A Working Paywright

Now when I started this podcast I knew that I wanted to use a somewhat similar device WHERE I interviewed THE characters in Shakespeare's play - that could be very instructive and lots of fun. But first I wanted to get the relatively tedious stuff out of the way first - starting with rhetorical devices. And then I DELVED into several episodes dealing with the plague in England during Shakespeare's time. Interestingly enough topic the all important subject of the plague was not even discussed in my Shakespeare courses in college. But then again, that was before Covid. And I thought it would be especially interesting to compare Elizabethan societies reaction to the plague with contemporary reactions to Covid.  Both were deadly airborne diseases, and while Shakespeare's contemporaries how to comparatively primitive understanding of how the plague was spread, the dynamics of the plague were surprisingly similar to the dynamics of Covid - showing that people are basically people - no matter what the historical period. Oh and by the way, since the subject of death could often be very heavy I thought the best way to approach it was to have relatively brief episodes - lasting approximately 15 minutes each.

But for a good part of the rest of this podcast series I went to continue a conversation with William Shakespeare, and next month start a look at the writers works, and a series of conversations with various characters - and some of Shakespeare's characters were fascinating individuals

GEORGE (quiet):
But first. You might say that We like to imagine Shakespeare alone with a quill, serenely producing masterpieces.
But the theatre didn’t run on serenity.
It ran on deadlines.
A play had to be ready.
Actors had to learn parts.
Costumes had to exist.
A crowd had to be fed a new story—often constantly.

Transcript

A Working Playwright: Deadlines, Sharers, and the Allowed Book

Now when I started this podcast I knew that I wanted to use a somewhat similar device WHERE I interviewed THE characters in Shakespeare's play - that could be very instructive and lots of fun. But first I wanted to get the relatively tedious stuff out of the way first - starting with rhetorical devices. And then I DELVED into several episodes dealing with the plague in England during Shakespeare's time. Interestingly enough topic the all important subject of the plague was not even discussed in my Shakespeare courses in college. But then again, that was before Covid. And I thought it would be especially interesting to compare Elizabethan societies reaction to the plague with contemporary reactions to Covid.  Both were deadly airborne diseases, and while Shakespeare's contemporaries how to comparatively primitive understanding of how the plague was spread, the dynamics of the plague were surprisingly similar to the dynamics of Covid - showing that people are basically people - no matter what the historical period. Oh and by the way, since the subject of death could often be very heavy I thought the best way to approach it was to have relatively brief episodes - lasting approximately 15 minutes each.

But for a good part of the rest of this podcast series I went to continue a conversation with William Shakespeare, and next month start a look at the writers works, and a series of conversations with various characters - and some of Shakespeare's characters were fascinating individuals

GEORGE (quiet):
But first. You might say that We like to imagine Shakespeare alone with a quill, serenely producing masterpieces.
But the theatre didn’t run on serenity.
It ran on deadlines.
A play had to be ready.
Actors had to learn parts.
Costumes had to exist.
A crowd had to be fed a new story—often constantly.

WILL (dry):
Nothing ruins a romantic myth like payroll.

GEORGE:
Today: Shakespeare’s first real London job description
GEORGE:
Reminder: my Shakespeare can look back from the present day—films, scholarship, modern claims—
but he cannot predict the future. No prophecy.

WILL:
Memory, yes.
Foresight, no.

4:00–11:00 The company machine: sharers, hired men, boys
GEORGE:
A professional playing company was a business. A team.
One common structure: a core group of sharers who split profits and carried debts, plus hired men and boy players. 
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men formed around 1594, and Shakespeare became a key writer for them. 

WILL:
“Key writer” sounds grand.

Often it meant:
“Write faster.”

GEORGE:
Exactly. And because a company might perform frequently, the need for new material was constant.

And here’s a fascinating production truth: actors often didn’t have full scripts.
They used cue scripts—individual parts containing their lines plus short cue words before each entry. 

WILL:
A beautiful system for speed… and panic.

GEORGE:
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust has discussed how different rehearsal practices were, including cue scripts and limited rehearsal time compared to modern theatre. 

GEORGE:
So what did the playwright do in this system?

WILL:
He did not merely “write.”
He tailored.
He wrote with certain actors in mind.
He wrote for a clown’s timing, a leading man’s authority, a boy’s range.
He cut when the stage demanded it.
He revised when the crowd demanded it.

GEORGE:
So the audience is a co-author.

WILL:
A noisy one.

GEORGE:
And the company is collaborative too—ideas, edits, business decisions. Scholarship often emphasizes that Elizabethan playmaking was deeply collaborative in company practice. 

GEORGE:
Reading One. Dramatized: the playwright’s week.

GEORGE (reading):
“You write with one eye on the page
and one eye on the purse.

You write knowing the play is not a poem for later.
It is food for tomorrow.
You hear footsteps—an actor wanting more jokes,
a manager wanting fewer risks,
a friend wanting to borrow a line that works.

You rewrite the ending because the boy who plays the lady is ill,
and the scene must be shorter.
You rewrite a speech because the crowd got restless yesterday.
You rewrite because writing is not sacred—
performance is.
And somewhere in the rush you discover:
craft is what survives pressure.”

WILL (soft):
Yes.
Pressure reveals whether art is real.

Now the part modern listeners forget: you’re not writing in a vacuum.

Plays required licensing/approval under royal authority, associated with the Master of the Revels and the censorship system—especially strengthened after a 1574 patent and later practice. 

Companies valued the licensed manuscript—the “allowed book”—as proof the play had approval. 


WILL:
Because one unapproved performance could bring trouble.

GEORGE:
Exactly. So the writer is also constantly negotiating risk: politics, religion, public order.

Now Modern films about Shakespeare love the “genius montage”:
Shakespeare scribbles, inspiration strikes, music swells, masterpiece done.

But the real workflow looks more like:
parts (cue scripts) 
rehearsal constraints 
censorship/approval 
and constant adjustment to audiences.

WILL:
Yes.
Genius is not only lightning.
It is also carpentry.

George
Modern claim: “Shakespeare wrote alone; the company just performed.”

Will?

WILL (gentle, firm):
The claim imagines theatre as literature with costumes.
But theatre is a living craft.
Actors had parts, not full texts—cue scripts shaped how performance functioned. 
Rehearsal and staging realities shaped what could be written. 
And the licensing system shaped what could be said publicly. 

GEORGE:
So even if the writing is yours, the making is collective.

WILL:
Yes.
And the audience is the final editor.

GEORGE:
That also connects to why this matters for your listeners: it makes Shakespeare accessible. He’s not a marble statue—he’s a working artist in a working system.

WILL:
And a working artist respects the crowd—
because the crowd pays the rent.

GEORGE (reading):
“A manuscript is carried like a fragile thing—
not because paper is precious,
but because permission is.

A signature at the end is not decoration.
It is protection.
The company keeps the ‘allowed book’ like a passport. 
Without it, the words are dangerous.
With it, the words can become theatre—
and theatre can become bread.”

WILL (soft):
Yes.
Art needs permission in every age—
one way or another.

GEORGE:
So we have the London foundation:
a district where theatre could exist (Shoreditch) 
and the company machine that turned words into livelihood: cue scripts, rehearsal realities, licensing 

So far up to now I hope I have basically established the rules and the London world that produced them.

WILL:
Ah.
And I will invite my inventions to speak back.

George
Mr. Shakespeare - you invented a world of characters, and I am looking forward to begin meeting them for conversation next month