Work and Play on the Shakespearean Stage

Time and again, early modern plays show people at work: shoemaking, grave-digging, and professional acting are just some of the forms of labour that theatregoers could have seen depicted on stage in 1599 and 1600. Tom Rutter demonstrates how such representations were shaped by the theatre''s own problematic relationship with work: actors earned their living through playing, a practice that many co...