In the Prologue to Romeo and Juliet the Chorus refers
to the play as ‘...the two hour traffic of our stage...’
If this were an accurate timing, it would imply that Shakespeare's actors must have spoken extremely quickly!
However, there is some evidence that scripts may have been shortened for touring.
In this tradition The Lord Chamberlain's Men perform sympathetically
edited versions of the text, without losing any of the work's richness and subtlety.
