Shakespeare

A German traveller noted, on a visit to London in 1606, that the players were “daily instructed, as it were in a school, so that even the most eminent actors have to allow themselves to be taught their places by the dramatists.”² This may have been a misunderstanding, so common in foreign reports of sixteenth-century London, since it is unlikely that an eminent actor would have endured direction from a young or minor playwright. But it would have been different with Shakespeare. Evidence to that effect comes in Richard Flecknoe’s Short Discourse of the English Stage, published in 1664, in which he describes how in the time of Shakespeare and Jonson “it was the happiness of the Actors of those Times to have such Poets as these to instruct them, and write for them; and no less of those Poets to have such docile and excellent Actors to Act their Playes as a Field and Burbidge.”³ They were not directed; they were “instructed.”

The actors had the “scrolls” of their own lines, but no complete script. They memorised or part-memorised their words before beginning the rehearsal itself. It can be inferred that approximately thirteen principal actors and boys were gathered together on this occasion. The smaller roles need not have been rehearsed. At this stage jokes were added or taken out, difficulties of action overcome, and obscurities of plot or dialogue clarified. At this point, too, the problems attendant on “doubling” were resolved. This was often done unobtrusively, but there were occasions when the Elizabethan players revelled in the artificiality of the procedure. Doubling was an obvious excuse for comedy as well as mystery. It also provided the actor with an opportunity to display his virtuosity and versatility, and it has been calculated that a player needed the time of just twenty-seven lines to change roles. In certain plays Shakespeare will allow precisely that amount of time for the transformation. There were occasions, too, when the audience revelled in “doubling.” When an actor dies on stage as one character, but then re-emerges as another living – this must often have been the cue for shouts of approval.

There is every reason to believe that actors and writers in rehearsal behaved very differently from their modern counterparts, who seem to be held in thrall to their director. In contrast the Elizabethan actor suggested lines, or ways of delivering lines, and may even have helped to invent new scenes to assist the progress of the plot. In the “epistle” to a publication of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher it is announced that “when these Comedies and Tragedies were presented on the Stage, the Actours omitted some Scenes and Passages (with the Authour’s consent) as occasion led them.”⁴ The plays of Shakespeare were not treated very differently. The play is not a piece of writing, but a collaborative event; it is never finished, in other words, but subject to a continuous and inevitable process of change. There was in the sixteenth century a well-understood set of stage conventions, however, which helped the process of rehearsal; there were principles of movement and gesture that the good actor would have known instinctively. It is interesting, for example, that exits are rarely mentioned in stage texts; it was assumed that competent performers would know exactly when to leave the stage.

A general “run” of a new play was between four to six weeks, played at intervals, but of course there were always revivals and reworkings whenever the occasion required them. The general business of the day would include rehearsals in the morning, playing in the afternoon, and the learning of innumerable lines in the evening. In the case of Shakespeare this was complemented by the necessity of writing plays in relatively quick succession. He was continually, and exhaustingly, occupied. J. M. W. Turner once said that the secret of genius was “hard work,” a sentiment with which Shakespeare would have agreed.

CHAPTER 64 See How the Giddy Multitude Doe Point

Everyone knew when the playhouse was open. A flag was flown from the roof, announcing the news, and a trumpet was blown to alert those in the vicinity. Playbills advertising the forthcoming entertainment had already been pasted onto walls and posts, as well as the doors of the Globe itself. These “bills” gave the time and place, title and company, as well as sensationalist details to attract the public- “the pittiefull murther … the extreame crueltie … the most deserved death” and so on. The play itself began with three “flourishes” from the small orchestra, designed in part to still the ever restless audience. Then there came upon the stage the “prologue,” attired in a long black velvet cloak, false beard and a wreath of bay-leaves. It was he who introduced the play and pleaded for the audience’s attention.