groundlings

Playgoers without seats

Groundlings were the spectators who stood in the pit of Elizabethan theaters, paying the cheapest admission to watch from ground level rather than seated in galleries above.

Shakespeare's references suggest they were considered less sophisticated: a play written for the groundlings.

The term now describes any audience members of supposedly lowbrow taste, or more neutrally, the general public as opposed to critics or connoisseurs.

Elizabethan

Shakespeare

Elizabethan dramatist and poet

Globe TheatreHistoric circular London playhouse
pitFruit's hard seed
yardLinear measure or grounds

Southwark · King's Men · open-air · Hamlet · Othello · Macbeth · Marlowe · Jonson · Tudor · Renaissance

theater

pit

Fruit's hard seed

standing roomArea for standing audience
cheap seatsLowest-priced arena tickets
audience participationSpectators actively joining performance

heckling · applause · booing · interaction · playhouse · performance · immediacy · engagement · rowdiness · atmosphere

commoners

peasantry

Rural working class

plebeiansRoman lower classes
massesBulk or populace
populaceInhabitants of a place

rabble · rank-and-file · townsfolk · common folk · lower classes · working class · hoi polloi · riffraff · unwashed · proletariat

zoology

fish

Gilled aquatic vertebrate

loachSmall barbeled freshwater fish
gudgeonSmall cylindrical pivot pin
catfishBarbeled freshwater bottom-feeder

carp · benthic · substrate · aquarium · freshwater · riverbed · sediment · bottom feeders · flatfish · sculpin

groundlings

Shakespeare

pit

peasantry

fish

groundlings

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