The Actor's Part

Much uncertainty has arisen from the erroneous assumption that there is only one surviving early modern written ‘part’ from which all knowledge of actors' texts must be gleaned. But in fact there are a handful of extant parts in English both from the Renaissance period and earlier; and from later — the Restoration and the 18th century — there are large quantities of surviving professional theatre parts. This chapter begins with a description of early 16th-century parts from England, France, and Germany. After establishing the characteristics of these parts, that information is then compared with the information offered by the early modern professional part of ‘Orlando’. As the question that is important to this project is whether ‘Orlando’ is typical, further contexts are explored. The chapter considers what professional theatre parts looked like over the two centuries following the performance of Orlando, asking where ‘Orlando’ fits into the history of actors' parts.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Extant taxon · Period (music) · The Renaissance · Visual arts · History · Philippine History and Culture