The Hamlet Project

My edition says “to attendants” for this line. Most productions I’ve seen or been a part of don’t really have enough actors for the king to just have extra attendants – so he will say it to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern but then you have a problem – because in just a few lines, he’s going to instruct someone to follow Hamlet. So if Rosencrantz and Guildenstern go look for the body, then you either have to have them come back or split them up – so Rosencrantz has to look for the body and Guildenstern has to follow Hamlet.
It all makes me wonder about the casts of Shakespeare’s shows. We have some sense of who was in them but the named players might not cover such roles as attendants and extras. The logistics of running a company in Shakespeare’s time are endlessly fascinating to me. I want to understand even the smallest roles and how they used them. I assume they’re apprentices. But then we have boys playing these attendant roles? That’s a little bit funny. In that case the king is followed around by a bunch of boys…which makes him slightly less powerful.