Actors would travel round the country in small towns, cities and in private homes, how by the time Shakespeare died, London had several theatre for the actors to perform in and they would bring "huge" audiences with them.
Back then, actors also had a "bad reputation". They were seen as "unruly" and a "threat to peaceful society".
Men playing woman parts:
Back in Shakespearean times, only men and boys were allowed to perform in England, despite there being a lot of female parts in Shakespeare's plays. Even though in other countries in Europe woman were allowed to be in theatre, in England this was not allowed until the 1660s. So due to the lack of female casting, the young boys would take on the parts of playing the females characters.
Actor's training:
As of today there's a lot of training in acting such as;
Drama clubs,
College,
And drama schools, and a lot of techniques to know and admire, back in Shakespeare's time the training was a lot less. What happened was when men/young boys would join a theatre company,-(generally young boys), they would join as an apprentice and the senior actors would show them what to do. Yes, it is still a type of training, however, it wasn't as intense as it is now, I wouldn't think.
"An average day for an actor"
Then, actors would have to perform midday/afternoon as they had to rely on the natural light, so they would spend all morning rehearsing from an early hour and then perform it that afternoon.
Actors wouldn't really have that much time to rehearse on one show either, as they were also working on other shows they're performing the next day etc.
How actors learnt their part:
Back then they weren't given the whole script, they were only given the pages with their lines and their cue lines. There was only 1 full version of the script, that belonged to the director. You can see because of this, it made it very hard for the actors to understand why their characters are feeling how they are as they didn't know the full show!!
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