Inspiration

“In the contemporary theatre, the dominant figure is of course the director. Before the twentieth century, artistic decision-making lay in other hands. What sort of play should be staged? How should it be staged? These were not decisions for a ‘Director’ but (chiefly) for the actor and for the writer. The writer’s work survives, the actor’s work can only be inferred. It is all too easy to assume that the actor was the servant or interpreter of the writer: to forget the writer was, in no less a real sense, the servant or interpreter of the actor” - David Wiles, Shakespeare’s Clown: Actor and text in the Elizabethan Playhouse