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From
The Electric
Shakespeare
There were
several competing theater companies during Shakespeare's career. Each
took its name from the aristocrat who was the company's nominal patron;
without such patronage the actors would have been in the same legal
class as vagrants and beggars. Shakespeare's company was under the
"protection" of a high court official called the Lord Chamberlain
until 1603 when, with the accession of King James I, it became the
King's Men (or Servants).
Despite this vestige of feudal organization, the Lord Chamberlain's/King's
Men functioned as a proto-capitalist business, drawing much of its
income from paid admissions to its home theater. The Lord Chamberlain's/King's
Men included boys and men (there were no girls or women) who were
paid a wage, and others who were shareholders or "sharers"
in the company's profits. Shakespeare the actor was a sharer. He was
also a stockholder in the company's home, the Globe Theater. The theaters
were periodically closed, for instance by outbreaks of plague; at
such times the company might go on tour. At all times it was more
than happy to play command performances at the royal court, which
paid highly and were excellent for prestige.
The repertory of the Lord Chamberlain's/King's Men was huge by the
standards of any modern repertory theater: the actors performed as
many as 30 different plays in a single theatrical season. Of those
plays, at least 15 would be new that year (including, on average,
two by Shakespeare); the company added a new play to its repertory
about once every two weeks. Rehearsal periods must have been relatively
brief. There was no director in the modern sense of the word
"Thou
art a monument without a tomb,
And art alive still, while thy book doth live
And we have wits to read and praise to give...."
Ben
Jonson's Eulogy to Shakespeare on the Bard's death
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Click on the
pocket watch to read more about Elizabethan Times
And on the
hat to read & make up Elizabethan insults
And on the
comb to read about Elizabethan dental habits
And on the
chest for the real players
An
interesting link to Elizabethan
Male Costume
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