Most of the leading actors in Shakespeare's theatre had their apprentices. A stage aspirant was often called upon to appear before the leading members of the company, and to give some proof of his talent. No little importance was attached to the youth's appearance, to his command of facial expression, and to the sufficiency of his voice. If the young man's talent lay in the direction of comedy, Kemp might address him after this manner: "Methinks you should belong to my tuition, and your face, methinks, would be good for a foolish mayor, or a foolish justice of peace." Not seldom the efforts of novices to copy nature excited the derision of experts. Kemp, as a character in a play--"The Return from Parnassus" acted about 1601--says to Burbage: "It is a good sport in a part to see them never speak but at the end of the stage, just as though, in walking with a fellow, we should never speak but at a stile, a gate, or a ditch, where a man can go no further." Besides having a good memory, an actor needed the gift of studying quickly. It is not generally known that the expression "to sleep on a part," still in use among actors, was current in Shakespeare's day; but we read in an old play of an actor, whose memory had failed him while acting his part, blaming the negligence of the man in charge of the stage: "It is all along of you. I could not get my part a night or two before to sleep upon it." The prompter, or "bookholder," as he was more often called, was not an unnecessary person on a "new day," the first performance of a new play. He would have received many a warning to "hold the book well, that we be not _non plus_ in the latter end of the play." And Ben Jonson has given an amusing description of an additional supervision on the part of the author that was not of the actor's seeking, "to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the bookholder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for every venal trespass we commit." The members of a theatrical company being limited in number, it was often necessary for the impersonators of kings and heroes to represent very inferior characters in the same play, a circumstance to the advantage of the dramatist, who could thus obtain capable exponents for the parts of messengers and attendants, and was able, therefore, to "write up" these parts without fear of the author's lines being mangled by incompetence, or made ridiculous by false pretension. Actors who doubled their parts wore the double cloak--a cloak that might be worn on either side. A turned cloak, with a false beard and a black or yellow peruke, supplied a ready, if not effectual, disguise.