Actors

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Acting troupes or companies were bands of actors who assembled to perform plays. Once the playhouses in London were built, more companies performed in these venues.

The two most famous companies were allocated playhouses of their own. The Lord Admiral’s Men performed at the Rose Theatre on Bankside. Their lead actor was Edward Alleyn, admired for his portrayals of Christopher Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, Barabas the Jew and Tamberlaine the Great.

The second company was Shakespeare’s the Lord Chamberlain’s, later known as the King’s Men. They performed at the Theatre in Shoreditch, which was eventually dismantled, rebuilt on Bankside and renamed the Globe. Their star actor was Richard Burbage, who played the first ever Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear.

Elizabethan actors worked hard; theatre-going was a new phenomenon in London and with so many playhouses competing with each other the plays had to be enthralling. The actors would perform up to thirty-five plays in a year without performing the same play on consecutive afternoons.

Actors memorised their lines from cue scripts, which contained only their lines and a few cues. It would have been common for an actor to forget a line, so he might make it up, borrow from another play or gesture to a prompter within the ‘tiring house’ to help him remember.

New plays were being written at a fast rate, firmly establishing the profession of the playwright in London, but popular plays like Shakespeare’s at the Globe and Marlowe’s at the Rose continued to be revived for years.

Between eight and twelve sharers or principal actors were responsible for the financial management of the company, hiring and firing and selecting plays to perform. Sometimes up to thirty hired men would perform a variety of tasks, such as minor acting roles, collecting money at the gate, acting as stagehand, or even helping actors to dress and undress.

Acting companies recruited boys to learn the trade; these boys were aged between twelve and twenty-one. They performed all the women’s roles. This means that the first Juliet, Desdemona and Portia were all played by young boys who wore glamorous gowns, wigs and white make-up.

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