Original performance conditions

As we've seen, Shakespeare wrote his plays with particular actors in mind and with a clear
sense of how his play could move from the page to the stage. He knew that his audience
could include courtiers as well as tradesmen, and it was always the possibility that it could be
performed in front of the monarch at some point.

You're going to hear a lot about interpretive choices and ways of presenting Much Ado about
Nothing in the next three weeks. But in Shakespeare's day, the most important thing was to
get the play on the stage quickly, because there was always a hunger for new plays. And
remember, Shakespeare's actors could have been performing in as many as five plays in one
week. Productions you'll be looking at will have rehearsed for a number of weeks.
Shakespeare's actors would have had a lot less time, so speed was always of the essence.
Shakespeare wrote his plays to satisfy his audience's tastes, and his actors played a major part
in shaping both their roles and the play itself.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the course-- and as you consider productions that came after
Shakespeare's time, you might like to think about some of the following questions. How do
you think the style of acting differed in Shakespeare's time to the styles of acting you might
see in the theatre today? Do you think the duration of the performance would have been
shorter in Shakespeare's time? And how do modern productions incorporate techniques that
could be described as Shakespearean in their method?