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Why are Groundlings called 'Groundlings'?
Who are 'Groundlings' in the Globe Theatre?
What is a Groundling in theatre?
Why did Shakespeare call people 'Groundlings'?
A groundling was a person who visited the Red Lion, The Rose, or the Globe theatres in the early 17th century. [1] They were too poor to pay to be able to sit on one of the three levels of the theatre.
It is thought that Shakespeare coined the word ‘groundlings’, which became the nickname for those audience members who stood at the theatre. In Elizabethan theatres, the stage was surrounded by some space before the terraced rows of seats began, and the groundlings stood, crowded together, on the bare earth, pushed right up against the stage.
Most of the poorer audience members, referred to as groundlings, would pay one penny (which was almost an entire day's wage) to stand in front of the stage, while the richer patrons would sit in the covered galleries, paying as much as half a crown each for their seats.
Apr 24, 2023 · In Shakespeare’s time, if you couldn’t afford the luxury of a hard bench, audiences stood in the yard for hours to watch the play, pressed in alongside the other groundlings. But what is a ‘groundling’?
Oct 2, 2012 · In nearly every depiction of Elizabethan England from Shakespeare in Love to the more recent film Anonymous, the audience of the famed Globe Theatre has been portrayed as a brawling, heaving, unwashed rabble who came to be known as “groundlings.”.
May 19, 2022 · A groundling, a.k.a. a plebeian, is an audience member at the Shakespeare’s Globe who stands in the yard to watch the play (as opposed to those who sit in the galleries) Do you have to stand for the entire duration of the play?
The groundlings were very close to the action on stage. They could buy food and drink during the performance – pippins (apples), oranges, nuts, gingerbread and ale. But there were no toilets and the floor they stood on was probably just sand, ash or covered in nutshells.
