st __THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__ AMPHITHEATRES, JEUX-DE-PAUME, AND CORRALES Evelyn Furquim Werneck Lima Introduction1 social connotation, which is one of the focuses of this essay as we are considering theatre Public places of performance in the late sixteenth architectural designs as products of the societies and early seventeenth century in London, Madrid, who have built and used them.3 He distinguishes 2 and Paris were “found spaces” adapted from older type from pattern, considering that the word type structures which had different architectural presents not so much the image of a thing to copy meanings, and they established dissimilar or completely imitate, but rather the idea of an possibilities in the relationship between the stage element which ought itself to serve as a rule for and the audience in the Golden Age. This essay aims the model. Type denotes the idea or the intention to discuss the basic differences and similarities for the construction of a structure. While model between types of public playhouses in the means an object that should be repeated as it is, aforementioned cities from 1580 to 1680, examined type is an object according to which each artist from the perspective of the semiotics of space and can conceive works of art or architecture that cultural history, in order to understand the symbolic may have no mutual resemblance but which and social relations that may be drawn from the follow the same principles.4 structural principles of their architecture. Subsequently, Argan developed Quincy’s theories Along with the concepts expressed by semiotics of and defined type as a scheme that allows space, I consider in this essay Giulio Carlo Argan’s reducing a number of formal variants to a theory of type. Research was directed to formal supposed common structure and, in this sense, analysis of the selected playhouses based on the Italian theorist applied the notion of type to international theorists who have published on the the idea of the form of a building as embodied in features and forms of theatre architecture in the a structural scheme that may feature variations. Golden Age, often obtained from the few existing He identified three categories of type, and here I primary sources, such as contracts signed to use the first one, which considers the refurbish or build the playhouses, old engravings, configuration of buildings.5 panoramas, account books of the theatre companies, and some rare descriptions of the The institutionalized theatre for "literate” society, theatres in newspaper publications, among gradually being removed from the streets, was others. I do not intend to shed a new light on generally left to its own devices and gave rise to different features for amphitheatres, jeux de the division between literate and popular theatre, paume, or corrales but to establish a comparative which is still in evidence, in spite of many study among those types concerning semiotics controversies about how to draw lines of and social aspects in each capital. separation.6 As a legacy of the Middle Ages, theatre invaded plazas, markets, and other urban The French theorist of the Age of Enlightenment, spaces in many European cities. However, in some Quatremère de Quincy - who tried to transform cities, playhouses were built or adapted either as architecture into something that could be a rectangular prism or as a polygonal arena for classified - thoroughly described and registered permanent use. The proscenium arch theatre the formal characteristics of buildings and from the Renaissance and Baroque remained the established different categories not only based on “literate pattern” and was mainly applied to forms but also, above all, based on use or function. Quincy’s concept of type carries a strong 3 See A,-C. Quatremère de Quincy, Encyclopedie Methodique - 1 This essay was developed based on research supported by CNPq Architecture, Volume 3, pt.2 (Liège, 1825), 555. (PQ 1-C grant) and CAPES (Senior Fellowship). Thanks to the 4 Ibid. collaboration of undergraduate students Edson Santiago, Marina 5 Giulio C. Argan, Projet et destin. Art, architecture, urbanisme, Nogueira, Silas Pinto and Luna Santos. (Paris, 1993), 59 2 A “Found Space " means a space not idealized to be a theatre but 6 Marvin Carlson, Places of Performance: The Semiotics of Theatre that can be used for the theatrical spectacle. Architecture, (Ithaca/London, 1989), 24. 8 st __THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__ indoor theatres or halls inside palaces, and will the creative invention that lies at the very not be considered in this essay. heart of the reception process. A retrospective sociology that has long made the unequal To discuss theatre social history in relationship to distribution of objects the primary criterion of the different types of playhouses and to examine the cultural hierarchy must be replaced by a these buildings and their meanings, I observed different approach that focuses attention on how each audience reflected society. How did the differentiated and contrasting uses of the collective identity of the users of seventeenth same goods, the same texts, and the same ideas.10 century theatrical spaces lead to intense attendance at the different forms of playhouses in Based on this statement, how can the study of the London, Paris, and Madrid? In spite of their different types of playhouses contribute to dissimilarities, some architectural elements and revealing social practices in the three capitals? the use of the playhouses by their audiences are quite similar. Stephen Greenblatt7 and Roger The first results of this survey pointed out some Chartier8 elucidate how these capitals manifested similarities and differences between the English such cultural development and energy at the amphitheatres, the Spanish corrales, and the same time. The former defends the notion of French jeux de paume concerning their shapes cultural mobility and explains that mobility and especially their audiences. I have investigated studies should “shed light on hidden as well as the circulation of architectural proposals that conspicuous movements of peoples, objects, may have invaded the three capitals chosen in the images, texts, and ideas”, but he also sustains period under study; though they maintained that mobility studies should “identify and analyse different kinds of playhouses. The intense the ‘contact zones’” where cultural goods are circulation of books and people in seventeenth exchanged. “Different societies constitute these century Europe, of itinerant troupes and of the zones differently, and their varied structures call circulation of printed plays must have contributed forth a range of responses from wonder and to the introduction of ingenious and innovative delight to avidity and fear. Certain places are types of playhouses for performing the great characteristically set apart from inter-cultural number of dramas and comedies at that time. contact; others are deliberately made open, with the rules suspended that inhibit exchange.”9 I About exchanges between France and England, understand that theatre activities were contact the scholar Sophie Deierkauf-Holsboer directs zones and simultaneously inspired the attention to the French actor Floridor, who had construction of public playhouses in the three been to London, where he entered a theatre capitals. company of which he soon became the head. In 1635, he gave performances in the London Chartier points out the intense circulation of Cockpit of Whitehall before the King and Queen of ideas, writings, and appropriations, which leads England, then in a theatre at Drury Lane, where us to believe that, despite the differences of each he performed Mélite by Pierre Corneille, culture, the taste for theatre in the late sixteenth Alcimédon by Ryer, and Le Trompeur puni by and early seventeenth century involved all layers George Scuderi.11 Other French actors and men of of European societies, prompting the companies theatre had certainly been in contact with English to find a permanent home for the theatrical companies at that time. Between the end of the spectacle. The French historian explains that: sixteenth century and the reopening of the playhouses in England in 1660, English companies Understood more sociologically than successfully travelled around diverse geopolitical phenomenologically, the notion of areas, including France, staging works of appropriation makes it possible to appreciate Shakespeare and his contemporaries at royal the differences in cultural apportionment, in palaces, schools, town markets, inn-yards and churches. They adapted the scripts and adjusted 7 See Stephen Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, (Cambridge, 2009), 250-253. 8 Roger Chartier, Cardenio between Cervantes and Shakespeare: The 10 Roger Chartier, “Texts, Printings and Readings,” In: Lynn Avery Story of a Lost Play, (Cambridge, 2013). Hunt, ed, The New Cultural History, (Berkeley, 1989), 154-175, 171. 9 Greenblatt, Cultural Mobility, 2009, 250. 11 Wilma Deierkauf-Holsboer, Le Théâtre du Marais, (Paris, 1954), 74. 9 st __THEATRE ARCHITECTURE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE 21 CENTURY__ their performance style for audiences with a wide Even authors from the seventeenth century were range of status, education, wealth, religion, aware of the concept of cultural appropriation. ethnicity, and language. On a contract to Assuming the existence of multiple foreign refurbish the Jeu de Paume du Becquet as a influences on French theatre and recognizing that theatre signed on July 19, 1646, found in the the Spaniards were particularly serious and tragic French National Archives and published by Alan in drama while the Italians were more concerned Howe, who noticed the signature of an English with entertainment, the playwright Samuel impresario, called Samuel Speede, the head of a Chappuzeau - contemporary of Molière - states theatre group in Paris and director of the adapted that French dramatic literature of his time stood venue.12 at an intermediate level between Spanish and Italian drama. He adds that "au fond nous In the field of dramatic literature, Chartier has sommes plus obligez aux Espagnols qu´aux recently proved how exchanges were recurrent.