Download Acting companies who were based in London

Acting companies
The origins of Elizabethan theatre are in the medieval mystery plays – versions of Bible stories. Troupes
of players travelled on carts from town to town. When they arrived they would turn the carts into a stage
and perform, or take over a local inn. Actors would buy into a company and invest in it (costumes, for
example, were expensive), and they would share the decisions and the profits. In the mid-1500s though,
the laws against travelling, and the suspicion of strangers who might be carrying plague, made this a
difficult way to run an acting company.
In 1576 the first theatre was built. Between four and six troupes of actors made their permanent home in
London and competed for audiences. Actors would be signed up to a company, and would always
perform with that company, unlike today. A company consisted of about 12 people – actors, workers
and apprentices. The actors played the major roles, invested in the theatre and clothes and split the
profits. Workers were paid to do odd jobs, and apprentices trained as actors, while playing the children’s
and female roles.
We actually see a travelling acting troupe in one of Shakespeare’s plays – Hamlet. A group of ‘players’
appear at court and put on a play. Hamlet gets them to insert a new scene into it – one that mimics the
way his uncle killed Hamlet’s father, so that the murder is revealed.
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Because acting companies were used to performing in local inns on their travels, the first theatres
were made from converted inns.
The original acting companies travelled around performing theatre versions of Bible stories.
These gradually transformed into stories which instructed the audience with a moral, which
eventually turned into the idea of a play which simply tells a story as we know today.
Acting companies had to do everything themselves – from making the costumes to setting the
stage. Today theatres have stage managers and a whole host of other people working hard back
stage.
Patronage
Acting companies who were based in London needed a noble patron – an aristocrat who would be
granted a licence to allow the company to perform. The company would be named after the noble who
was their patron. Shakespeare’s company were the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and the actors all had
shares in the company. Their main rivals were the Admiral’s Men, whose patrons owned the company,
and merely employed the actors.
The king or queen might occasionally commission a play or pay especially for a performance but would
not be the full patron of the company. The exception to this was the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, who
became the King’s Men when James I came to the throne and took over as patron of their company.
James loved the theatre and the company performed at court twice as often as they had under Elizabeth.
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Shakespeare tried to flatter the Earl of Southampton into being his patron by dedicating his first
long poem, Venus and Adonis, to the Earl. It seems to have worked – he published a second long
poem also dedicated to the Earl.
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The word ‘patron’ comes from Latin, and is related to the word ‘pater’ meaning father – your
patron provided for you and looked after you, like a father. We still use the phrase ‘patron of the
arts’ to describe someone who funds art projects.
Actors
Because the actors owned the company, new plays written for the company had to include parts for all
the main actors to let them show their strengths. This is one of the reasons why you get funny bits even
in the most serious tragedies. So in Macbeth we have the role of the Porter, whose drunken antics amuse
the crowds, designed for the comic in the company.
It was quite usual for some parts to be ‘doubled up’ where one person would play two or more
characters because they were not on stage at the same time. The plays would be structured to allow for
this. Later in Shakespeare’s life he was able to afford more people on stage at once because his company
was so successful. In Twelfth Night, for example, nearly every single character is on stage in the final
scene, meaning that no doubling up was possible.
To be an actor in the Elizabethan age was to have the possibility of becoming rich and famous – actors
frequently mixed with nobility and appeared at court. However, it was not unusual for actors and the
theatre to be associated with scandal and the underworld. The Globe Theatre, for example, was built on
the south bank of the Thames, just outside the city limits of the day because it was illegal to put on a
play inside London.
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Shakespeare was an actor as well as a playwright. We think that he played quite minor roles in
his own plays – like the ghost in Hamlet.
When the plays were first published in 1623, the book included a list of the ‘principal actors’ in
all the plays. Two of the most famous Shakespearean actors were William Kempe and Richard
Burbage. Burbage ran the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.