FAQ Project Elizabethan Actors

1. FAQ ProjectElizabethan Actors By: Brittany Rock Period 1

2. What were Elizabethan actors? Elizabethan actors were skilled and talented performers that used a lot of poetic dialogue to paint a picture of the scene that they wished their audience to envision. Before the building of permanent playhouses, plays were put on by traveling troupes of actors who would wander throughout the country in wagons that could be transformed into temporary stages. These acting companies performed anywhere they could find an audience, frequently setting up their stage in the courtyard of an inn or at times in the home of a nobleman at his demand. In a typical Elizabethan acting company, there were roughly ten shareholders, several paid actors, and apprentices. All the actors in the company were male because, due to the often rough and disorderly atmosphere of the theatre, women were not allowed to take part in the plays. the female characters were acted by young boys, who were the apprentices of the older actors. Each actor in a company was assigned a particular type of character to portray in the company’s plays, such as a fool, a hero, a clown, etc. In addition, the actors often played more than one character within the same play. Besides being able to act, Elizabethan actors also had to be able to sing, clown, fence, perform acrobatic feats, and dance.

3. What were some of the companies of the actors? In 1578 six companies were granted permission by special order of the queen to perform plays. They were the Children of the Chapel Royal, Children of Saint Paul's, the Servants of the Lord Chamberlain, Servants of Lords Warwick, Leicester, and Essex. Theatrical companies were slowly transformed from unbalanced associations of men dependent on the favor of a lord, to stable business organizations.

4. Who were some of the Elizabethan actors? Actors became famous in their own right. Some of the leading actors during this Era included Edward Alleyn (of the Admiral’s Men) is considered one of the greatest actors of Shakespeare's time, Richard Burbage (of the Chamberlain’s Men) who He also prospered as a major shareholder in the Globe and Blackfliers theatres, William Kemp (Earl of Leicesters) who was an English actor and dancer, John Lowen (King’s Men) who was an English actor and a colleague of William Shakespear, and the last actor you all should know; the famous William Shakespeare.

5. How did the Elizabethan actors talk? Without the elaborate stage setting the audience was forced to listen more closely to the actor’s dialogue to understand the action and meaning of the play. The actors used a lot of poetic dialogue to help with depicting the story line and paint a picture for the audience. Actors also made use of asides, in which the character “thinks aloud” without the notice of the other characters on stage.

6. What did the actors wear? The actors on stage wore costumes that were rich, showy, and expensive. The Elizabethan actors had access to very good castoff clothes to use as their costumes in the plays that they were performing in. The primary function of Elizabethan costume was to identify a character’s occupation and social rank. The quality and price of the garments was an indicator of rank, at least in theory; many Elizabethans, complained that people often dressed above their station.

7. Bibliography • Mabillard, Amanda. "Shakespeare of Stratford." Shakespeare Online. 2000. (11/30/04) • http://www.shakespeare-online.com • http://archive.1september.ru/eng/1999/eng16-1.htm (12/1/04) • G. Smith 2000 Shakespeare: The Man and His Times (12/1/04) http://home.pacific.net.au/~greg.hub/shakespeare.html • Ross, Maggi. 26 March 2000 (11/30/04) http://renaissance.dm.net/compendium/57.html • LLC 2000-2004 (12/1/04)http://www.allshakespeare.com/1400