Theater of Imagination

• Compared to some of the theatrical performances of the 21st century, Elizabethan theater had little in the way of sets or props, or even artificial lighting. This was a disadvantage in that performers had to rely on natural light, but also contributed to the style of Elizabethan drama. For a start, since there was little need to change sets between scenes, plays proceeded in a very fluid fashion, with each scene directly following another. Playwrights had to utilize evocative language to create the mood and present the action rather than relying on props and stage backgrounds.
  
  

Costumes

• Elizabethan drama didn’t use expensive costumes for its performers, and many wore contemporary dress. When it came to representing characters from historical periods or other countries, actors would don easily recognized costumes to convey who they were. For instance, an actor playing a Roman would wear a sash to represent a toga.
  
  

Contact with Audience

• Although Elizabethan drama was scripted and the lines learnt by the company performing the piece, the period’s theater was not acted in a vacuum. Since the audience, even in a specially built theater, would surround the stage or performance space, the acting company would interact with those watching. Sometimes the audience would loudly comment on the action while some scripts contained allusions to contemporary politics that the audience would understand. The characters in Shakespeare’s plays that speak in soliloquies -- directly to those watching -- are another result of this relationship with the audience.
  
  

Forms

• Two of the more well known dramatic forms from the Elizabethan age are comedy and tragedy. Traditionally, comedy dealt with bawdy language and low-class characters, while tragedy was concerned with questions about humanity and noble characters, but playwrights such as Shakespeare and his contemporaries didn’t always separate the two genres in their work. Meanwhile, in the early Elizabethan period, many plays were of the mystery genre and concentrated on retelling Biblical stories or tales of saints. These mystery plays were often performed by travelling companies of actors and would coincide with religious festivals.
  
  

Mixing of Tones and Subjects

• The mixing of genres that Shakespeare and his contemporaries introduced is accompanied in Elizabethan drama by a collision of tone and subjects. For example, many dramatists, including Shakespeare, used both elegant and poetic language as well as more ribald lines in the same play, as opposed to reserving different kinds of language for separate genres. Subjects were also diverse during Elizabethan drama. The same playwrights produced work based on myths as well as plays concerning historical events.