Shakespeare: A Life

by Park Honan

  For the Admiral's men, Howard thus had the most famous actor in Alleyn, the wealthiest impresario in Henslowe, and perhaps the most up-to-date theatre in the Rose, along with all of Marlowe's dramas and the rest of Henslowe's rich stock of playbooks. The actors were not to be sworn in as Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber but would wear the badge and colours of Hunsdon or Howard. Among Howard's dependable, well-tried actors were Thomas Downton from Derby's troupe, John Singer of the Queen's, as well as Edward Dutton (prominent by 1597), Edward Juby, Martin Slater, and Thomas Towne. All of them wore a badge of the Lord Admiral's players -- a noble white lion with a blue shoulder-crescent.

  Yet Hunsdon was not quite outdone. His troupe began with seven or eight shareholders, though the number would rise. As Chamberlain's sharers -- or leading actors who would jointly own and manage

  -199-

  the company, pay expenses, and take profits -- Richard Burbage and Shakespeare probably came in before the summer. Five more sharers were found in the Countess Alice's troupe in George Bryan, John Heminges, Will Kempe, Augustine Phillips, and Thomas Pope, along with some lesser recruits. These men and boys wore the insignia, on a round arm-badge or on a brooch pinned to the hat, of a flying silver swan.

  Shakespeare had to pay about £50 for a Chamberlain's share, unless he was excused from that. In lieu of paying, he may have agreed to write for the company two new plays a year -- one comedy and one serious work -- for which he would be recompensed. The Burbages knew something of his value. All of his early plays came into their hands, either because he had kept his rights, or because old Burbage shrewdly had bought the Henry VI scripts and a few others.

  Much else doubtless came into company hands, and it is likely that they acquired four other playscripts of some note: a Hamlet which was perhaps Kyd's, a recent King Leir, The Troublesome Raigne of John, King of England, and one of several texts of The Famous Victories of Henry V. The titles are interesting. King Leir definitely, if not versions of the other plays, had once belonged to the badly depleted Queen's troupe, which in the spring quit London to go 'into the contrey to play', as Henslowe recorded; for one reason or another they did not return. The regular poet of the Chamberlain's men, it seems, was to ensure that new versions of those same four playscripts would not be forgotten.

  Without much time for planning, the Admiral's and the Chamberlain's men shared a ten-day run at Newington Butts in June. This was miserable; the takings up to 13 June were thin. Two days later the Admiral's Servants were at the Rose near the river, and here they had a fairly brilliant run -- putting on nearly three dozen plays in fifty weeks and breaking only at Lent and midsummer.

  The Chamberlain's men had unknown problems -- the Theater may not have been ready, or the venue gave difficulty -- and in September

  -200-

  they were out at Marlborough in Wiltshire. But, not meaning to starve in the winter, they made it plain to their great patron that they needed to be in the city's heart at the Cross Keys inn in Gracechurch Street. On 8 October 1594, Hunsdon sent an odd letter to the Lord Mayor, something in between a fiat and a request, to 'requier and praye' that Shakespeare's company be allowed in the city. He implies they are already there, and promises the actors will begin at two o'clock, instead of nearly four. They will be less noisy than in the suburbs, not using any drums or trumpets at all,

  for the callinge of peopell together, and shall be contributories to the poore of the parishe where they plaie accordinge to their habilities. And soe not dowting of your willingnes to yeeld hereunto, uppon theise resonable condicions, I comitt yow to the Almightie . . . this viijth of October 1594.

  Your lordships lovinge freind, H. Hounsdon 4

  For a few days at least, Shakespeare and his fellows were at the Cross Keys, near the arterial road leading up to the city's north-east gate.

  Playwrights, we imagine, must have waited for elaborate civic occasions to see symbolic, colourful ceremonies from which they could learn. But after the plague, a wealthy inner parish of London would have shown its own rainbow. Colours, at the time, were not just anarchical; and streets were encoded with a thousand symbols of rank, trade, and profession, with heraldry on flags and even on shop signs. One saw the badged coats of liveries, ecclesiastical and civil robes, now and then the black gowns of Students or magistrates, and many blues of apprentices. On a working day, London would have given Shakespeare vibrant examples of a symbolism of colour. London also offered books, and not far from the inn was the bookshop of William Barley -- soon to be a music publisher.

  How did Shakespeare get his books? By late 1594 he must have owned a copy of the second edition of Holinshed Chronicles, and he would soon make use of 'The Life of Theseus' in North's version of Plutarch Lives. After the Earl of Derby died his widow Alice in fact presented a copy of North's Plutarch to a man named ' Wilhelmi' -- or

  -201-

  William -- but the last name is lost. A Latin inscription (not in her own hand) has been cut to leave the words:

  Nunc Wilhelmi dono Nobilissima Alisiae Comitissae 5

  Perhaps Shakespeare, perhaps someone else. But Alice's book -whoever her William was -- suggests that patrons gave volumes as desirable gifts and so a poet might acquire books in this way. Patrons, such as the third Earl of Pembroke, even gave money for bookbuying. At Stratford today is a copy of Henri Estienne Katherine de Medicis ( 1575), a work full of allusions to the King of Navarre; 6 it was once in Shakespeare's hands if we accept a legend, not very sound, that his daughter Susanna later gave it to a royal chamberlain. What seems true is that in an age when books were costly, he acquired from sellers or patrons a few that he most needed, and borrowed others on short-term loan. One evident resource was the printing office of his friend Richard Field, since it appears that soon after Field printed Richard Crompton Mansion of Magnanimitie early in 1599, the poet was able to consult a copy for Henry V.

  At the Cross Keys, he was near the Eastcheap taverns of Falstaff, and, at about this time, his interest in London quickened. His men had a repertoire to plan in 1594, and at taverns a new play might be recited for a troupe's approval: so the Admiral's men vetted a script 'at the Sun in New Fish Street', and wine flowed at such recitals. 7 The Chamberlain's men had time for the wine, but the Guildhall's general anxiety and mortal fear of civic riot, it appears, ensured that they were never again allowed at a city inn. After moving up near Holywell Street they acted twice at the royal court in December, and later, to collect the fee, Shakespeare went along to Whitehall with Richard Burbage and Will Kempe on 15 March 1595.

  As joint payees, these men were key figures in the troupe. But the usual payee became John Heminges, who as a 'business manager' held bonds, deeds, and other legal papers and looked after financial interests of his fellows. Meanwhile, the actors had begun an almost frantic routine. At the Curtain or Theater in 1595, morning rehearsals preceded

  -202-

  the afternoon's show, and Shakespeare was then partly responsible for a pyramid of half-sharers, supporting actors, boys, and hirelings.

  The first condition of his own success was a troupe's smooth order, but actors were flamboyant, living on their feelings. Offstage fights were known. His actors were not especially dangerous, but extreme cases probably suggest an underlying tenor in behaviour. John Heminges had married a widow of 16, whose actor-husband had been killed by a player, and the actor whom Ben Jonson later killed had himself murdered a man. Robert Dawes was dispatched by a fellow player. John Singer, then working as a 'gatherer', killed a play-goer who argued over the price of admission. The creator of Tybalt and Mercutio had much to observe, not least the love-affairs, flare-ups, mix-ups (as with lovers in the Dream), petty arguments, jealousies, and minor tumult of his own actors. And in the sharers' group he became part of a conservative phalanx which at least tacitly reinforced order. Clowns were more independent, 'solo' players, and Will Kempe presumably was not among his coterie. To judge from wills and bequests, Shakespeare was not attached to clowns, though
he may have felt better about the dwarfish, subtle, literary Robert Armin than about Pope and Kempe. He perhaps had friends whom wills and bequests tell us less about, such as the boys who were to be his Juliets and Rosalinds and who were usually apprenticed to individual actors.

  His special, known friends included the popular, level-headed Heminges as well as Henry Condell, Augustine Phillips, and Richard Burbage. These four had in common a certain natural plausibility, and an influence on and off the stage. Starting in the group as no more than a half-sharer, Condell in 1596 married a city heiress with twelve valuable houses in the Strand west of Somerset House, and after that, though he did not win fame as an actor, he was of value for business acumen and somewhat stolid efficiency. Augustine Phillips was a cautious, dependable musician and actor who was to testify for the troupe, as will appear, in a crisis over Richrd II. After moving up from Bankside, he made elaborate provisions to protect his modest wealth, bought himself a coat of arms to which he had no right, and must have seen his practical-minded friends Condell and Shakespeare fairly often

  -203-

  offstage; he favoured them both with 30s. bequests and left lesser sums to other actors. Richard Burbage, whose tragic roles concern us especially, became the leading actor of his time and an adept, amateur painter who peers today, rather abjectly, from a supposed self-portrait at Dulwich Picture Gallery in South London. He had a reputation for temper, but, unspoiled by success, he was one of the troupe's more stable elements. Shakespeare, it is said, was obsessed with money -- but this myth has been partly dispelled by recent evidence. Neither he nor any of his settled, married friends among the sharers, to judge from allusions to their finances, was very money-hungry, though all cared for social status and the troupe's profitability. Famous as he was, Burbage had land worth only £200 to £300 a year when he died -about the annual worth of Shakespeare's total property in 1616 (and a trifle compared with the riches of the Admiral's star, Alleyn, who could invest £10,000 in a manor at a stroke). 8

  Without obvious compromise, they attended to patrons and authorities, and may have buttered them up. Burbage befriended the wealthy William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, even before that patron had the chamberlaincy, and Shakespeare and Heminges dealt with licensors of the Revels Office, whose trust Heminges very clearly won. 'Teste [so states] W. Shakespeare', one finds in a note in an early seventeenth-century hand about the author of George a Greene, a comedy revived at the Rose. In the play, George a Greene is 'Pinner of Wakefield', an officer in charge of impounding stray beasts. If one can trust the note, an official (such as Sir George Buc) had asked the poet about the play's authorship. George a Greene was written by 'a minister', Shakespeare is reported to have said amiably, 'who acted the pinner's part in it himself'. 9

  In an Elizabethan company, all the sharers performed in each play, though there must have been many exceptions. Recent evidence from computer studies, involving the lexicon or vocabulary of each of his dramatis personae, in quarto and folio texts, yields a rather eerie, problematic view of Shakespeare acting. Much of his play-writing, it appears from these studies, was done in his favoured 'season' for sitting at his writing table, November to February, but he acted the year round, often taking two or three minor parts instead of a major one.

  -204-

  His striking, more energetic, roles in his own works, or so we are told, included that of black Aaron in Titus Andronicus, Antonio in Twelfth Night, and Ulysses in Troilus and Cressida. He played several kings (as it was reported in the seventeenth century that he had done), but more typically old men, churchmen, or 'presenter figures' -- such as Henry V's fine Chorus -- roles which called for eloquence rather than much acting skill. He spoke on average as few as 300 lines in a performance, chose parts that took him on stage in opening scenes (sometimes to a drum-roll or trumpet-flourish), and often had the first line in a drama. In his Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare, as we hear, played Friar Laurence and later the Chorus. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, he was usually content to be Duke Theseus, who discourses on poetry. On separate occasions in the same drama, he played either Mortimer or Exeter in I Henry VI, Ferdinand or Boyet in Love's Labour's Lost, and Leonato or the Friar and Messenger in Much Ado. He doubled as old Gaunt and the Gardener in Richard II, impersonated King Henry in both parts of Henry IV, as well as Rumour in Part 2, the Garter Inn's Host and then Master Ford in Merry Wives, the King in All's Well, and Duncan in Macbeth. Shakespeare perhaps liked to stun the groundlings with finely tonal, 'aria' speeches. He consistently took the sentimental Egeon's role in The Comedy of Errors, and he did play Adam in As You Like It and the Ghost as well as the First Player in Hamlet.

  All of this, anyway, is what computer analysis says or implies: he would have had to memorize a role to act it, so with high frequency, in theory, his 'rare' or seldom-used words in that role will crop up in his subsequent work to tell the computer that he did take each of the parts just mentioned, or such minor parts as Flavius in Julius Caesar, or Desdemona's scandalized old parent Brabanzio in Othello. Anyway, so much for theory. Facts are another matter: the computer's results may be explained in some other way, and, so far, at best, we have frail hints as to his acting roles -- not proof. 10

  But there is no hint that he took major parts; he was likely to be protected because his composition rate was high, and his friends knew it. Collaborators often had a hand in more titles overall, but few poets wrote more than an equivalent of two whole new plays a year. He was exceptional before he joined the Chamberlain's men, but even with

  -205-

  his deep, abiding tensions and his regret -- not about the money he was earning, but, it seems, about the way he earned it -- he excelled in a fairly stable troupe in which membership did not quickly change. Stage demands suited his rapid intellect, and his writing suggests a needed release. His productive tensions may be related to an obscure, residual, and not quite unevidenced self-contempt, and to the problem of unbalanced excesses from time to time in his work; but it is a good deal less speculative to say that in the late 1590s he lived to an unusual degree in and through other viewpoints. Like most Tudor playwrights he was not especially proprietary about his scripts, and he gave the actors chances to mock their calling and also their poet, as in several of his solemnly absurd plays-within-plays. His troupe's solidarity-which he abetted -- would have kept outsiders and the curious at bay while helping him to know the sweating, hard-worked actors well. He took pains to show how lightly he regarded himself, or at any rate there are more 'in-jokes', theatre references, and self-deprecating allusions in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Hamlet than in all the dramas by his rivals. In a small group of managers, with close colleagues among the steadiest, he worked in the midst of a troupe to achieve results -- and as they acted his plays the troupe expressed his own inner being.

  His company was under threat from a puritanical Guildhall, from competition, plague, and dwindling receipts, but the public theatres were more stable than before 1594. The audiences included many habitual play-goers. Not only leading actors, but Phillips, Shakespeare, and individual boys in their wigs and luxurious dresses would have been identified on stage, and if Burbage missed a line in Richard III, it was perhaps shouted down at him. Audiences knew Shakespeare and he knew them, so that despite disruptions, there might be a complex, subtle communicative exchange when a play was acted.

  Thus he had some incentive to pursue his interests, and he might have felt he had little to lose. He did not write Romeo or the Dream much before 1596, but in their fresh, artful use of locale these plays at least begin to show what he found in the Chamberlain's group. They are in part correctives; they make up for a feeble sense of locale in Lucrece, or for a nervous, overwrought ingenuity in some of its

  -206-

  stanzas, as well as for slack, almost timid, imitativeness in a few of the Sonnets. He has found naturalness, the right detachment, and he succeeded not only because of his talent. The more self-abnegating he became, the more his imagination really flo
urished. His daily selfeffacing duties would have given him a sense of routine as he sat at his table, and he found he could supply his troupe best by complicating his work and giving it multiple layers of appeal. In the same play, he can affirm and repudiate popular attitudes, and in a sense, by writing plays with subversive, troubling aspects, he remained inside and outside his vocation, and abetted his own development.

  Performing even in minor roles, he learned from acting; and the paradox is that he drew now from an audience's intelligence and energy, only to overturn the city's static, predictable attitudes. In fact he challenged Londoners and their views in his soaring, witty, lyric styles, as he told them about love in his two greatest works so far.

  Dreams and the doors of breath

  In the summer of 1595 Londoners were alarmed by severe rioting over food prices. At Southwark butter was snatched from vendors who were paid for it at 3d. a pound, instead of 5d. asked, and such highhandedness led to violence. At Tower Hill crowds of apprentices and other youths throwing a hail of stones and inspired by a trumpet-call drove local warders back into Tower Street.

  Not only the Lord Mayor, but the Crown took alarm. A curfew was decreed, public assemblies were banned. All theatres were closed by order. By 26 June Shakespeare had lost his means of livelihood. By then the Rose had shut, and the Admiral's men toured to stay solvent. The Burbages' troupe suffered until late in August -- when acting resumed -- but as if to mock Hunsdon and Howard's plan, the new Lord Mayor recognized no truce and asked that the Theater and the Rose be pulled down. 11 How long would an ailing, elderly Lord Hunsdon protect his troupe? Shakespeare prepared Romeo and Juliet for a tense city, and his tragedy reflects the civic tension and obtuseness that make violence endemic in life.