The golden age of theatre lasted only about the length of a good human lifetime, but what a wondrously prolific and successful period it was. Between the opening of the Red Lion in 1567 and the closing of all the theatres by the Puritans 75 years later, London’s playhouses are thought to have attracted 50m paying customers, something like 10 times the country’s population in Shakespeare’s day.

To prosper, a theatre in London needed to draw as many as 2,000 spectators a day – about 1% of the city’s population – 200 or so times a year, and to do so repeatedly against stiff competition. To keep customers coming back, it was necessary to change the plays constantly. Most companies performed at least five different plays in a week, sometimes six, and used such spare time as they could muster to learn and rehearse new ones.

A new play might be performed three times in its first month, then rested for a few months or abandoned altogether. Few plays managed as many as 10 performances in a year. So quite quickly there arose an urgent demand for material.

What is truly remarkable is how much quality the age produced in the circumstances. Few writers made much of a living at it, however. A good play might fetch £10, but as these were often collaborations involving as many as half a dozen authors, an individual share was modest (and with no royalties or other further payments beyond).

Thomas Dekker cranked out, singly or in collaboration, no fewer than 32 plays in three years, but never pocketed more than 12 shillings a week, and spent much of his career imprisoned for debt. Even Ben Jonson, who passed most of his career in triumph and esteem, died in poverty.

Plays belonged, incidentally, to the company, not the playwright. A finished play was stamped with a licence from the master of the revels giving permission for its staging, so it needed to be retained by the company. It is sometimes considered odd that no play manuscripts or prompt books were found among Shakespeare’s personal effects at his death. In fact it would have been odd if they had been.

For authors and actors alike, the theatrical world was an insanely busy place, and for someone like Shakespeare, who was playwright, actor, part owner and probably de facto director as well (there were no formal directors in his day), it must have been nearly hysterical at times.

Companies might have as many as 30 plays in their active repertoire, so a leading actor could be required to memorise perhaps 15,000 lines in a season as well as remember every dance, sword thrust and costume change.

Even the most successful companies were unlikely to employ more than a dozen or so actors, which meant a great deal of doubling up. Julius Caesar, for instance, has 40 named characters, as well as parts for unspecified numbers of “servants”, “other plebians” and “senators, soldiers and attendants”.

Although many of these had few demanding lines, or none at all, it was still necessary in every case to be fully acquainted with the relevant props, cues, positions, entrances and exits, and to appear on time correctly attired. That in itself must have been a challenge, for nearly all clothing then involved either complicated fastenings – two dozen or more obstinate fabric clasps on a standard doublet – or yards of lacing.

In such a hothouse, reliability was paramount. The papers of Philip Henslowe, theatrical manager, show that actors were subjected to rigorous contractual obligations, with graduated penalties for missing rehearsals, being drunk or tardy, failing to be “ready apparelled” at the right moment, or – strikingly – for wearing any stage costumes outside the playhouse. Costumes were extremely valuable, so the fine was a decidedly whopping (and thus probably never imposed) £40. But even the most minor infractions, like tardiness, could cost an actor two days’ pay.

Shakespeare appears to have remained an actor throughout his professional life (unlike Ben Jonson, who quit as soon as he could afford to), for he was listed as an actor on documents in 1592, 1598, 1603 and 1608 – which is to say at every phase of his career. It can’t have been easy to have been an actor as well as a playwright, but it would doubtless have allowed him (assuming he wished it) much greater control than had he simply surrendered a script to others, as most playwrights did.

According to tradition, Shakespeare specialised in good but fairly undemanding roles in his own plays. The ghost in Hamlet is the part to which he is most often linked. In fact we don’t know what parts he played, but that they were nontaxing roles seems a reasonable assumption given the demands on him not only as writer of the plays but also in all likelihood as the person most closely involved with their staging. But it may well be that he truly enjoyed acting, and craved large parts when not distracted by scripting considerations.

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