Shakespeare

Towards the end of Shakespeare’s career, the “outdoor” playhouses were being replaced by “indoor” theatres. In those quieter surroundings, there was music between the recently introduced “acts”-in fact acts may have been devised solely for the purpose of affording musical accompaniments – and there was often a musical performance before the play actually began. Conditions at the Globe, in the open air and in front of a larger and more restive audience, were not conducive to such refined entertainment.

The stage itself was full of noises. Plays were acccompanied by the simulated sound of horses’ hooves and of birdsong, of bells and of cannons. Voices off-stage amplified battle scenes with cries of “Kill, kill, kill,” loud shouts, shrieks and general clamour. There were fireworks available, for lightning, and smoke was used to imitate fog or mist. When the directions called for “thunder” a sheet of metal was shaken vigorously, and squibs were let off, behind the scene. The sound of pebbles in a drum could counterfeit the sea, and a piece of canvas tied to a wheel could mimic the wind. The sound of dried peas upon a metal sheet would substitute for rain.

Lighting was another source of stage-effects. Torches or tapers were used to signify night. There were certain scenes where supernumeraries would come upon the stage carrying candles as an indication of a night-time banquet or meeting. On occasions lights were placed behind bottles of coloured water to provide sinister or supernatural illumination. In the late sixteenth century the stage was the centre of public enchantment.

CHAPTER 63 Why There You Toucht the Life of Our Designe

The repertoire of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at the Globe was extensive and various. Quite apart from Shakespeare’s plays they seem to have owned approximately one hundred other dramas ranging from Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose to Stuhlweissenburg, from The London Prodigal to The Fair Maid of Bristol. In all of these plays it is likely that Shakespeare played his part. It is not clear how long it required to stage a revival, but it took between two and three weeks to prepare a new play. Since on average fifteen new plays were performed each year, the schedule of business was extremely tight. The records of the Globe have not survived but related material from the Rose suggests that the players there gave 150 performances of thirty separate plays during one winter season. In any week a different play was performed each afternoon. Nothing can better capture the vitality and excitement of the new medium. The constant demand was for novelty.

There was a tested procedure for the production of these new plays. The author or authors, as we have noted, would approach the playhouse with a skeleton narrative for a new play. On the basis of this scenario the playhouse might commission the drama, with a series of part payments followed by the remainder when a satisfactory manuscript or “book-of-the-play” was delivered. At the time of its final delivery the players met in order to listen to the playwright reading out the entire text. There is a note in Philip Henslowe’s diary, in May 1602, for two shillings “layd owt for the companye when they read the playe of Jeffa for wine at the tavern.” It may have been at this juncture, or slightly later, that the “book-keeper” prepared a “plot” or outline of the action in which the names of the actors, the stage-props required, and the requisite stage-noises, were written down. But by far the most important function of the “plot” was to list the sequence of entries, and thus the number of scenes. It was a way of adjusting the play, in other words, to the available resources and numbers of the company. One task, for example, was carefully to allot the roles to individual actors so that “doubling” (one actor taking two parts) became easily achieved. The player, however skilled, could not be in two places on the same stage. The plot was divided into individual scenes by the simple expedient of a line ruled across the various columns, and each scene began with the direction “Enter.” This was also placed on pasteboard and hung in the tiring-house behind the stage as an aide-memoire to players.

A member of the company, perhaps the book-keeper himself, also copied down the individual actor’s parts on a “scroll” or long strips of paper. It was this that the player carried about with him and memorised. One of those given to Edward Alleyn, for the part of Orlando in Robert Greene’s Orlando Furioso, has survived. It is made up of fourteen half-sheets of paper pasted together so that it forms a continuous roll some 17 feet in length and 6 inches in width. The speeches are given “cues” in the last words of the previous speaker, and there are occasional directions.