How were the actors directed during the Elizabethan period?

Answer 1

I heard a lecture on Shakespeare that said the theatres were noisy open air places with the audience standing and eating and drinking beer etc, rough and tumble places, with no scenery, no curtains or wings, no props to speak of. The thing was to get on with telling the story and racing through the action. There would be music before and after the play, making the whole thing 4 or 5 hours every afternoon. The audience would want to see something different every day so the actors had to know parts and play one part one day, another the next etc. If they got bored, they'd chuck fruit and veg etc, and "they wouldn't stand for it", i.e. they'd more or less riot. I got the impression from the talk that there wasn't much of a place for "direction" as we know it, just the writer's and the actors' abilities to hold the audience. It wasn't like today, the audience quiet and respectful and deferent, and seated comfortably, open to anything. They were very impatient and demanding and the actor and writer had to just get on with it and get through it. And there'd be improvising and "audience participation".

Answer 2

I'm not sure that the previous answer really addresses the question here. It's not about performance conditions for Elizabethan actors (see Olivier's film of "Henry V" if you want an excellent conception of what that might've been like), but about how plays were CREATED in rehearsal.

From what I've heard and read, it was much more of a COMMUNAL process than we're used to today. Nowadays, we're trained to look to the director as the person responsible for making all significant decisions regarding what goes onstage and what doesn't. He/she is in charge of design, tone, interpretation of text, and (to a greater or lesser degree) the quality of performance. Back then, I think shows were assembled more or less by consensus as among the performers.

In the Elizabethan period, there were theatre company MANAGERS (Shakespeare was one himself), and it stands to reason that the managers had a lot of say as to what went on...since a great deal of the money riding on the productions was THEIRS.

As opposed to today, actors were given SIDES (sheets containing only their lines, along with cue lines), not scripts. Rehearsals must have been very different kinds of events, since actors at a first reading would be hearing the FULL text of scenes and acts for the first time.