Exploring Theatre in Stratford-Upon-Avon

Drama was thriving in Stratford when Shakespeare was a child, so we're talking the 1560s and '70s, because traveling acting companies visited the town.

Before they were granted a license to perform in town, they had to be vetted by the bailiff, the alderman, the Common Council, as I believe it was known.

And there was even a point when John Shakespeare, so William's dad, was in charge of this vetting process.

It took place usually in the Guild Hall, so very difficult to imagine that Shakespeare wouldn't have had a look at at least some of the occasions.

We know, for example, that when he was aged between about nine and 12, the most famous theater company in England arrived in Stratford more than once.

Lord Leicester's Men, they were called, and quite an illustrious company, able to charge apparently three times what ordinary companies could charge in order to watch their plays.

They weren't the only players in town.

Records show that at least 15 other companies visited Stratford during the years when Shakespeare was young.

So the question is, did he watch and did he find inspiration there? I think the official answer is maybe.

My answer is surely, surely he did.

I also read something interesting in one of the guidebooks I came across.

Quote, "The companies sometimes recruited local boys and young men to act in walk-on roles and perhaps assist backstage.

If this happened in Stratford, William Shakespeare would probably have been a keen participant." Yes, indeed, and if you go on a tour round the Guild Hall, they will show you a room upstairs which used to be called the agreeing room, so the room in which actors, before they did their performance, would meet to agree on exactly how they were going to perform in the space.

I think it's a corruption of that word that gives us today's green room.

And while we're on the subject of etymology, there was also in theaters of the day a tiring room, the room where the actors got changed into their costumes, taken from the word attire, presumably.

Anyway, so he probably saw real actors at work.

We know, too, that he probably watched court cases in the Guild Hall, again, especially when his father was a magistrate, so maybe that gave him some ideas for high drama.

And we know that his teachers, or some of them anyway, encouraged the boys in the school that he almost certainly attended to act out texts from Roman literature in their lessons.

That must have filled young Shakespeare's mind with lots of ideas and characters and stories, and you can trace them sometimes.

Pyramus and Thisbe, for example, that little interlude in Midsummer Night's Dream, that comes straight from the Latin author Ovid.

And we can perhaps also imagine that maybe they read Cicero, and that from that, Shakespeare picked up lots of ideas about the power of great oratory and how to write a really good speech.

I found it interesting to note that Shakespeare's childhood was exactly the moment when theater as an actual building in which to perform plays became a thing.

Drama was thriving in Stratford when Shakespeare was a child, so we're talking the 1560s and '70s, because traveling acting companies visited the town.

Before they were granted a license to perform in town, they had to be vetted by the bailiff, the alderman, the Common Council, as I believe it was known.

And there was even a point when John Shakespeare, so William's dad, was in charge of this vetting process.

It took place usually in the Guild Hall, so very difficult to imagine that Shakespeare wouldn't have had a look at at least some of the occasions.

We know, for example, that when he was aged between about nine and 12, the most famous theater company in England arrived in Stratford more than once.

Lord Leicester's Men, they were called, and quite an illustrious company, able to charge apparently three times what ordinary companies could charge in order to watch their plays.

They weren't the only players in town.

Records show that at least 15 other companies visited Stratford during the years when Shakespeare was young.

So the question is, did he watch and did he find inspiration there? I think the official answer is maybe.

My answer is surely, surely he did.

I also read something interesting in one of the guidebooks I came across.

Quote, "The companies sometimes recruited local boys and young men to act in walk-on roles and perhaps assist backstage.

If this happened in Stratford, William Shakespeare would probably have been a keen participant." Yes, indeed, and if you go on a tour round the Guild Hall, they will show you a room upstairs which used to be called the agreeing room, so the room in which actors, before they did their performance, would meet to agree on exactly how they were going to perform in the space.

I think it's a corruption of that word that gives us today's green room.

And while we're on the subject of etymology, there was also in theaters of the day a tiring room, the room where the actors got changed into their costumes, taken from the word attire, presumably.

Anyway, so he probably saw real actors at work.

We know, too, that he probably watched court cases in the Guild Hall, again, especially when his father was a magistrate, so maybe that gave him some ideas for high drama.

And we know that his teachers, or some of them anyway, encouraged the boys in the school that he almost certainly attended to act out texts from Roman literature in their lessons.

That must have filled young Shakespeare's mind with lots of ideas and characters and stories, and you can trace them sometimes.

Pyramus and Thisbe, for example, that little interlude in Midsummer Night's Dream, that comes straight from the Latin author Ovid.

And we can perhaps also imagine that maybe they read Cicero, and that from that, Shakespeare picked up lots of ideas about the power of great oratory and how to write a really good speech.

I found it interesting to note that Shakespeare's childhood was exactly the moment when theater as an actual building in which to perform plays became a thing.