A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

by James Shapiro

  The fresh start at the Globe had also motivated Shakespeare to challenge both actors and spectators (after 1599, Shakespeare also stopped calling playgoers “auditors” and switched to “spectators,” perhaps signaling that his was a theater that would offer more in the way of visual spectacle). He started placing new demands on what he expected from leading players: no boy actor had ever been asked to carry off a role like Rosalind’s, and even for a star like Burbage the physical and psychic demands of playing Hamlet were daunting. Audiences, too, would be confronted—and rewarded—with more difficult language and more complex characters, and, on occasion, with vexing plays like Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens that pushed the edge of experimentation to the breaking point.

  The strain of seeing the new theater up and running, of worrying about its destruction at the hands of Spanish invaders in August, simply of writing and acting and reading as much as he did this year, took its toll. Shakespeare was now midway, as Dante put it, through the journey of life, though his would be cut short at fifty-two. At thirty-five he was also at the midway point in his career, having written or collaborated in over twenty plays with almost that many as yet unwritten. In the charged atmosphere in which Hamlet was conceived, Shakespeare might have hoped that the creative rush would carry over into other plays. It didn’t. Hamlet, in retrospect, faced backward more than it looked forward, marking the end of an era and a stage of a career even more than it pointed in new directions. It may simply be that Shakespeare put so much of himself into this capacious play that he was spent. The torrid pace of his playwriting let up. In the three years between the time that Hamlet was first staged and the death of Queen Elizabeth in March 1603, Shakespeare managed to write only Twelfth Night and Troilus and Cressida, well below his average of two plays a year—and neither of these plays are either anticipated in or echo those that he wrote in 1599. Twelfth Night was a time-tested and accomplished, if somewhat formulaic, throwback to earlier Shakespearean comedy—and it would be the last of this kind he would write. Compared to Much Ado and As You Like It, it was safer and less inspired, lacking the sharp wit of Benedict and Beatrice or the dazzling originality of his Arden play. Troilus veered in the other direction: it was too unmoored and too bitter. Some scholars remain unconvinced that it was ever staged at the Globe and point to the epistle to the second printing of the 1609 quarto, which claims that it was “never staled with the stage, never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar.” It was not until the accession of James I in 1603, and the rewarding news that followed—that the Chamberlain’s Men would henceforth be known as the King’s Men—that Shakespeare produced Othello and Measure for Measure in quick succession; another two quiet years would pass before his next extraordinary creative moment, in which in just over a year he wrote three of his greatest tragedies: King Lear, Macbeth, and Antony and Cleopatra.

  While the period immediately after Hamlet was a relatively lean one for his dramatic output, it was a rich one for his poetry, for Shakespeare kept writing, turning inward once again to the lyric as a sounding board and source of inspiration. In 1601, he published the enigmatic poem that now goes by the name “The Phoenix and Turtle”—the first poetry he had willingly seen into print since 1594. It’s an elusive if not evasive poem, one that explores the metaphysical vein popularized by writers like John Donne, even as it hearkens back to older models like Sir Philip Sidney. There’s also evidence that Shakespeare returned at this time to writing sonnets, including some of those in the sequence 104 through 126. He had enough confidence and experience to know that if the great press of plays wasn’t there at this time, it would surely return.

  Looking back at the year at Christmastime in 1599, Shakespeare must have recognized how much he had thrived on the highly charged political atmosphere of the past twelve months, when the nation had confronted everything from an “Invisible Armada” and an ill-fated Irish campaign to the banning and burning of books and the silencing of preachers—experiences that had deepened his bond with an audience that had come to depend on the theater to make sense of the world and had found in Shakespeare its most incisive interpreter. The year may have brought out the best in Shakespeare as an actor, too—unless we read too much into the scanty evidence that suggests that his two most memorable roles were Adam in As You Like It and the Ghost in Hamlet. At the end of 1598, Shakespeare had asked of his admirers, “Bate me some and I will pay you some, and, as most debtors do, promise you infinitely.” He had been as good as his word. It would be the most decisive year of his career, one in which he redefined himself and his theater.

  Though his plays would last, the cultural preoccupations that had fueled the drama of this year would not. When a few years later Michael Drayton needed an example of “incertain times oft varying in their course” and “how things still unexpectantly have run,” England’s recent history came immediately to mind. Almost overnight, it seemed, everything familiar to Elizabethans had been upended: “mine eyes amazedly have seen,” Drayton wrote,

  Essex’ great fall, Tyrone his peace to gain,

  The quiet end of that long-living Queen,

  This King’s fair entrance, and our peace with Spain,

  We and the Dutch at length ourselves to sever.

  (Idea, Sonnet 51)

  Mountjoy had learned from his predecessor’s mistakes and pursued a ruthless campaign of starving the Irish into submission—and Tyrone, with Ireland cruelly brought to its knees, capitulated, though the desire for Irish independence could not be crushed. In February 1601, Essex and his followers, knowing that they would never be restored to favor, belatedly committed themselves to action. The time for military revolt had passed. With that option gone, their alternatives were a palace coup (which meant overwhelming the guards at Whitehall, arresting Essex’s enemies at court, and petitioning the queen) or a London rising supported by the people. Essex, egged on by his more aggressive followers, and counting on a replay of the scene when adoring citizens had swarmed around him as he rode off to Ireland, chose the latter. Seeking inspiration on the eve of the revolt, Essex’s supporters paid the Chamberlain’s Men to stage Shakespeare’s great deposition play, Richard the Second. As Essex and his loyal followers marched out of Essex House in the Strand through Ludgate into the city, they called on London’s citizens to join them. The crowds which had quickly gathered looked at the unfolding scene in disbelief and decided that it was best to remain spectators. The revolt quickly collapsed. The Chamberlain’s Men were called in to explain why they staged “the killing of Richard II”; they pleaded ignorance and were fortunate to escape punishment. The ill-conceived rising was Essex’s last and greatest miscalculation. Elizabeth didn’t flinch, and on Ash Wednesday, 1601, two years after Lancelot Andrewes’s Lenten war sermon at Richmond, a repentant Essex had his head lopped off in the Tower of London. Like his father and grandfather before him, Essex had not made it past thirty-five.

  Elizabeth did not long outlive Essex. The report ran that she “sleepeth not so much by day as she used, neither taketh rest by night. Her delight is to sit in the dark and sometimes with shedding tears to bewail Essex.” The King of Scots’ accession to the English throne in March 1603, carefully orchestrated by Cecil, went flawlessly, and for the first time in a half century, England was ruled by a king—and one with sons. Spain would never threaten invasion again.

  For the next dozen or so years, spectators continued to flock to the Globe to see their world “perspectively” through Shakespeare’s latest plays. His drama continued to register the effects of these seismic changes and anticipate those that would soon throw England into turmoil. Shakespeare died prematurely at age fifty-two in 1616, so he did not live to see the civil war that divided the nation, the public execution of King James’s son and heir Charles I, the closing of London’s theaters, and the destruction of the Globe.

  In his letter written from the court at the end of 1599, John Donne had concluded witheringly that Essex “understood not his age” and “that
such men want locks for themselves and keys for others.” The opposite may be said of Shakespeare. He understood his age perfectly, and the depth and profundity of that understanding, which continued to draw contemporaries to his plays, has ensured that we still read him and see these plays performed today in “states unborn and accents yet unknown,” as he prophetically put it in Julius Caesar (3.1.114). More so, perhaps, than any writer before or since, Shakespeare held the keys that opened the hearts and minds of others, even as he kept a lock on what he revealed about himself.

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY

  “He that undertaketh the story of a time, especially of any length,” Francis Bacon warned in his Advancement of Learning (London, 1605), “cannot but meet with many blanks and spaces which he must be forced to fill up out of his own wit and conjecture.” I have often reflected on those words while writing this book; they remind me of how much I owe to the scholars whose work filled in enough blanks and spaces to allow me to undertake this story of a year in Shakespeare’s life. What follows is at once an acknowledgment of that debt and a guide for those interested in consulting my sources directly. My model here is Susan Brigden’s New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors, 1485–1603 (London, 2000), the best one-volume history of Tudor England available, whose bibliographical essay is exemplary in addressing the needs of both academic and general readers. Before turning to the specific sources on which I’ve drawn in individual chapters, it’s helpful to list the principal ones for Shakespeare’s life, Elizabethan theater, and sixteenth-century English (and Irish) history. Anyone following in my tracks should turn to these works first.

  PRINCIPAL SOURCES

  Shakespeare’s Life

  The bare facts of Shakespeare’s life have been collected in a few key sources: E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1930), and S. Schoenbaum, ed., William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life (Oxford, 1975). J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare (11th impression; London, 1907) is still useful. More recent discoveries can be found in David Thomas, ed., Shakespeare in the Public Records (London, 1985), and Robert Bearman, ed., Shakespeare in the Stratford Records (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1994).

  Relevant documents about Stratford-upon-Avon in Shakespeare’s day can be located through James O. Halliwell, A Descriptive Calendar of the Ancient Manuscripts and Records in the Possession of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon (London, 1863). See, too, the five published volumes of the Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon and Other Records, vols. 1–4 (Hertford, 1921–1930), ed. Richard Savage and E. I. Fripp; and volume 5 (Hertford, 1990), ed. Levi Fox, which stops at 1598. For Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon and its environs, see: Edgar I. Fripp’s several volumes: Master Richard Quyny, Bailiff of Stratford-upon-Avon and Friend of William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1924), Shakespeare’s Stratford (Oxford, 1928), Shakespeare’s Haunts Near Stratford (Oxford, 1929), and Shakespeare: Man and Artist, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1938); Charlotte Carmichael Stopes, Shakespeare’s Warwickshire Contemporaries (rev. ed., Stratford-upon-Avon, 1907); as well as Mark Eccles’s outstanding Shakespeare in Warwickshire (Madison, 1961). Two recent and valuable studies are Robert Bearman, ed., The History of an English Borough: Stratford-upon-Avon, 1196–1996 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1997), and Jeanne Jones, Family Life in Shakespeare’s England: Stratford-upon-Avon 1570–1630 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 1996).

  I’ve consulted a number of highly recommended biographies: Peter Thompson, Shakespeare’s Professional Career (Cambridge, 1992); Park Honan, Shakespeare: A Life (Oxford, 1998); Katherine Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare (London, 2001); Michael Wood, In Search of Shakespeare (London, 2003); Anthony Holden, William Shakespeare: His Life and Work (London, 1999); and Stanley Wells, Shakespeare for All Time (Oxford, 2003). Though not a biography, Jonathan Bate’s The Genius of Shakespeare (New York, 1998) is also recommended, and G. B. Harrison’s Shakespeare at Work, 1592–1603 (London, 1933) is still useful. Frank Kermode offers a brief, useful overview in The Age of Shakespeare (New York, 2004). Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World (New York, 2004) came out only as I was making final revisions.

  All too little of Shakespeare’s London remains. In re-creating its topography, I have relied on John Stow, The Survey of London (London, 1598; 1603); the latter edition is also available in a modern edition, C. L. Kingsford, ed. (Oxford, 1908; reprint 1971). Lena Cowen Orlin, ed., Material London, ca. 1600 (Philadelphia, 2000) has also proved useful. I have been greatly aided by a pair of London Topographical Society Publications: Adrian Prockter and Robert Taylor, eds., The A to Z of Elizabethan London (London, 1979), and Ann Saunders and John Schofield, eds., Tudor London: A Map and a View (London, 2001). See, too, Ida Darlington and James Howgego, Printed Maps of London, circa 1553–1850 (London, 1964; rev. ed. 1979). E. H. Sugden, A Topographical Dictionary to the Works of Shakespeare and His Fellow Dramatists (Manchester, 1925) remains indispensable. For the calendar and times of sunrise and sunset I’ve relied on Gabriel Frend, An Almanac and Prognostication for This Year of Our Lord Jesus Christ 1599 (London, 1599).

  Shakespeare’s Plays and Poems

  Any study of Shakespeare’s work begins with editions. The starting point for any researcher—once past the original quartos, octavos, and folios—is H. H. Furness’s multivolume Victorian Variorum Shakespeare, supplemented by a superb trio of series: the Arden Shakespeare (both Arden 2 and Arden 3); The Oxford Shakespeare, and The New Cambridge Shakespeare. For the four plays Shakespeare was writing in 1599 I’ve relied heavily on the following editions: for Henry the Fifth, ed. Gary Taylor (Oxford, 1982); ed. T. W. Craik (London, 1995); and ed. Andrew Gurr (Cambridge, 1992), as well as Gurr’s edition of the 1600 Quarto (Cambridge, 2000). For Julius Caesar: ed. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1913); ed. Arthur Humphreys (Oxford, 1984); ed. Marvin Spevack (Cambridge, 1988); and ed. David Daniell (London, 1998). For As You Like It: ed. H. H. Furness (Philadelphia, 1890); ed. Agnes Latham (London, 1975); The New Variorum, ed. Richard Knowles (New York, 1977); ed. Alan Brissenden (Oxford, 1993); ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge, 2000); and ed. Juliet Dusinberre (London, 2005). And Hamlet: ed. H. H. Furness, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1877); ed. J. Dover Wilson (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1948); ed. Harold Jenkins (London, 1982); ed. Philip Edwards (Cambridge, 1985); and ed. G. R. Hibbard (Oxford, 1987). The multiple texts of Hamlet pose special problems, and, in addition to originals and facsimiles of the 1603, 1604/5, and 1623 texts, I’ve drawn on Paul Bertram and Bernice W. Kliman, eds., The Three-Text Hamlet (New York, 1988); Jesús Tronch-Pérez, ed., A Synoptic “Hamlet”: A Critical Synoptic Edition of the Secord Quarto and First Folio Texts of “Hamlet” (Valencia, 2002); Thomas Marc Parrott and Hardin Craig, eds., The Tragedy of Hamlet: A Critical Edition of the Second Quarto (Princeton, 1938); and Kathleen O. Irace, ed., The First Quarto of Hamlet (Cambridge, 1998). An indispensable account of textual issues, dating, and chronology can be found in Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, with John Jowett and William Montgomery, William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion (Oxford, 1987). For Shakespeare’s poetry I’ve relied on Hyder Edwards Rollins’s New Variorum edition of The Poems (Philadelphia, 1938); Stephen Booth, ed., Shakespeare’s Sonnets (New Haven, 1977); John Roe, ed., The Poems (Cambridge, 1992); G. Blakemore Evans, ed., and Anthony Hecht, intro., The Sonnets (Cambridge, 1996); Katherine Duncan-Jones, ed., Shakespeare’s Sonnets (London, 1997), and, most of all, Colin Burrow, ed., The Complete Sonnets and Poems (Oxford, 2002). I’ll refer to other editions that I’ve consulted below when dealing with specific issues.

  Except for Hamlet, quotations from Shakespeare’s works are cited from David Bevington, ed., The Complete Works of Shakespeare (5th ed., New York, 2004). In the few instances where I disagree with his emendations, I’ve silently gone back to what appears in the early printed texts. Bevington, like other recent editors, modernizes Shakespeare’s spelling and punctuation; I’ve done the same with Shakespeare’s contemporaries throughout the book. All quotations from Hamlet a
re from the Second Quarto, unless the Folio or First Quarto texts are specified. Since Bevington reconstructs his Hamlet out of multiple texts, for Second Quarto and Folio quotations from the play, I’ve turned to Jesús Tronch-Pérez’s excellent A Synoptic “Hamlet”: A Critical Synoptic Edition of the Secord Quarto and First Folio Texts of “Hamlet,” which allows readers to compare the two version in the most accessible way.

  I’ve also relied on a number of valuable resources on Shakespeare’s language and sources: Marvin Spevak, ed., The Harvard Concordance to Shakespeare (Cambridge, Mass., 1973); Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols. (London, 1957–75); Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare’s Sources (London, 1957); and Stuart Gillespie, Shakespeare’s Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare’s Sources (London, 2001). For the best one-volume resource, see Michael Dobson and Stanley Wells, eds., The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (Oxford, 2001).

  Shakespeare Onstage and In Print

  I couldn’t have written this book without the remarkable scholarship in the past century on Shakespeare’s stage. Still unsurpassed is E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1923). I am deeply indebted to R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert, eds., Henslowe’s Diary (London, 1961) for information about the culture of playwriting at the time. Carol Chillington Rutter, ed., Documents of the Rose Playhouse (Manchester, 1984) is also useful. Other major sources include: Alfred Harbage, S. Schoenbaum, and Sylvia Stoler Wagonheim, eds., Annals of English Drama, 975–1700 (3rd ed., New York, 1989); G. E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols. (Oxford, 1941–1968); R. A. Foakes, Illustrations of the English Stage, 1580–1642 (Stanford, 1985); and Herbert Berry, Shakespeare’s Playhouses (New York, 1987). Relevant documents can also be found in Glynne Wickham, Herbert Berry, and William Ingram, eds., English Professional Theatre, 1530–1660 (Cambridge, 2000).