ABSTRACT
T h e r i s e o f E u ro p e a n p ro f e s s i o n a l t h e a t re s Although print would prove vitally important to Western theatre, the struggling professional troupes of the mid-sixteenth century relied very little on printed plays. In Spain and England, traveling companies of actors benefited from the gradual decline of medieval forms of theatre by enacting traditional farces, moralities, banquet performances, and occasional new scripts – typically cobbled together by the actor-manager – for popular and aristocratic audiences. Much as troupes of minstrels had done in medieval times, the acting companies of the early 1500s attached themselves to a noble family, entertained in their households when they could, and traveled with the permission and under the protection of a nobleman’s name for much of the season. Despite this apparent extension of feudal relationships in the theatre, however, Western European actor-managers and their companies both drew on noble patronage and supported themselves economically by charging admission.
