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[MUSIC PLAYING] MICHAEL DOBSON: A prompt book is a copy of a play that has been used to regulate a performance. It has been used, as it implies, by the prompter.

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It's the copy of the script backstage or in the prompt booth that tells the prompter which lines the actors are supposed to be saying and which ones have been deliberately left out so

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that any prompter coming in, perhaps as a deputy, will know immediately how to guide the actors, if they need it, through the performance. And it's also used by other backstage personnel--

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stage managers, in particular. It's got the markings on it, characteristically, of when something mechanical needs to happen, when a curtain needs to be rung down,

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when scenery needs to be changed. It will often have cues marked in it when you need to remind the actors who are due to come on in five minutes' time.

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Because a prompt book has to be used by technicians who may be coming in and out of the theatre and weren't there during the rehearsals, they have to be consistent with each other. So there's a set of marks and codes

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for which side of the stage we're talking about, which, as I say, are consistent. So, a prompt book tends to give you pretty unambiguous evidence about many aspects

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of a production. Because they tell us about what the play was actually like, which bits of the play were performed, how many set changes there were, how much was happening

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backstage, prompt books give us a sense of the changing shape of a play and its changing meanings. Other documents don't. For example, one can watch certain roles

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growing and changing in size. One can watch more of Shakespeare's texts being put in and alterations to that text coming out or going back in, in some instances.

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We have prompt books from which certain roles have actually been struck out completely. The comings and goings of Fortinbras in Hamlet are a classic instance of this.

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Some Hamlets have been really interested in who takes over the kingdom at the end of the play. Some just think that once Hamlet's dead, we don't care anymore and that the political side

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of Scandinavian life is much less interesting than the psychological. And one can gauge that by seeing how many lines Fortinbras gets or whether his lines are given to Horatio, as they

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are in some versions. So, if what one wants to see is how a Shakespeare play changes for different audiences, how it evolves, what in the live theatre you actually get of that play,

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there's really nothing like being able to see these cuts coming and going and these cues. The more complex theatre becomes, the more elaborate prompt books become,

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and the more they tell us about what these spectacles were like, what meanings they made available from the scripts.