What impressed me most about the whole process was the dedicated professionalism shown throughout by the actors. There was no bickering; there were no temper tantrums nor ego trips. Each actor naturally came to the rehearsals with ideas of his or her own which emphasized the role of that actor’s character. The resulting differences were, however, worked out in a spirit of cooperation. Ego was subordinated to consensus. The actors focused instead on the business of putting on an entertainment worthy of their spectators’ time.
Watching the actors, it occurred to me that this also was how a successful Elizabethan acting company must have operated. They not only had to perform and to rehearse upcoming performances, but also to attend to the company’s business affairs, hiring and paying employees, dealing with the authorities, and marketing their product. They also had to acquire new plays, a process which, as we have seen, required considerable attention on their parts. They could not have done all that in the time available to them unless they cooperated with each other with the same professionalism that was shown by the actors here.