III семестр

К сессии III семестра необходимо:

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English theatre

The United Kingdom has great theatre traditions. Theatre was introduced to the UK from Europe by the Romans and auditoriums were constructed across the country for this purpose.

By the medieval period theatre had developed with the mummers’ plays, a form of early street theatre associated with the Morris dance, concentrating on themes such as Saint George and the Dragon and Robin Hood. There were folk tales retelling old stories, and the actors traveled from town to town performing these for their audiences in return for money and hospitality.

The medieval mystery plays and morality plays, which dealt with Christian themes, were performed at religious festivals.

The reign of Elizabeth I in the late 16th and early 17th century saw a flowering of the drama and all the arts. The most famous playwright in the world, William Shakespeare, wrote around 40 plays that are still performed in theatres across the world to this day.

The Elizabethan age is sometimes nicknamed ‘the age of Shakespeare’ for the amount of influence he held over the era. Other important Elizabethan and 17th-century playwrights include Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, and John Webster.

The 18th century is known for its sentimental comedies, domestic tragedies and an overwhelming interest in Italian opera. Popular entertainment became more important in this period than ever before, with fair-booth burlesque forms that are the ancestors of the English Music Hall. These forms flourished at the expense of English drama, which went into a long period of decline.

A change came in the late 19th century with the plays on the London stage by the Irishmen George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen, all of whom influenced domestic English drama and vitalised it again.

Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw(1856—1951) born in Dublin, acquired from his mother his early knowledge of music, especially opera, and painting. He was also well-read in Shakespeare, Bunyan, Shelly, Byron and Dickens. He started writing plays when he was about forty. His first plays aroused the interest of a very small enthusiastic audience and the censor, who banned his third play, “Mrs. Warren's Profession” (1892). In 1898, unwilling to accept the general neglect of his work, Shaw published two volumes of his plays, “Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant”, and these, together with the success of “The Devil's Disciple in America” and his marriage to an heiress, proved the turning point in his personal and economic fortunes.

During the sixty years of his life as a playwright he wrote a world of plays, among which the most famous are “Pygmalion” (or “My Fair Lady”), “Caesar and Cleopatra”, “Heartbreak House”, “The Millionairess”.

Charlie Chaplin

Charles Spencer(1889—1977) is an English film actor and director. He made his reputation as a tramp with a smudge moustache, bowler hat, and twirling cane in silent comedies from the mid-1910-s, including “The Rink”, “The Kid”, and “The Gold Rush”. His later films combine dialogue with mime and music, as in “The Great Dictator”, and “Limelight”.