The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare | acting, Elizabethan
acting, Elizabethan. The Elizabethan word for what we call acting was ‘playing’, and the word ‘acting’ was reserved for the gesticulations of an orator. We have little direct evidence about the style of Elizabethan acting, although a few general principles can be derived from the conditions of performance. The relative shortness of rehearsal periods and the large number of plays in the repertory at any one time suggest that an actor was not likely to think of his character as having a unique and complex human psychology in the way which, in our time, the Stanislavskian technique encourages. Likewise, the distribution of parts as individual rolls of paper giving only the particular speeches needed for one character suggests that what we think of as dramatic interaction was less important than the individual's interpretation of his speeches. Modern ensemble acting requires lengthy rehearsals which were unknown on the early modern stage. But this should...
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