Accueil Actes des colloques 39 Introduction. Right from the beginning, then, the term was related to the idea of the world as a stage. Throughout their dramatic production, Shakespeare and his contemporaries were keen on showcasing the omnipresence of actors while also stressing the instability of their status. Together, they call for a reflection on the uncertain boundaries between stage and life and on the material conditions surrounding the acting profession. Without them, Shakespeare would certainly not have the international aura that makes his name iconic today.
Yet, dramatists did not always judge actors kindly for, contrary to poets, their means of livelihood bore the mark of infamy. Grammar school education particularly cultivated this skill in children from an early age by making them learn by heart whole passages from the classics.
Acting styles were steeped in such rhetoric. Speech acts and passions that were played out on stage were associated with a particular rhetorical form and style, providing a whole repertory of speech codes playwrights used and subverted.
There was no clear answer, but Thomas Heywood, himself an actor, said that. Actors should be men picked out personable, according to the parts they present; they should be rather scholars, that though they cannot speak well, know how to speak, or else to have that volubility that they can speak well, though they understand not what, and so both imperfections may by instructions be helped and amended; but where a good tongue and a good conceit both fail, there can never be good actor.
The surviving court playing venues, namely Hampton Court, St. Actors certainly needed their support at a time when Puritan pamphleteers were beginning to make themselves heard and to threaten the profession.
