William Shakespeare, Actor Shakespeare, Actor Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University Grants for Engaged Learning

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

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Shakespeare the Actor

Modern audiences and readers know William Shakespeare as a playwright, but he was also known as an actor in his own time. Shakespeare’s profession as actor is documented in contemporary accounts and printed texts. References to him as an actor, called a player in the early modern period, do not specify the parts he played. The preface of the First Folio of Shakespeare’s works, published by his colleagues after his death in 1623, lists him in The Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes. Playwright Ben Jonson puts him at the top of the list of the principall Comoedians in his play Every Man in his Humour, first acted in 1598; Jonson’s less successful 1603 tragedy Sejanus also includes Shakespeare as a Tragedian.

This image shows the page from a 1616 book The Workes of Benjamin Johnson for the play Every Man in his Humour, noting that Will Shakespeare was one of the ten principall comedians or main actors in the play along with Richard Burbage and eight others, including Henry Condell and John Heminges, who arranged for the publication of Shakespeare’s collected works in 1623. Courtesy of The Folger Shakespeare Library. CC By-SA 4.0.
This image shows the page from a 1616 book The Workes of Benjamin Jonson for the play Sejanus, noting that Will Shakespeare was one of the ten principall tragedians or main actors in the play along with Richard Burbage and eight others, including Henry Condell and John Heminges, who arranged for the publication of Shakespeare’s collected works in 1623. Courtesy of The Folger Shakespeare Library. CC By-SA 4.0.

Scholars do not know if the order in which the names appear is significant, but these cast lists from printed editions of early modern plays confirm that Shakespeare was one of the main actors who acted in Jonson’s plays when they were first staged. Evidence of payments to Shakespeare, alongside Burbage and Kemp, also indicate he was a key part of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in the mid-1590s, very likely as a shareholder, playwright, and actor. The two Jonson cast lists indicate that Shakespeare was performing as an actor at least until 1603, when the King’s Men received their royal patent.

Parts Shakepeare May Have Played

Although scholars have vigorously debated which parts Shakespeare might have played, no clear assignment of parts is possible. It is often rumored that Shakespeare played the parts of old men, like Adam in As You Like It or The Ghost in Hamlet, but there are no documents of any kind that demonstrate this as a fact. In the end, all scholars can be certain of is evidence from other prominent authors of the time indicates that William Shakespeare was both an actor and a playwright. Scholars presume he gave up acting after 1603 to focus on playwriting.

Key Print Sources King, T.J. Casting Shakespeare’s Plays: London Actors and Their Roles, 1590-1642. Cambridge University Press, 2009. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare. Ed. Michael Dobson. Oxford University Press, 2015. Van Es, Bart. <q>Johannes fac Totum?</q>: Shakespeare’s First Contact with the Acting Companies. Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 61, no. 4, 2010, pp. 551–557.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. Shakespeare, Actor. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/maturity/shactor.html. Accessed 18 Feb. 2023. Mabillard, Amanda. Shakespeare the Actor and Playwright. Shakespeare Online, 12 Nov. 2000, https://www.shakespeare-online.com/biography/shakespeareactor.html. Nelson, Alan. <title level="m">The Works of Benjamin Jonson: Shakespeare Included in Two Cast Lists. Shakespeare Documented, 25 Jan. 2020 https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/node/257.
Image Sources Jonson, Benjamin. The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. London: Will. Stansby, 1616. 72 and 438. Shakespeare Documented. Folger Shakespeare Library. STC 14751 copy 2. https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/node/257.