In his consideration of the organization of the Elizabethan dramatic companies Professor Alwin Thaler pointed out that the company of the Globe Theater in London, to which Shakspere belonged, continued to contain the same actors year after year, the secessions and the accessions being few and far between; and he explained that this was “because its members were bound to one another by ties of devoted personal friendship.” He noted that he had “emphasized the influence exerted upon Shakspere the playwright by his intimate knowledge of the men for whom his work was written, and there can be no doubt that in working out some of his greatest characters he must have remembered that Burbage was to act them.” Then Professor Thaler filed a caveat, so to speak. But the Shakspere muse was not of that sorry sort which produces made-to-order garments to fit the tastes and idiosyncrasies of a single star. Far from being one-man plays, the dramas were written for a great company of actors.... And Richard Burbage, I imagine, would have had little inclination to surrender his place among his peers for the artificial and idolatrous solitude of modern starhood. In this last sentence Mr. Thaler confuses the issue. The question is not whether Burbage wanted to go starring, supported by a more or less incompetent company, but whether Shakspere did on occasion choose to write a play which is in fact a made-to-order garment to fit the idiosyncrasies of a single star. And when it is put in this way the question is easy to answer. We know that Burbage played Richard III, and if there ever was a star-part, if there ever was a one-man play, if there ever was a piece cut and stitched to the measure of the man who first performed it, then it is Richard III. Here we have a dominating character to whom the other characters are sacrificed; he is etched with bold strokes, whereas most of the others are only faintly outlined. So long as Richard is powerfully seized and rendered, then the rest of the acting is relatively unimportant. Richard is the whole show. And while there is only a single star-part in Richard III—Eclipse first and the rest nowhere—there are twin star-parts in Macbeth, who are vigorously drawn, while the remaining characters are merely brushed in, as Professor Bradley has noted.