Introduction

Abstract

Early modern adult playing companies coped with enormous mnemonic loads, apparently performing up to six different plays a week, with relatively infrequent repetition, all the while learning and mounting a new play more than once a month. As Lois Potter (1991) has noted, such cognitive demands were especially intensive in the highly competitive era of the 1590s, when multiple companies sought to entice audiences into the relatively new environment of the purpose-built theatre. Companies successfully delivered performances, day after day, bringing together script, player, playing space, and audience in what seems like an unimaginably demanding environment. Cognition in the Globe seeks to answer a seemingly simple question: How did they do it?