To prosper, a theatre in London needed to draw as many as two thousand spectators a day – about 1 per cent of the city’s population – two hundred or so times a year, and to do so repeatedly against stiff competition. To keep customers coming back, it was necessary to change the plays constantly. Most companies performed at least five different plays in a week, sometimes six, and used such spare time as they could muster to learn and rehearse new ones. A new play might be performed three times in its first month, then rested for a few months or abandoned altogether. Few plays managed as many as
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