ABSTRACT
This study is concerned to examine a series of extracts from play-texts which feature players as characters for the information they provide about the nature of Elizabethan performance practice. In their formative stage these texts were hand-written 'scripts', copied in parts for the actors, and intended for the two hours' traffic of the stage, and so they generally remained throughout their active life . In normal circumstances they were not printed, they did not become 'literature', until they had ceased to be of value in the playhouse.
