New England Shakespeare revives a practice not seen on the stage since Richard Burbadge, Will Kempt, and Will Shakespeare himself last trod the boards of the great Globe itself: performances of Shakespeare's plays from the original prompt scripts. The intent is to discover the true content of the texts by duplicating the creative process of Shakespeare's own acting company.

Shakespeare, and all other playwrights of the Elizabethan period, wished to ensure protection for their works in a world which knew no Copyright laws. Therefore, they distributed to their actors "cue scripts" which contained only an actor's own lines plus the last three words of his cues. This practice guaranteed that a disgruntled actor could not abscond with the script and sell it for unauthorized publication.

In addition, there was no such thing as "a run" in the modern sense. To draw audiences, public playhouses had to constantly perform new plays or revive old ones. On average, a single acting company would present ten different plays over the course of two weeks, as well as additional private performances before the court. This left room for "rehearsals" of only the most rudimentary type. Actors met together to rehearse only fights, dances, and songs. The first time they worked their scenes together was during their first performance before an audience. Everything an actor needed to know - his blocking, characterization, props he would need - were all in his own lines.

The First Folio of 1623 was the first published collection of the canon which was compiled from Shakespeare's original prompt-scripts by two members of his company, John Hemmings and Henry Condell.

Cue-script productions can only be done from the Folio, as editors wring out much vital life from the texts and remove all the important acting clues in the name of Regularity. Seemingly "archaic" spellings are not really "archaic" at all - they were written as clues to the actors. For example, "warre" spelled with the double "r" could indicate a dialect, while "mee" spelled with the double "e" indicates stress which colors the sense of the line.

Employing Shakespeare's own methods establishes a groundwork on which actors build remarkably inspired performances. Actors find the process exhilarating, though very demanding, and often have difficulty "going back" to edited scripts after being exposed to Folio work.

Audiences find the process no less exhilarating than the actors, for the result is an extremely tactile, visceral, and accessible production.