How was it like in Shakespeares time?

Answer 1

That would depend on your social rank. If you were of low social class, it was not very fun. If you were of high social class it was not to bad. But remember, there was little to no bathing, no indoor Plumbing, and a lot of disease (not to mention little knowledge of medicine).

Answer 2

It is impossible to reproduce experiences for people, but some hint of what it was like in the Elizabethan playhouses can be found by attending the New Globe Theatre in London, or watching any performance filmed at the new Globe, the beginning of Laurence Olivier's Henry V movie from 1944, or the movie Shakespeare in Love. What will be missing from these will be the smell (imagine 2500 people who never take baths all crammed together in those spaces), the people wandering around selling nuts and fruit and sometimes themselves, and the pickpockets who make sure you can't pay for the nuts, fruit and other goods on offer.

Answer 3

Men and boys acted, and sometimes the boys (who played women) died from lead poisoning due to large amounts in the makeup they wore. The groundlings, or people who stood in the floor, often threw rotten fruit at actors or booed them. Other than those setbacks, they were watched by all of England's upper class. Now, the audience is more polite.

Answer 4

Acting then was a job, as it is now. There were performances six days a week, usually in the afternoon (if playing in an outdoor theatre) or the evening (if playing indoors). Performances for royalty or aristocrats would have taken place in the evening, as shown in A Midsummer Night's Dream where Duke Theseus calls for a play to be performed "to wear away this long age of three hours between our after-supper and bedtime."

The mornings could be used for rehearsals and business meetings. Actors had to have a large number of plays ready to hand, because they performed a different play every day. It was not like nowadays where the same play runs with the same cast for months if it is successful. An actor had to know the lines to fifty or sixty plays at any given time, and learned two new ones a month. Their memories were incredible, especially as they had so little time to devote to rehearsal.

For the actors who had a share in the acting company like Shakespeare and Burbage, the money could be quite good, unlike the hired actors who were lucky to get a poorly-paid job as a spear-carrier. In addition, not all the acting companies played the big theatres in London. If you were not with the Chamberlain's or the Admiral's or Worcester's, you were probably faced with a lot of unprofitable touring or playing small venues.

Even for the big companies, there was considerable uncertainty. If your company chose to perform a risky play, like the Isle of Dogs, you could find yourself in jail and your theatre closed. Outbreaks of plague regularly closed the theatres, and when that happened, you were out of a job. Regular members of the company could go on tour of the country to make ends meet until the plague scare was over. If you were a hired actor, you had to try to find what you could. Shakespeare, who was a hired man in the long theatre closure of 1593, kept himself going by writing and publishing a very successful semi-pornographic poem.

Answer 5

of Renaissance drama.