Pitching to a Shakespeare's Audience

I found this interesting book called The Background of Shakespeare's Plays it had some interesting facts about the Elizabethan audience concerning there taste in plays. Here are some facts that I thought were interesting and could help in our play writing. 

Storyline

1. Playgoers wanted a story -old, patched or borrowed,- so long as there was plenty happening.


so twisted complicated plots were what entertained the Elizabethans
Shakespeare usually had two or three plots going on.  not all were not all were logically resolved but they had a hero or heroine "on the horns" of a dilemma. The play I'm working on Duke of Venice has two solid plots and a less resolve third plot which I think is representative of this.

Setting

2.Setting of the play wasn't as important so long as it was romantic.  the Elizabethans were not strict about geographical or historical facts. They preferred the play to be set somewhere exotic. 


This would explain shakespeare setting a lot of his plays in foreign places like Italy. Our play takes place in Venice which was a popular setting for Shakespeare's plays.

Characters

3. Shakespeare was more interested in his character then his plot which was popular with his audience. If is plot was lacking in logic he would compensate by slightly tarnishing the figures of his main plot, I. E. making his minor characters more attractive, he could use a tale of pathos and potential tragedy for high comedy.(he did this in Much Ado About Nothing). The interest lies in the character and incident. 


Though were not writing the play we tried to create deep/complex character traits that would "tarnish slightly" our main characters and make our B character more appealing. 

Themes

4. Elizabethans like romance as a theme for plays no matter how extravagant. They had a great love an capacity for imagination. they liked stories where wars were averted by sudden conversion, disguises impenetrable,and where love at first sight is the expected thing and anything can happen. ex. "Twelfth Night only in Illyria can  a girl disguised as a page produce such complexities. and other stories like the Tempest are possible only in the glory of romance."


disguises, marriage, romance are all found in our play. Also our third plot of impending war is averted by a transformation of the main character which was a popular idea back then.

Manners

5. Even though the stories took place in different times or settings characters were expected to conform to Elizabethan mannerisms. I.E Romans behave like London Crowds they would not have been well received otherwise.


Though I don't know much about Elizabethan behavior we tried to model them after shakespeare characters rather then Italians etc. By doing this I think our characters would be understood and enjoyed by an Elizabethan audience.