Shakespeare in performance works were plundered for these scenes. Among the drolls taken from Shakespeare were "Bottom the Weaver" (Bottom's scenes from "A Midsummer Night's Dream") and "The Grave-makers" (the gravedigger's scene from "Hamlet"). At the Restoration in 1660, Shakespeare's plays were divided between the two newly licensed companies: the King's Company of Thomas Killigrew and the Duke's Men of William Davenant. The licensing system prevailed for two centuries; from 1660 to 1843, only two main companies regularly presented Shakespeare in London. Davenant, who had known early-Stuart actors such as John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, was the main figure establishing some continuity with
The Shakespeare Project The Shakespeare Project In October 1983, the Riverside Shakespeare Company, then New York City's only year-round professional Shakespeare theatre company, inaugurated "The Shakespeare Project", based at the theatre company's home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, The Shakespeare Center. "The Shakespeare Project" was the first major New York residency of actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company - with Edwin Richfield, Heather Canning, Christopher Ravenscroft, Jennie Stoller and John Kane (the later two from Peter Brook's "A Midsummer Night's Dream") - for a week of public workshops, panel discussions, seminars and performances at the company's Upper West Side theatre, The