Playing Company - Scheduling

Scheduling

Performances at the public theatres were generally allowed six days per week; the theatres were closed on Sundays and major religious holidays like Good Friday. Other restrictions were laid upon the players, some of which they evaded as consistently as they could. They were supposed to cease playing entirely during Lent — but violated this structure regularly. In the spring of 1592, for example, the Lord Strange's Men played daily at the Rose Theatre right through Lent. After 1623, companies circumvented the Lenten restriction through the simple expedient of paying bribes to Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels.

One restriction that the players observed, one that was too serious to violate, was the prohibition enforced whenever bubonic plague rose from endemic to epidemic levels. Through much of the English Renaissance period, the theatres were shut down when the death figures in the plague bill (the weekly mortality report for London and some suburban parishes) rose above a certain level. In 1604 that cut-off number was set at 30 per week; in 1607 it was raised to 40. A serious epidemic closed the theatres almost entirely from June 1592 through April 1594; 11,000 Londoners died of plague in 1593. (The plague tended to abate in the colder weather of winter; the theatres opened for short seasons during the winter months of those years.) 1603 was another bad plague year, with 30,000 deaths in London; the theatres were closed from March 1603 to perhaps April 1604.

Other serious epidemics caused theatre closures in 1625 (for eight months, to October) and from May 1636 to October 1637. These periods of closure were always traumatically difficult for the acting troupes; some survived by touring cities and towns outside of London...and some didn't survive at all.