by flagamuffin

This among other things is supremely interesting:

The entire cast then received a written copy of their cue-lines and their own lines, and nothing else; most of the subsequent “rehearsal” was in private, an adult actor working at home with his boy apprentice, who lodged with him, to memorize scenes they shared. Gesture and intonation would be practiced at this point rather than in full rehearsal. Actors learned their craft from each other; there was no equivalent of the modern director. There might be occasional small group rehearsals supervised by another member of the company, who probably would not be the author unless, like Shakespeare, the author had a financial stake in the play’s success. Extraordinary though it seems to us, an actor receiving his part, who had not previously heard the play read through, was ignorant of the overall plot, of what had happened since his previous speech, and even of whom he was addressing since the cue-lines contained no speech prefixes. The only full rehearsal would come, if at all, immediately before the first performance and would be what is now called a “blocking rehearsal” where onstage entrances, exits, and movements could be run through. The actors would therefore experience the entire play only on the day they were to perform it, in a week when they might also be performing three or four other plays from their repertoire without any fresh rehearsal. Palfrey and Stern even question whether all the words would be rehearsed; since the actors were assumed to know their business, time might be better spent on logistically tricky group activities such as crowd or fight scenes. Given these conditions, the leading actors had to specialize in particular kinds of roles, enabling them to rely on stock gestures, movements, facial expressions, and tones of voice. An actor’s interpretation of his roles would die with him unless he taught it to another actor such as his apprentice.