FROM PARCHMENT TO PERFORMANCE

In Shakespeare’s time, playwriting was a matter of both perspiration and inspiration. First he had to think up a story, which he would shape into a plot. Usually this meant he had to do a lot of fresh reading, because most of Shakespeare’s plays are based either on history or on stories that had already been written down.

For plays based on English history, such as , , and those about Henry IV and Henry V, Shakespeare would have read big, heavy books suchasthe Chronicles byRaphael Holinshed. When he wrote about ancient Rome, in plays such as , , and , he would have turned to Sir Thomas North’s English translation, a collection of biographies written by the Greek historian Plutarch. These tomes are not the sort of thing you can slip into your pocket and dip into over lunch.