or protestant (Boecker 2015). Due to the age’s interest revolving around the
humors, the melancholic psychology and character of hamlet further attracted the audiences. The
audience could relate to the message of war in the play due to the constant threat of war in the
contemporary England. A clash between catholic and protestant was popular in the Elizabethan
age (Frye 2014). Queen Elizabeth when she came to power banned all religious plays because
though she was a protestant her country was not. In Hamlet, Shakespeare avoids any kind of tiff
and disagreement within the audience refers to God in general. By doing this, he does not offend
the queen because it is not a religious play. During the Elizabethan age, the people were
fascinated with psychology, medicines, and its impact on men. In hamlet, the humors are given
importance (Gregory 2017). It was believed that the proportion of humors in a human body
affected a man’s temperament. The four humors were blood, choler, phlegm and melancholy.
When blood was excess it made sanguine, those with excess choler choleric, too much phlegm
phlegmatic and excessive melancholy made a man melancholic (Charney 2015). This explained
that when one men had too much of an element his characteristics will have the traits of that
element. In the play hamlet comes across as a melancholic person, which is evident from his
psychotic behavior towards others. Claudius’ speech in act IV also clarifies it that he too is aware
of the four humors and their impact on a man’s nature. In the Elizabethan era, the economic and
social conditions of England were important in determining the state of the country. Fighting
over money, power and land was the social norm. Constant power struggle with France and

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Spain was an integral part of foreign policy of England for which England had to maintain army
and lands. This is reflected in the play where hamlet talks about two thousand men and twenty
thousand ducats. Further many quotes in the drama talks about the meaninglessness of war and
how unnecessary wars are which cost the lives of innocent men for money and peace (Gibbons
2017). This reflects the then England’s views on war and power struggle between England,
France and Spain. Issues like religion, medicine and war expressed through hamlet fascinated the
audience because it reflected the contemporary important issues. The soliloquies in hamlet are a
special theatre device that was used by dramatist to let the audience know about the character in
detail (Anderson 2018). Since there are supposed to be no listener on the stage during a soliloquy
there are no barriers and the characters can express his real feelings in front of the audience.
Hamlet becomes a confessor to the audience where he reveals his inner thoughts, which make it
evident that he is a lonely and melancholic character and lives in a world of solitude. The
soliloquies are therefore important in the play as they let the audience understand the character of
their prince.
During the Jacobean age, pastoral literature grew popular in England. Pastoral plays dealt
with shepherds and livestock around open land. It portrayed a rural life and rural characters. The
depiction of ideal rural life was a way to escape from the contemporary corruption and vices of
the contemporary age (Anderson 2018). It was an attempt to return to the age on simplicity and
innocence. The masque was becoming popular in this time in England though in Italy it
developed much before. A masque was a kind of performance, which involved dancing, and
music and singing with elaborate state and costumes. In these plays towards the end of the play,
the audience joined the actors and danced together in the final dance. Masque was the only form
of dramatic performance in which the audience played a complex role (Ribner 2017). During the

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rule of king, James masques developed as a chief dramatic presentation (Carr 2015). They were
staged on important occasions and the audiences were chiefly the royal family, diplomats,
wealthy aristocrats and courtiers. These masques often ended with elaborate dance that brought
the audience to dance with the actors. More often, these masques were accompanied by banquets
The most important member of a masque was the king followed by queen, Prince Henry,
Prince Charles and Princess Elizabeth followed by the other aristocrats. The royal family was not
just the audience but played chief role in the production of the play. Henry VIII was the first king
of England who took part in a masque in 1512. Queen Anne’s performance in the masques
offended many. The audience blends with the performers in masques not just by dancing but also
by several other ways (Sturgess 2017). Just like the masques, the audience too was elaborately
dressed to signify their social status. By sitting close to the king in all glory, they too performed
the same role like the masques, which was of obedience to the king and glorifying the king
(Loxley 2016). The masque audience consisted of both men and women of high social strata and
education and intelligence level. This was why masque used figures from mythologies and
allegories. The masques were a sharp distinction from the Elizabethan drama which were played
outdoors and were accessible to the commoners. During the time Shakespeare wrote his play The
Tempest, queen Elizabeth the daughter of king James was about to get married. It is believed this
special occasion led Shakespeare to include a masque in the play where Prospero celebrates the
marriage of his daughter Miranda with Prince Ferdinand. Ben Jonson used the masque theme in
many of his plays. He was the most renowned of the Jacobean dramatists. He wrote several
masques in the court of King James I like The Masque of Blackness on the request of Queen
Anne of Denmark who urged all the masquers should be disguised as Africans. Queen Anne was
one of the performers in it along with her court ladies who appeared in black face makeup. The

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play dealt with the theme of fairness which was considered as more beautiful than black skin
color. John Milton’s Comus was another example of a typical masque in every form. Milton as a
masque honoring chastity used the traditional song and dance feature of masque.
Next in discussion would be the alienation effect of Brecht found in Mother Courage and
Her Children and Edward Bond’s Lear. Edward Bond’s Lear written in 1971 is still known as
one of the most controversial and violent plays ever staged. As many wrongly believes, Lear is
not an adoption of Shakespeare’s King Lear but it Bond’s comment on the play. Bond’s writings
not just aimed at recreational reading but his writings questioned the social and political
conditions of the society and he focused on political unrest in his works (Gale 2016). In Lear, he
exposed the political revolutions of the time. In the play, Bond tries to show the relationship of
men with the society they live in. In the play bond uses the structure of an epic theatre developed
by Brecht. This structure develops from a sequence of back-to-back scenes like in Lear. This
technique of employing a large number of character and a constant movement from scene to
scene prevents the audience from being emotionally involved with the character. The lack of
emotional connection between the audience and the characters is known as Brecht’s alienation
effect where the audience is continuously reminded that they are watching a play and it is not
reality. As seen in Lear, the characters frequently interact and converse with the audience instead
of one another. This kind of technique known as “aside” is also employed in alienation effect.
The excruciating torture that Warrington faces in the hands of Bodice and Fontanella is an
exaggerated form of cruelty far removed from the real world. The purpose and aim of the
alienation effect was primary to compel the audience to make them use their intellect in judging
the theme and action of the play instead of their emotion. Bertolt Brecht developed the alienation
effect or distantiation effect or the V effect in his political dramas to combat with the emotional

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manipulation of the audience and instead used surprising jolt or entertainment. This was done to
break the ongoing trend of emotional attraction of audience by beautiful set, natural lights,
emotional arousing acting (Brecht 2016). Unlike traditional dramas, epic theatre or the alienation
effect employs large number of characters; the plot is developed over a large number of scenes
and takes place over a large period of time. The alienation effect originally known in German as
the verfremdungseffekt is a cinematic and theatrical device that does not let the audience lose
themselves passively in the character of the actor, which consciously makes them judge the
characters critically like an observer. Brecht developed the term. The audience does not enjoy the
illusion of being the unseen omniscient spectator in this. The direct interaction of the character
with the audience breaks down the illusion and results in the alienation effect.
Brecht’s Mother Courage and her children is known as one of the finest examples of his
alienation effect. However mother courage being a tragic play that leads to catharsis, this is
exactly what the A effect tries to avoid because Brecht’s alienation effect is anti-Aristotelian and
opposed to the tradition of tragedy which stirs the audience emotionally (Brecht and Brecht
2014). A play covers a large time span in its twelve scenes from 1624-1636 and runs across wide
locations like Poland, Saxony and Sweden. The scenes are episodic which serves the purpose of
the technique where mother courage’s interests at different moments of the play reflect her
feelings of that particular time (Held 2017.). For example, in scene three, she abandons all
natural feelings and in the very next scene four she is prepared to voice her anger for the
soldiers’ ruthlessness. The bare stage in the play shocked the audience who were too accustomed
in seeing well-decorated realistic sets. Brecht turned on all the lights in the set and the stage was
flooded with light. This was a sharp contrast to the traditional style of lightning of the stage as
per the moments being played on the stage (Brecht 2015). This was done consciously by Brecht

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to make the audience realize that they are watching a play where they are supposed to use their
critical observation. The presence of songs and musicals also add to the breakdown of illusion
since it does not let the audience connect to the otherwise tragic drama.
The next drama that the essay would analyze is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and
its shattering of the fourth wall. Modern drama signifies the struggle of humans for survival and
freedom. Written in 1953 Waiting for Godot is the beginning of modern drama. It is a
masterpiece of the modern existence breaking all barriers. The modern age dramatist broke away
with several conventions and traditions of the past in every aspect of literature and art. The forth
wall is a performance convention where an invisible wall separates the actors from the audience.
While the audience is assumed to see through the wall into the actor, the actor is believed not to
be able to see the audience. The actors ignore the presence of the audience, and are completely
involved with their dramatic world. The breaking of the fourth wall violates the conventions by
directly addressing the audience. The forth wall was frequently shattered in Elizabethan
restoration drama when actors ran through the audience. In those plays, the actors directly
interacted with the audience through asides, soliloquies and monologues. Shattering the fourth
wall is when the characters in the play acknowledge the fictionality of their characters, by ways
like directly or indirectly addressing the audience. They may also interact with the creator. By
addressing the creator, the characters indirectly address the audience v as well. This is known as
breaking the fourth wall, which is mostly used for comic purpose (Davis 2015). Waiting for
Godot is one of the most meaningful plays of the 20th century. Waiting for Godot defeated the
theory of natural liberalism that was dominating the theatre at the time. The naturalistic theatre
put great emphasis on the naturalistic depiction of the stage. Waiting for Godot provided an
empty stage, a tree and two tramps waiting and only waiting throughout the play. The empty

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stage was the symbol of the passage of time, of the passing of life, of hope and hopelessness, of
despair and companionship and of loneliness (Wright 2016). Destructing the concept of the
fourth wall that separates the actors from the audience Beckett moves from the realism of the
theatre. He creates scenes that fracture the lines between the representation and the reality. He
draws the audience into the theatre by blurring the boundary lines between the reality and
representation making the play more powerful. In waiting for Godot, Vladimir and estragon
decides to move on but then they do not move and they again want to move. This happens
repeatedly. This unending circular loop makes the audience feel like they are seeing the same
thing repeatedly as if a hallucination. The open-endedness of the play waiting for Godot adds to
the timelessness of the play. It is Beckett’s way of not giving the play any resolution or an
ending. The structure of the play remains static and stagnant (Chothia 2016). There are no
developments in the plot. There are no conflicts. Beckett smashes every dramatic conventions in
the play. Nobody comes or goes nothing happens in the play. The character keeps waiting for the
arrival of Godot who never comes. The frustration and hopelessness, the bareness and futility of
the modern age where every faith is questioned, every belief are shattered the waiting for Godot
seems like the only hope for survival for the two trumps. In this context it is also important to
mention the 2014 Oscar winning movie Birdman which used this technique when the characters
moved directly into the audience and delivered their speech from amidst the audience.
Conclusion
The role and importance of audience in a performance is of vital importance all across the
ages. From the medieval age when the audiences were mere spectators to the performances, to
the Jacobean age when the audience were brought in along with the actors to participate in the
masque, the importance of the audience increased in theatre (Leggatt 2014). The audience was

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no more a dumb observer to the play. In the modern age, the role of the audience underwent a
sweeping change. With the development of the alienation effect by Brecht, the audience was no
longer a receiver at the other end. However, they were expected to analyze and examine the
characters in the play and judge the themes and the plot using not the emotional faculties but also
their intelligence.

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