# How to Rehearse With Cue Scripts, the Way Shakespeare’s Actors Did > A cue script gives you your lines and the last few words before each one, and nothing else. Here's how to make one, learn the cue with the line, listen for it in the room, and catch the traps Shakespeare built in, with Flute's famous mistake from A Midsummer Night's Dream. - URL: https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-rehearse-with-cue-scripts - Published: 2026-11-12 - Last updated: 2026-11-12 Someone has handed you a part, not a script. Maybe it's a class exercise, a festival that rehearses the old way, or a director who wants the cast to listen harder. You have your own lines, a few words before each one, and no idea what anyone else says. It feels like being handed half a phone call. But this is how Shakespeare's actors worked, and it trains the one thing a full script lets you skip: hearing your cue and answering it. The short version: make your part and read the whole play once, marking any cue words that turn up early. Read your part for the clues it gives about the character. Learn each line as a pair with its cue, out loud, cue first, then backward. Then, with other voices reading the other parts, stop following the page and listen for the words that send you in. ## What a cue script gives you, and what it leaves out A cue script is one actor's part: your speeches in order, each one headed by the last few words of the speech before it. Actor Ben Crystal, quoted on the [Folger Shakespeare Library's blog](https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/according-to-the-scrip-shakespeares-text-from-cue-scripts-to-promptbooks-and-beyond/), describes them as rolls of paper with an actor's lines and the cue words spoken before them. The same post notes that none of the cue scripts for Shakespeare's own plays survive. One Elizabethan part does. The Dulwich College archive holds Edward Alleyn's part of Orlando from Robert Greene's *Orlando Furioso*. R. A. Foakes, writing for the [Henslowe-Alleyn project](https://henslowe-alleyn.org.uk/essays/the-part-of-orlando-in-robert-greenes-play/), describes it as strips of paper that were originally pasted into a long roll, with each speech marked off by a line leading to a short cue. The full part would have run to about 800 lines. That's the whole thing an actor held: his role, literally rolled up. What it leaves out matters just as much. In her Oxford talk [Shakespeare and the Stage](https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/shakespeare-and-stage), scholar Tiffany Stern points out that a part shows you the character's journey but not the story. It doesn't tell you who speaks your cue, or how long you'll wait before it comes. You might stand through a whole scene of other people's speeches, or a dance, and the page gives you no warning. So a cue script asks two things of you. Know your own part cold, and keep listening until you hear your way in. ## Make your part first If nobody has given you a part, make one. Go through the script, and for every speech you have, write down the last three or four words of the speech before it, then your speech. Leave everything else out. In the [Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's podcast](https://shakespeare.org.uk/explore-shakespeare/podcast/how-did-actors-learn-their-lines) on how actors learned their lines, Crystal describes a cue as the three or four words of whoever speaks before you, and says copying out your part was itself a help to memory. That's a good reason to write your first copy by hand, at least for a short role or a single scene. You'll notice things as you copy: a word you keep repeating, a speech that's much longer than the rest, a cue that sounds like another cue. For a long role, you don't have to write the whole thing out. Our free [cue script maker](https://www.offbook.com/tools/cue-script-maker) lets you paste a script, pick your role, and get only your lines, each with the last words of the speech before it, ready to print. If you're working on a classic, the plays in our [play library](https://www.offbook.com/plays) are a clean place to start. Keep the cues short. Three or four words is enough to recognize, and a short cue makes you listen for the exact words rather than the general idea of what's being said. ## Read your part for what it tells you A part with nobody else in it can feel thin, but it's full of clues if you read it as a part. In the same Oxford talk, Stern shows how the shape of a single role tells the actor about the person. A servant who says "my lord" in nearly every speech, as Reynaldo does in *Hamlet*, is telling you how he stands with his master. A line where he drops it tells you something has changed. Stern also points to shifts in how a character speaks, such as a move from prose into verse, as signs that the feeling has changed. Read your part through once just for these: repeated words, sudden changes of rhythm, speeches that get shorter as the scene goes on. Write one word beside each speech for what your character wants at that moment. Those notes are what you'll play once the rest of the scene arrives. For more on reading the text this closely, our guide to the [First Folio technique](https://www.offbook.com/blog/first-folio-technique) covers the clues in punctuation, capitals, and line breaks. ## Learn the cue with the line Here's a part built from a famous moment in *A Midsummer Night's Dream*, Act 3, Scene 1. Flute, the bellows-mender, is playing Thisby in the workmen's play, and these are his three speeches in the rehearsal, each with its cue. His first cue is Puck's aside, which the workmen can't hear, so in the scene Flute is really waiting for Bottom to leave: > *...e’er played here.* > > Must I speak now? > > *...is to come again.* > > Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue, / Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier, / Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew, / As true as truest horse that yet would never tire, / I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb. > > *...it is, “never tire.”* > > O—As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire. Learn it the way it's laid out. Cover your lines, read the cue aloud, and say the line that answers it. Uncover and check. When you get one wrong, say that pair three more times before moving on. The cue and the line become one unit, so hearing the first half pulls out the second. Then do it the other way round once a day: read your line and say the cue that comes before it. It sounds backward, but it means you know what you're waiting for, not just what you'll say when it arrives. Offbook's hide-lines view works on the same idea: everyone else's lines stay visible and yours become a gap you have to fill. The video below shows how to hide your lines, or switch them to first-letter cues while you're still learning. Video: [Hide your lines](https://www.offbook.com/learn/hide-your-lines) (1:07) ## Listen for the cue, not for your turn Shakespeare wrote a scene about what happens when actors get this wrong. In Act 1, Scene 2, Quince hands out the parts and tells the company to con them by tomorrow night. At the rehearsal in Act 3, Scene 1, Flute does something any actor with a cue script can easily do: > BOTTOM: —odours savours sweet: / So hath thy breath, my dearest Thisby dear. / But hark, a voice! stay thou but here awhile, / And by and by I will to thee appear. > > PUCK: A stranger Pyramus than e’er played here. > > FLUTE: Must I speak now? > > QUINCE: Ay, marry, must you; for you must understand he goes but to see a noise that he heard, and is to come again. > > FLUTE: Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue, / Of colour like the red rose on triumphant brier, / Most brisky juvenal and eke most lovely Jew, / As true as truest horse that yet would never tire, / I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb. > > QUINCE: “Ninus’ tomb,” man: why, you must not speak that yet; that you answer to Pyramus: you speak all your part at once, cues and all. Pyramus, enter: your cue is past; it is, “never tire.” > > FLUTE: O—As true as truest horse, that yet would never tire. > > *William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 3, Scene 1, from the public-domain [Standard Ebooks edition](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/william-shakespeare/a-midsummer-nights-dream).* Flute ran straight through the cue for Pyramus to re-enter and on into a line that answers a speech nobody has said yet. Bottom, waiting offstage for "never tire," missed his entrance. The [Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's cue script exercise](https://www.shakespeare.org.uk/education/teaching-resources/rehearsing-shakespeares-theatre-cue-scripts/) for schools is built on this scene, and its notes say it's safe to assume Shakespeare's own actors made the same mistakes now and then. The lesson for you: your part is not a speech to deliver when there's a gap. Every line waits for a specific set of words. Even "Must I speak now?" is a fair question when all you have is a cue. Ask it in rehearsal, and mark the answer on your part. ### When your cue words turn up twice Sometimes the words that cue you appear earlier in the other actor's speech too. If you're listening only for "my lord," and the speech says "my lord" three times, you'll come in after the first one. Stern points to Shylock, who keeps reaching his cue words early, so the actors around him jump in, and she argues the interruptions are part of the scene. You won't know where the repeats are until you read or hear the whole scene. So when you do, from your read of the play or at the first rehearsal, look and listen for any place where your cue words come up before the real cue, and write a note beside that line: "second 'my lord'," or "after the pause." ## Rehearse together, from parts only Rehearsal time was short in Shakespeare's theater. Stern describes companies often having only one group rehearsal before a performance, which is why the parts had to carry so much. Shakespeare's Globe still runs experiments like this: for its [one-night cue script *Dream*](https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/a-midsummer-nights-dream-for-one-night-only/), the Globe explains that actors would go away, learn their lines and their cues, and arrive ready to play. You can run the same exercise with a class or a cast. Give everyone only their part. Agree on one rule: nobody speaks until they hear their cue, and nobody reads ahead. Then run the scene and see what happens. Here's what that first run usually teaches: - You'll look at the actor who's speaking, because they're the only source of your next cue. - You'll hear the scene as your character does, from inside it, which can change how you play your first line in it. - You'll find the cues that are hard to hear, such as a cue that's mumbled, cut, or buried in a laugh, and you can ask that actor to land those words. - You'll find out who you're actually answering, which the part on its own never tells you. After that run, swap to the full script for a while. The cue script did its job: it made you listen. Our guide on [how to pick up cues](https://www.offbook.com/blog/how-to-pick-up-cues) covers keeping that pace once you're working from the whole scene. ## A five-day plan from part to scene - Day 1: Read the whole play once if you can, make your part (by hand for a short role, with the cue script maker for a long one), and mark any cue words that come up early in the speech before them. - Day 2: Read your part for clues, and write one word of intention beside each speech. - Day 3: Drill the cue-line pairs out loud, cue first, until you get every pair right twice in a row. - Day 4: Drill them backward, line to cue, so you know what you're waiting for. - Day 5: Run your scenes with other voices reading the other parts, listening for each cue instead of reading ahead. Day 5 is the hard part if you're working alone. If you're alone, Offbook can read the other parts and wait for your line: upload the script, pick your role, and it plays the next cue when you finish. To try it on a classic scene first, the [free run lines tool](https://www.offbook.com/tools/run-lines-online) works with no account. ## Questions actors ask ### What do I do if I miss a cue in a cue script run? Keep going. Come in as soon as you realize, or let the scene move on, and don't apologize mid-scene. Afterward, find the cue you missed on your part and drill that pair a few extra times, cue first. ### Can I use a cue script for a modern play? Yes. The method works for any script with dialogue. The clues in the part are different in modern plays, with less verse and more fragments, but learning each line with its cue and listening for it in the room helps in any style. ### What if another actor changes my cue? It happens all the time in early rehearsals. Keep the short cue, but also know the thought it ends, so you can still come in if the words change. If it keeps happening, ask the stage manager to give that actor a line note. ### Is a cue script the same as sides? No. Sides are pages of the script, usually for an audition, and they show everyone's lines in the scene. A cue script shows only your lines and the few words before each one. You can turn sides into a cue script if you want to drill your lines that way.