|
Shakespeare wrote plays for his company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men), and many of
them were first performed in The Globe theatre one of the earliest purpose built theatres in England.
The Globe and its rival the Rose were polygonal buildings with open roofs. Performances took place in the afternoon in daylight and were attended
by well over 1,000 people. Asides (when an actor talks directly to the audience) and soliloquies (speeches delivered by an actor alone on stage)
seem artificial in a modern theatre, but in the old open-air playhouses, the actor had a more direct relationship with the audience.
The companies put on many different plays every month, some of them new, so there was little time for rehearsal. Each actor was given a scroll with just his own part written
out on it, and his cue line. The actors playing minor parts also had to double as different characters. All the parts were played
by men, with boys taking female roles (women were not allowed to perform on the public stage). |
