Shakespeare

As well as the actors and apprentices in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men there was a book-keeper who also acted as prompter with perhaps an assistant stage-keeper, a wardrobe-keeper or “fireman,” stage musicians, a carpenter or two, “gatherers” who collected the money at the doors before each performance, and of course stagehands. There were differences in status and income among them, the most important distinction being that between “sharer” and “hired man.” A “sharer,” as Shakespeare was in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, put up a sum of £50 on joining the company. He was then eligible for a share in its income, once a portion of the receipts for each performance had been paid to the owner of the playhouse and to the rest of the company. It was a theatrical version of the “joint stock company” which played so large a part in the economics of the late sixteenth century. At a later date Shakespeare also became a “house-keeper,” when he was part of the group who owned the Globe playhouse. It was a way of cutting out the “middle men” or theatrical entrepreneurs such as Henslowe; since the house-keepers took half of the proceeds from the gallery, it proved to be highly profitable.

Each of the nine “sharers” in the company was also one of the principal actors, and it has been estimated that their roles took up some 90 or 95 per cent of the dialogue in each play; the “hired men” were minor actors who played only the smaller roles that could be learned without undue delay or extensive rehearsal. It seems likely that the “sharers” made their decisions, financial or artistic, by means of majority voting. Heminges and Shakespeare were no doubt known for their business acumen, and it is more than likely that the advice of Shakespeare was sought on new plays and new playwrights. He is credited, for example, with bringing the plays of Ben Jonson to his company. According to Nicholas Rowe the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were about to reject Every Man in His Humour “when Shakespear luckily cast his Eye upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to read it through.” The story may be apocryphal but it accurately reflects his task of “reading through” new plays for their dramatic potential. The “sharers” were also required to arrange rehearsals, purchase costumes, put up playbills, plan for future productions and engage in all the general administration which a busy theatre requires. They paid for all those involved in the theatre, of course, from book-keeper to gatherer; they also paid for new plays and new costumes as well as the costs of licensing plays with the Master of Revels. They were also obliged, by Elizabethan custom, to give money to the needy poor of the parish.

It was a society of friends and colleagues, in other words, with common interests and common obligations. It was an extended family, with the actors living in the same neighbourhood. The actors married into one another’s immediate families, too, uniting with various sisters, daughters and widows. In their wills they left money, and various tokens, to one another. It was a family that played together and stayed together. They were “ffellowes,” to use the word they themselves employed.

They were also zealous and industrious. Alone among the companies of the period the Lord Chamberlain’s Men avoided serious trouble with the civic authorities and stayed out of prison. When one contemporary satirist exonerated certain actors from his aspersions, calling them “sober, discreet, properly learned honest householders and citizens well thought of among their neighbours at home,”³ it was of just such men as Shakespeare and Heminges that he was writing. In a volume entitled Historia Histrionica they are described as “Men of grave and sober Behaviour.”⁴ More than any other company of their generation they helped to elevate the status of actor beyond that of the vagabond and the acrobat.

CHAPTER 39 Lord How Art Thou Changed

The actual nature of their acting is still not fully understood. There is some argument, for example, over the rival claims of traditionalism and realism in the Elizabethan theatre. Did the actors rely upon formal techniques of oratory and gesture or were they exploiting a new vein of naturalism in their movement and their delivery? The published reports of Burbage, for example, tend to emphasise his naturalness and fluency. His method was described as “personation,” and was deemed to be the way of projecting an individual character “to the life” or “with lively action.” It was a way of “counterfeiting” passions that avoided what was known as “pantomimick action”.