2
Possible Beginnings
Most people today associate Shakespeare with the Globe, the playhouse on the Bankside in Southwark which became iconic because of its associations with him, though it was not actually built until his a career was half over (1599). When he himself imagines a performance in his plays it is not in a public playhouse but in the private space of a royal palace or a lord’s house. Traveling players come to Elsinore in Hamlet and to the house of the Lord in The Taming of the Shrew; Ariel and his spirits perform for Duke Prospero in The Tempest; enthusiastic but inept artisans offer their service to Theseus and Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ben Jonson, by contrast, often builds references to the London theatres into his plays, as when Fitzdottrel in The Devil is an Ass (1616) announces “Today, I go to the Blackfriars playhouse” – topping the joke by telling us that he is going to see … The Devil is an Ass (2012d, 1.6.31: see also 1.4.21). Jonson was always preeminently a Londoner, an urban dramatist (though he was a traveling player for a time in his early years). But Shakespeare always retained something of a pre‐urban sensibility, in which playing was closely attached to the service of a lord and to great private houses.
Despite the most assiduous research, we still do not know how Shakespeare’s move from Stratford to London took place. And we know nothing for certain of his employment or the patrons he might have cultivated prior to his arrival in London. Terence G. Schoone‐Jongen is the latest scholar to look for answers, but eventually he concludes: “Ultimately, it seems Shakespeare’s pre‐1594 company affiliations present the biographer with a jigsaw puzzle. Yet because the puzzle is missing key pieces, it cannot be fully assembled. Or, more to the point, it can be assembled in a number of different, plausible‐yet‐incomplete ways” (2008, 199). What I propose to do is to examine two of those “plausible‐yet‐incomplete ways” in which the puzzle can be assembled, to show between them the variety of theatrical situations Shakespeare may well have confronted – and with which he must certainly have been familiar – before the recorded part of his career began. The first is the Queen’s Men theory; the second is Hoghton Will theory.
Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men’s Theory
This explanation of how Shakespeare may have entered the theatrical world centers on the first visit the Queen’s Men paid to Stratford, in 1587 (p. 19). It assumes that he had probably stayed in his birthplace up to that date, perhaps working alongside his father. The speculation focuses on the fact that the company probably arrived a man short. A coroner’s inquest reports that on June 13,1587, between 9 and 10 p.m., one of their leading players, William Knell entered a close called White Hound in Thame, Oxfordshire (not so far from Stratford) and assaulted his fellow actor, John Towne. Towne, fearing for his life, took to the high ground of a nearby “mound.” As the official report put it, “William Knell continuing his attack as before, so maliciously and furiously, and Towne … to save his life drew his sword of iron (price five shillings) and held it in his right hand and thrust it into the neck of William Knell and made a mortal wound three inches deep and one inch wide.” Knell bled to death within the half‐hour. The Queen pardoned Towne on August 15 after it was agreed he acted in self‐defense (Eccles, 1961, 82–3, 157–8).
Violence among the players was, sadly, not uncommon, though the Queen’s Men seem to have been unusually prone to it. In September 1598 Ben Jonson and Gabriel Spenser fought a duel in Hoxton fields. They had formerly been fellows together in the Earl of Pembroke’s Men and shared imprisonment for a play that Jonson co‐wrote, The Isle of Dogs (see p. 221). But both had a history of violence, Jonson killing an opponent in a personal duel when he fought in the Low Countries, Spenser killing one James Freake in an affray in 1596. Spenser apparently wounded Jonson in the arm, but Jonson managed to strike back, killing him. According to the inquest, he died from a six‐inch deep stab wound in his right side. Duelling was illegal and Jonson only escaped hanging by pleading benefit of clergy and reading “neck verse,” an old legal loophole for those who could prove they could read Latin (Donaldson, 2011, 95; 113–15; 132–7). Elizabethan theatre was not an arena for shrinking‐violet aesthetes.
The Queen’s Men were certainly no strangers to violence before 1587. An incident in Norwich on Saturday June 15, 1583, shortly after their formation, is testimony to this and also gives us some real information about playing on the road, as this company commonly did.1 They had previously given their “Mayor’s play” at the guildhall and were now performing for the public at the Red Lion inn. There was an affray. A man recorded only as “George” was killed and two of the players, John Bentley and John Singer, were imprisoned while the city authorities investigated. It all began when, as Edmund Brown, a Norwich draper, deposed:
one Winsdon would have entered in at the gate, but would not have paid until he had been within; and thereupon, the gatekeeper and he striking, Tarlton [the clown] came out off the stage and would have thrust him out at the gate; but in the mean‐time one Bentley – he which played the Duke – came off the stage; and with his hilts of his sword struck Winsdon upon the head, and offered him another stripe, but Tarlton defended it; whereupon Winsdon fled out of the gate, and Bentley pursued him: and then he in the black doublet, which kept the gate [identified elsewhere as the player, John Singer, in costume and wearing a false beard] ran up into the stage and brought an arming sword: and as he was going out the gate, he drew the sword, and ran out at the gate.
Another “examinate,” Henry Brown, deposed how he saw “one in a blue coat [‘George’] cast stones at Bentley and broke his head, being one of Her Majesty’s servants; whereupon this examinate said ‘villain, wilt thou murder the Queen’s man?’ and the fellow called this examinate ‘villain’ again, and thereupon this examinate struck him with his sword and hit him on the leg.” Various depositions establish that Singer and Bentley also stabbed “George,” Singer in the shoulder (though he denied drawing blood) and Bentley “thrust at him twice with his naked rapier; the one thrust was about the knee, but he [Brown] knoweth not where the other thrust was.” Since Bentley and Singer were released, they were apparently not held at fault; possibly Brown’s blow was the one deemed responsible for “George’s” death, but even he could claim that he was defending Bentley. One Thomas Holland heard Brown say “I have sped him” and Bentley reply “well done, boy, we will bear thee out in it.” Brown’s own version of what Bentley said is “be of good cheer, for if all this matter be laid on thee, thou shalt have what friendship we can procure thee.”
Being the Queen’s servants at the very least ensured that they would get a careful hearing, with powerful patronage in London should it be needed. The whole incident seems to have started as a result of Winsdon’s ignorance of the conventions of payment for a performance at an inn. He was probably used to performances in the street, where the actors would erect a stage and solicit payment during the course of the play or at its end. This of course could be subject to any manner of abuse, some of the audience slipping away without paying, others offering less than full payment if they had not been happy with what they saw. One of the attractions of playing in the inns must have been that the actors could control a limited number of entrances and demand payment in advance, as would happen in the purpose‐built London playhouses. For the Queen’s Men collecting the take was so important that one of their own sharers (senior players), John Singer, was entrusted with the role of gatekeeper – and he did it in costume, ready to take his place in the performance on cue. Presumably one of his fellows would relieve him at this point. As we shall see, ensuring that gatekeepers were trustworthy was an important consideration in the London theatres; although there are no records of sharer‐players doing it there, hired players – who would be needed on stage from time to time – were certainly sometimes employed (p. 166).
By comparison with the Norwich and Thame incidents the Stratford authorities may have been relieved in 1587 that they got away, after the “Mayor’s play,” with only having to pay sixteen pence “for mending of a form that was broken by the Queen’s players.” This sort of damage may well have been one reason that Stratford was among the first towns to stop players using their Guild Hall for performances, in 1602 (Mulryne 2006: 20; 19, 10–13). At all events, with the death of Knell the Queen’s Men would have been a player short. Shakespeare could have been recommended to them as literate and articulate, not able of course to fill Knell’s shoes but able to help out as the others adjusted.
If this happened, he stepped quickly into elite company. The company bearing the Queen’s name and scarlet livery came into being by Privy Council fiat, following a meeting called by its Principal Secretary, Sir Francis Walsingham: “Edmund Tilney Esquire, Master of the [Revels] office being sent for to the court by letter from Master Secretary, dated the 10 of March 158[3]. To choose out a company of players for her Majesty” (ES, 2: 104). Elizabeth must certainly have given personal permission for this. Only two years earlier Tilney, a distant cousin of hers, had been given a Special Commission which conferred upon him virtually plenipotentiary powers over all actors and their playing‐places; the underlying motive was to ensure that he could provide entertainment of adequate quality at court whenever it was needed (Dutton, 1991, 41–55; Streitberger, 2016, 169ff). The creation of the Queen’s Men was clearly seen as a way of fulfilling that mandate: “there were twelve of the best [players] chosen, they were sworn as the Queen’s servants and were allowed … liveries as grooms of the chamber … Among these twelve players were two rare men, viz. Thomas [i.e. Robert] Wilson, for a quick, delicate, refined extempore wit, and Richard Tarlton, for a wondrous plentiful pleasant, extemporal wit; he was the wonder of his time. He lieth buried in Shoreditch church. He was so beloved that men use his picture for their signs.”2
The whole process, a clear demonstration that royal will trumped personal ambitions and profit in the business of playing, robbed all the existing leading companies of star players. Besides Wilson, Leicester’s Men lost William Johnson and John Laneham; Oxford’s Men lost John Dutton (who before 1588 would be joined by his brother, Laurence); John Adams, another clown, came with Tarlton from Sussex’s Men. The total of twelve leading players made it a super‐troupe of its era, easily capable of staging plays requiring casts of fifteen or more (including boys), without the need to recruit added hired men. It has been shown that their plays which have survived require about that number (Crockett, 2009, 234). Earlier in the century troupes had usually been significantly smaller. Mid‐century plays originally written for private performance later passed into print and the public repertoire, and title pages made a virtue of how few players they needed. The interlude, Lusty Juventus (circa 1550), for example, was printed with the claim that “Four may play it easily, taking such parts as they think best.” Thomas Preston’s Cambises (1570) was printed with a doubling chart on the title page, showing that eight people could play it. And that would include boys.
When Leicester’s Men wrote to their patron in 1572 for confirmation of their status as his servants (see p. 29) only six players signed it, presumably the sharing members of the company. It may well be that the attempts to limit the patronage of playing, to which that letter responded, reduced the number of touring companies but increased the size of those that remained, helping turn them into more substantial commercial enterprises. In the case of the Queen’s Men, however, the figures may be somewhat deceptive, since it is apparent that they often split in two during their travels and perhaps only played as a unified company on special occasions, such as when summoned to court.6
We may compare this evidence with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the Lord Admiral’s Men as they came into being in 1594; the former had about eight sharers, the latter nine (Gurr, 2006, 303, 253). But those operations, being London based, could also draw on a reliable pool of hired men to fill the lesser roles. We do know that when the Earl of Derby’s Men played at Chatsworth in 1611 there were fourteen in the party, which doubtless included hired men and boys as well as sharers; the following year, at the Earl of Cumberland’s Londesborough, there were thirteen of them (Bentley, 1984, 185–6). So the Queen’s Men, in their early years, were capable of matching other companies of the era without having to hire journeymen players, though they would certainly have needed perhaps three boys to play their female roles. Alternatively, of course, they could have mounted extremely lavish productions by hiring extras. The presence among them of both Wilson and Tarlton, both playwrights as well as comedians, gave them the potential to be highly self‐reliant. Wilson was the probable author of three extant plays, The Three Ladies of London, The Three Lords and Ladies of London, and The Cobbler’s Prophecy; Tarlton wrote the two‐part Seven Deadly Sins, a “plot” of the second part of which I reproduce and discuss later (see pp. 205ff)
Tarlton
For all their talent, Tarlton was the undoubted leading light and we can still catch a flavor of what made him so special. We have a good idea what he looked like in performance, where his clown persona was built on the country rustic. Henry Chettle says he knew him in a dream “by his suit of russet, his buttoned cap, his tabor, his standing on the toe, and other tricks … to be either the body or resemblance of Tarlton, who living for his pleasant conceits was of all men liked, and dying, for mirth left not his like” (1592, B2v). Tarlton’s Jests, an untrustworthy collection of jokes and anecdotes, nevertheless tells us that he had a squint and a flat nose, and these characteristics certainly appear in the woodcut on the title‐page of the volume (see Figure 2.1). E. K. Chambers says that it “represents a short, broad‐faced, cunning‐looking man, with curly hair, an elaborate moustache and a starved beard, wearing a cap, and a bag or money‐box slung at his side, and playing on a tabor and a pipe” (ES, 2, 344).
Figure 2.1 Image of Richard Tarlton (or Tarleton).
Source: © British Library Board. All Rights Reserved / Bridgeman Images.
The Jests also gives us these plausible tales of the man in performance: “At the Bull in Bishopsgate Street [a London inn], where the Queen’s men oftentimes played, Tarlton coming on the stage, one from the gallery threw a pippin at him … [there] was a play of Henry the Fifth [The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth] wherein the judge was to take a box on the ear, and because he was absent that should take the blow, Tarlton himself (ever forward to please) took upon him to play the same judge, besides his own part of the clown” (quoted in EPF, 301).7 Ben Jonson has the stagekeeper in the Induction to Bartholomew Fair remember a routine with Adams: “I kept the stage in Master Tarlton’s time, I thank my stars. Ho! An that man had lived to have played in Barthol’mew Fair you should ha’ seen him ha’ come in and ha’ been cozened i’the cloth‐quarter so finely! And Adams, the rogue, ha’ leapt and capered upon him, and ha’ dealt his vermin about as though they had cost him nothing” (2012b, lines 27–32).8 Thomas Nashe also gives us a glimpse of Tarlton at work in this anecdote about a choleric country justice:
that, having a play presented before him and his township, by Tarlton and the rest of his fellows, her Majesty’s servants, and they were now entering into their first merriment (as they call it) the people began exceedingly to laugh, when Tarlton first peeped out his head. Where at the justice, not a little moved and seeing with his becks and nods he could not make them cease, he went with his staff and beat them round about unmercifully on the bare pates, in that they being but farmers and poor country hinds would presume to laugh at the Queen’s men, and make no more account of her cloth in his presence.
(Pierce Penniless, 1592, D1v)
The anecdote cuts several ways, since Tarlton’s clown persona was that of the rustic fellow, liable to be defrauded even of his verminous clothes – or, like the justice, to misunderstand that the audience was supposed to laugh, even at the Queen’s own servants. But the priceless touch is of Tarlton peeping out his head from behind the scenes, playing his audience, an instantly funny man who was either already known to them or whose fame had gone before.
He had a talent for extempore doggerel, sometimes inviting topics from the audience; the Queen is said to have enjoyed his wit, though it is possible that on occasion he overstepped the mark (ES, 2, 342). He channeled this talent into jigs, often performed as endpiece entertainments after a performance; they involved music, often topical fare set to popular tunes; dancing; comic, sometimes bawdy routines, perhaps built around a folk tale (see Box item, p. 218). The form was preserved by Will Kemp, who was to act with Shakespeare in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Not the least of Tarlton’s many talents was as a swordsman; in 1587 he achieved the prestigious title of Master of Fence by the Society of the Masters of Defence, requiring a mastery over several forms of swords and knives. The Elizabethans had a taste for fighting competitions, many of which were staged at the Theatre, Curtain, and Rose, as well as city inns like the Bull. Shakespeare’s plays – Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, Hamlet, Macbeth, and many others – feature prominent sword‐fights, which clearly also cater for that taste. Richard Burbage, who certainly played Richard III and Hamlet, must himself have been an accomplished swordsman and there would have been others in the company able to offer him a plausible challenge.
There is no wonder that Tarlton’s fame lingered, as the posthumous anecdotes and jest‐books attest. When Burbage played Hamlet and remembered how Yorick, “the King’s jester … hath bore me on his back a thousand times” (5.1.180–6) many in the audience must have identified Yorick with Tarlton. The Queen’s Men certainly sometimes used the Theatre, when they played in London. And indeed Tarlton probably had his home near there, in Shoreditch; he was certainly buried there in 1588. So young Burbage, growing up in the environs of his father’s Theatre, almost certainly knew the great clown from an early age. Shakespeare perhaps knew him at the end of his career, and more as a traveling player than as a London presence. One of the distinctive features of the Queen’s Men is that, for all they would be expected to entertain the Queen and certainly took up residence in London from time to time (see p. 48–9), they were clearly also expected to spend much of the year touring.
They came into being at a time when a Spanish invasion to unseat Elizabeth and her Protestant regime was a very real possibility, and indeed came perilously close to succeeding with the Armada of 1588. The Queen’s Men, traveling in her scarlet livery, spread her presence throughout the country, and indeed beyond. Their repertoire, including some of the earliest chronicle history plays, such as The Troublesome Reign of King John, The True Tragedy of Richard III, and The Famous Victories of Henry V, contained distinct elements of national and religious propaganda. And there were few places of substance that they did not visit. They had circuits that took in Kent – Canterbury, Faversham, Lydd, Maidstone, Dover, New Romney, Rye; East Anglia – Norwich, Aldeburgh, Ipswich, Cambridge, Saffron Walden; the West Country – Bristol, Gloucester, Bath, Lyme Regis, Exeter, Bridgwater, Southampton; the Midlands – Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Oxford, Worcester, Shrewsbury, and of course Stratford; the North – York, Carlisle, Chester, and the three main properties of the Stanley Earls of Derby, New Place, Lathom, and Knowsley in Lancashire. In 1589 they even visited Dublin and in October of that year accepted an invitation (forwarded by the governor of Carlisle while they were at Knowsley) to perform at the wedding of James VI and Anne of Denmark in Edinburgh. Unfortunately winds delayed Anne in Oslo by a month and the company could not linger indefinitely. But the diplomatic correspondence shows that they did attend in good faith and were honorably treated by their hosts (McMillin and MacLean, 58).
Until quite recently touring has been seen as a second‐best option for the actors, indeed usually as an option of last resort. G. E. Bentley is typical in this prejudice: “For the London companies, touring was nearly always an unpleasant and comparatively unprofitable expedient to compensate for London misfortunes, and as the metropolitan companies became more prosperous they resorted to the road less frequently than they had in the reign of Elizabeth and in the early years of James” (1984, 179). But this is very much from the perspective of what was achieved in London in the 1590s and beyond, which involved radical changes for a few elite companies that no one had yet contemplated. And there is no reason to suppose that players in the 1580s were so gloomy about touring, especially if they were the Queen’s Men. For one thing, they invariably received a higher gratuity for the “Mayor’s play” than any other company – performing it probably as described at Stratford in the local town or guildhall, though they sometimes even played in cathedrals at Norwich, Chester, and York. As Andrew Gurr has noted, at “Bristol, Gloucester, Cambridge, Dover and other parts of Kent, Nottingham, and Shrewsbury … they were usually paid twice as much as the other companies. This may reflect their greater size. It certainly reflected their pre‐eminent name and greater prestige” (1996, 201). This is what R. Willis was getting at when he wrote that the players received from the Mayor “a reward he thinks fit to show respect unto them.” In Stratford in 1587, for example, they received 20 shillings, exactly twice as much as Leicester’s Men, four times as much as Essex’s Men and six times as much as Stafford’s Men that same year.
The assumption of Bentley and others that touring was “comparatively unprofitable” is partly based on the assumption that such payments in the town and city accounts constitute a significant proportion of the take while on tour. It alone, even combined with money we know they would also have received from performances at the houses of the nobility and gentry along their route, would indeed hardly have covered their costs.9 William Ingram has estimated that, around 1600, food and lodging on the road would cost around 1s. a day per person, while the hire of horses – either to ride or to pull a wagon with all the company’s costumes and properties – would cost a similar amount. So a company as large as the Queen’s Men (assuming the boys could double up on most items) might spend as much as 25s. a day just to get by. This puts Stratford’s 20s. in proportion. But of course that 20s. was a prelude to performances at inns like the the Bear or the Swan in Bridge Street, or indeed the Red Lion in Norwich (where the depositions about the fray suggest quite a crowded house; see p. 39–40). The nature of the staging would have been dictated by the space available, either indoor or outdoor. But they could have charged more for a smaller but well‐appointed indoor venue, while inns yard were likely to have covered galleries on at least two sides (leading to rooms for rent), and they would have been able to charge extra to those willing to pay for the comfort. In the differences between the “Mayors’ plays” and those in public inns we see the professional players of the late sixteenth century poised between a patronage economy which required them formally to be servants of grandees and a proto‐capitalist one, where the profit motive was unmistakable.
Towns seem normally (as we saw at Gloucester, p. 20) to have limited such commercial performances to two or three, but that was quite enough to be profitable, especially if innkeepers were prepared to allow the players some slack in respect of food and lodging as a trade‐off against profits from the business they would generate with large audiences. By the same token, when they visited great private houses the players might expect to be fed and put up (probably with the servants) in addition to any gratuity. They might also receive additional, unrecorded gratuities from any of the lord’s guests. Alan Somerset quotes an itinerant singer who claimed that he could survive simply by moving “from gentilmans house to gentilmans house upon their benevolence” (Somerset, 1994, 1.280; see also Greenfield, 2009). All in all, a well‐planned tour by a premier troupe like the Queen’s Men might expect not merely to cover costs but to be quite profitable.
Nevertheless, London was always an important stop on their travels. As we have already noted, anecdotes about Tarlton place the Queen’s Men at times in the large outdoor auditoria, the Theatre, or its near neighbor, the Curtain. But for their first winter, that of 1583/4, the Privy Council specifically negotiated with the city authorities that they be allowed to play “at the signs of the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, and the sign of the Bell in Gracechurch Street and nowhere else in this city.” Andrew Gurr observes: “The Bull in Bishopsgate Street was an inn … with a square of galleries open to the sky. The Bell in Gracechurch Street, by contrast, seems to have been an inn with a large indoor hall available for playing. Specifying the two allowed the company a large good‐weather and a smaller bad‐weather venue, both inside the city.”10 David Kathman is more cautious about the evidence for indoor playing at any of the inns, suggesting that their key virtue was probably the greater convenience they offered the audience, being at the heart of the city (Kathman, 2009b). The specification of two inns might also have catered for the company continuing in its split form.
As I shall discuss further in Chapter 3, several issues are in play here. First, during the 1580s no company seems to have played for really extended periods in any of the available London playhouses. They hired one for the duration of their visits and then passed on. Second, they seem to have been happy enough with the outdoor auditoria (the Theatre, Curtain, and, from 1587, the Rose) in the summer months, but in the winter their first preference was always to play in one of the inns within the city itself, rather than outside in the suburbs. With the shorter hours of daylight and the worse weather it must surely have been easier to attract audiences there, possibly charging higher prices, even if the inns could not accommodate as many people. Third, this was an issue that created constant friction between the City authorities and the Privy Council. The former only wanted players in the City on their own terms; the latter insisted (as in their 1578 letter to the Lord Mayor) that certain companies it nominated must be allowed to play, as a form of rehearsal for their appearances at court.
In this instance the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Howard of Effingham, had negotiated these rights exclusively for the Queen’s Men.11 And they were the only adult company to perform at court that 1583/4 season, making four appearances in all; their only competition was from boy companies, who had long been among the Queen’s favorite entertainments. The following year the Queen’s Men gave five performances and again the only competition was Oxford’s Boys (based at a theatre in the Blackfriars liberty, which was controlled by the playwright, John Lyly). In subsequent years, until 1590/1, they remained the dominant company, though it was a dominance that was increasingly challenged. The death of Tarlton in 1588 (following that of Knell the previous year) must inevitably have weakened them and may have entrenched the practice of splitting the company into two troupes, both still calling themselves the Queen’s Men, but one led by John Laneham and the other by the Dutton brothers. Presumably about half of the surviving sharers went with each and they made up numbers to be able to continue playing from their established repertoire with hired men. It may even have been a more profitable arrangement as far as the sharers were concerned. In 1589/90 the Chamber Accounts at court show that John Dutton and John Laneham were jointly paid “for themselves and their company” for two performances, suggesting that the two sections came together for these court appearances. But in 1591/2 there are clear demarcations: “Lawrence Dutton and John Dutton, Her Majesty’s players & their company” were paid for four performances and “John Laneham and his company, Her Majesty’s players” only one (ES, 4: 163).
As we shall shortly see, they were then eclipsed by Strange’s Men (with whom, indeed, Shakespeare may have been associated by 1592: Manley and MacLean, 2014, 280ff). After 1594 they survived only as a single touring company, with none of their former star players, and never again appeared at court. Why exactly they were allowed to lose their preeminent position is not certain. One explanation is that their style of drama may have begun to seem old‐fashioned by comparison with the work pioneered around this time by Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and others, including Shakespeare. It was certainly within Edmund Tilney’s power to reinforce them, if he felt it was in the court’s interest that he should. The fact that he did not do so perhaps suggests that their time had come and gone. If Shakespeare did indeed join them in 1587, it would have been sufficient to allow him to see a great company in its pomp, but also its rapid decline. He would presumably only have been with them quite briefly, but long enough to get him to London, where another model of theatrical practice was being formulated.
There is, however, absolutely no documentary evidence that Shakespeare was ever with the Queen’s Men. The strongest argument for his involvement with them is well advanced by McMillin and MacLean: “The plots of no fewer than six of Shakespeare’s known plays are closely related to the plots of plays performed by the Queen’s Men. King John resembles The Troublesome Reign [of King John] virtually scene for scene. King Lear and Richard III cover the same stories as King Leir and The True Tragedy of Richard III. The sequence of 1 Henry IV, 2 Henry IV, and Henry V is in part an elaborate version of the material covered in The Famous Victories [of Henry V]. The plays of the Queen’s Men are the largest theatrical source of Shakespeare’s plots” (1999, 161). But did Shakespeare need to be a member of the company to have known these plays? Hardly. He could have had many opportunities to see them performed, or to speak to men who had played in them. Several were in print before he wrote the plays that seem to draw on them.
Shakespeare and Alexander Hoghton’s Will
An entirely different scenario for Shakespeare’s “lost years” and how he might have entered the theatrical profession starts earlier than the Queen’s Men hypothesis and finishes somewhat later. It covers rather different terrain in terms of the kinds of acting experience it could have involved him in. On August 3, 1581 Alexander Hoghton of Lea Hall in Lancashire, dying without a male heir, wrote a will with bequests to his family and faithful servants. This is the passage that most directly concerns us, even if it is not (as some would claim) about William Shakespeare of Stratford:
Item: it is my mind & will that the said Thomas Hoghton of Brynescoules, my brother, shall have all my instruments belonging to musics, & all manner of play clothes, if he be minded to keep & do keep players. And if he will not keep & maintain players, then it is my mind & will that Sir Thomas Hesketh, knight, shall have the same instruments & play clothes. And I most heartily require the said Sir Thomas to be friendly unto Fulke Gillom & William Shakshafte now dwelling with me & either to take them unto his service or else to help them to some good master, as my trust is he will …12
In the twentieth century several people argued that “shakshafte” is actually a variant of “shakespeare” (a name much given to punning) and that this refers to the seventeen‐year old future playwright.13 There are several supporting circumstances, though they collectively fall well short of absolute proof. “shakshafte” turns out to have be quite a common name in central Lancashire and this was more likely a local man; conversely that very fact might explain why Hoghton muddled the name (Bearman, 2002). The likeliest reason for Shakespeare being a hundred miles or so from his Stratford home would be that his family were recusant Roman Catholics, like the Hoghtons, and that the young Shakespeare had gone to find employment in a part of the country where Catholicism was still strong and to an extent shielded. The possible association of John Shakespeare with a Catholic “spiritual Testament” perhaps speaks to this, though here too there are doubters (Schoenbaum, 1987, 45–54). But one of the Stratford schoolmasters in 1579–81, John Cottam, was the brother of a Jesuit priest and he came from that same part of Lancashire, suggesting possible lines of communication. Might he have recommended a star pupil from the grammar school to Hoghton? The whole circumstance, moreover, might bear out John Aubrey’s anecdote from the late seventeenth century, that Shakespeare “had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country.”14
Yet even if Shakshafte was not Shakespeare it tells us interesting things about theatricals in the community when he was growing up. The will strikingly puts goods before persons. Alexander starts with a bequest to his half‐brother, Thomas, of “all my instruments belonging to musics, and all manner of play‐clothes, if he be minded to keep and do keep players”; if not, “the same instruments and play‐clothes” were to go to Alexander’s relative by marriage, Sir Thomas Hesketh of Rufford, some ten miles away. Only then does he bring to mind two faithful retainers: “And I most heartily require the said Sir Thomas to be friendly unto Fulke Gillom & William Shakshafte now dwelling with me & either to take them unto his service or else to help them to some good master.” There is an immediate ambiguity about whether “players” here means musicians or actors (an ambiguity which dogs many early records of theatre); but musicians do not specifically need “play‐clothes” so it is not unreasonable to suppose that it means actors. The passage obviously suggests a tradition of music and playing at Lea Hall – and likewise at Sir Thomas Hesketh’s properties, Rufford Hall and Martholme. Alexander is less sure about his brother’s establishment, though he thinks it not impossible – and that Thomas might take it up as a result of the bequest.
In Hesketh–Hoghton circles playing was a regular fact of life, especially around Christmas, as it doubtless was in the households of many of the substantial gentry (I am speaking here of those below the status of a baron), though it has left little trace in the written records. Their household papers have not survived nearly as well as those of the grander aristocracy or the official records of towns and cities. Where they have survived, however, they can be quite revealing. For example, the records of Dunkenhalgh Hall in Lancashire, home of a wealthy judge, Thomas Walmesley, record fifty‐one visits by performers in the period 1612–36. These include some of the major companies, including the King’s Men, Prince Charles’s Men, and Princess Elizabeth’s Men; but they also include visits by companies not recorded anywhere else, including one by Sir Cuthbert Halsall’s Men in August 1616.15 Halsall was a relatively close neighbor, his principal residence being near Ormskirk in Lancashire. The visit seems to have coincided with a Walmesley family wedding, so this was perhaps a friendly festive wedding present. Visits are also recorded between 1612 and 1618 by John Warren’s Men and Sir Edward Warren’s Men. The latter must be a mistake, since Sir Edward died in 1609 and was succeeded by his son, John, who was doubtless the true patron over all five visits recorded under the Warren name.16 The Warren family home was in Poynton, Cheshire, the county south of Lancashire; but John also acquired some property in Woodplumpton, some twenty miles west of Dunkenhalgh (and very close, as it happens, to Lea Hall). These visits by his “players” were perhaps in the spirit of generating and sustaining neighborly relations.
We should notice, however, that only one other record of an event involving the Warren players has surfaced; this was in 1611 at Gawthorpe Hall (close to Dunkenhalgh), and they are expressly recorded as “musicians.”17 As I say, it is a frustratingly common ambiguity in the records. It seems unlikely that John Warren patronized troupes of both musicians and actors (that level of patronage is normally associated with the aristocracy), so it is possible that none of these recorded visits involved theatricals at all. But it is also possible that the persons concerned were equally adept at both types of “playing.” We just do not know. There is a parallel example in the records of Smithills Hall, also in Lancashire (one of the properties of the wealthy Shuttleworth family who later occupied Gawthorpe Hall); in 1584 they were visited by Sir Peter Legh’s musicians and in 1588 by Sir Peter’s “players.”18 Sir Peter held property and offices in both Lancashire and Cheshire, but it is still unlikely that he maintained two different troupes.
At all events, such entries suggest that there was some tradition of welcoming traveling players of various kinds in the Halsall, Warren, and Legh households, but it has left only these small traces and that only because their players traveled on a neighborly basis and were given lodging and board and a small gratuity. Warren’s Men earned one shilling or two on each of their visits; Legh’s Men 1s. and 5s.; Halsall’s Men received quite a handsome 10s., perhaps inflated by the fact that it was associated with a wedding. Unless the Records of Early English Drama project unearths further references, this is the sum total of what we know of each of them. The Halsall visit might have been a one‐off; Warren’s Men presumably called at other properties in the region, to justify journeys from Cheshire, but all records of this have been lost. Legh’s men surely did not only perform twice, and in the same property.
The situation must have been replicated all over the country – localized troupes visiting the properties of friends, relatives, neighbors and allies, but leaving at best the scantiest of records. Such troupes did not have the prestige to present themselves to the mayors of towns they might pass through; at least, they are not recorded as receiving payment from them. This was playing on a much more modest and domestic scale, and those who took part could not possibly have earned a professional living by it. They presumably held other positions in their master’s household and only entertained the family or the neighbors when occasion called for it.
As to Sir Thomas Hesketh, although Alexander Hoghton seemed confident that he kept players, they have left very little trace. In 1569 one of his minstrels (James) was left a bequest by Robert Nowell of Read Hall (near Dunkenhalgh), where perhaps he had once performed. The only other, much debated, record is an entry in the household book of the steward of the Stanley family, Earls of Derby, who were the great magnates of southern and central Lancashire. An entry for December 1587 reads “Sir Tho[mas] Hesketh players went away.” There are in fact several records of Sir Thomas visiting Henry Stanley, the fourth earl, and his son, Ferdinando, Lord Strange. He was clearly on sociable terms with them, a fact of some consequence in our hypothetical account of Shakespeare’s theatrical experience.
But for now, the question is whether the “players” mentioned in the household book were Sir Thomas’s own; or whether these were the company patronized by Lord Strange himself, back with the family for the festive season, but happening to leave at the same time as Sir Thomas – the timing of whose visit might well have been arranged to see their performances. We simply do not know. The Stanleys were used to the highest quality of theatrical entertainment, having visits (besides those of their own very accomplished troupes) from the Queen’s own players as well as those of the Earls of Leicester, Hertford, and Essex; but it is possible that they followed the pattern at Dunkenhalgh and also accepted visits from much lowlier, local companies in the spirit of Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: “For never anything can be amiss / When simpleness and duty tender it” (5.1.82–3). But there are no records of payment to them.
We have little evidence of what precise “playing” may have gone on in households of Hesketh’s scale. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, a great house such as that of the fifth Earl of Northumberland, maintained four salaried players; it was made clear, however, that they would be in attendance for important religious and family events, but would otherwise tour to spare his household the cost of maintaining them – which in essence was the derivation of all the patronized touring companies (Westfall, 1990, 124). They perhaps supported the members of his chapel who were required to play the “Play of Nativity upon Christmas Day in the morning,” the “Play of Resurrection on Easter Day” and the “Play before his Lordship upon Shrove Tuesday at night yearly” (Westfall, 2009, 276). Such performances were part and parcel of an intense celebration of the Twelve Days of Christmas, with feasts, masques, concerts, and processions, and then beyond to Shrovetide, before the great drawing‐in of Lent. This festive season – known at the royal court as the Revels – was central to the business of playing in early modern England, though by Shakespeare’s day theatricals were clearly distinguished from Christian (and most particularly Catholic) liturgy and tradition.
At Hesketh’s Rufford Hall we might perhaps expect a scaled‐down, more domesticated version of this pattern, with those who acted as players during festive periods of the year earning their keep in other ways for the rest of the time rather than touring extensively. It is highly unlikely that any were salaried for playing as such, or were full‐time professionals. In 1542 the Earl of Rutland allowed one Anthony Hall board in the household for four weeks, because he was “learning a play to play in Christmas,” though later he was paid for “scouring away the earth and stones in the tennis play” (Westfall, 1990, 127). If John Aubrey’s evidence carries any weight, such a position for Shakespeare might have been as a “tutor” to household children. Baptista in The Taming of the Shrew talks of such appointments:
And for I know she [Bianca] takes most delight
In music, instruments, and poetry,
Schoolmasters will I keep within my house
Fit to instruct her youth …
… to cunning men
I will be very kind.
(1.1.92–8)
Holofernes in Love’s Labour’s Lost could be one such, though it seems more likely (“he teaches boys the hornbook”: 5.1.46) that he is master over a whole school. Either way, when the King instructs Don Armado that he wants “some delightful ostentation, or show, or pageant, or antic, or firework” for the Princess (107–9), it is to Holofernes and the curate, Nathaniel, that he turns, understanding that they “are good at such eruptions and sudden breaking out of mirth, as it were” (107–9, 110–11). Holofernes immediately proposes a show of the Nine Worthies and volunteers the three of them to perform in it. Might this offer us some shadow of how Shakespeare got into writing and performing drama?
If Hesketh was personally interested in drama, rather than just prepared to patronize it, he might have done as Sir Edward Dering (of Surrenden Dering in Kent) did, collecting printed playbooks on a prodigious scale – Dering is the earliest known person to purchase the Shakespeare First Folio – and adapting some for amateur theatricals in his own home. A manuscript survives of an abridgement of 1 and 2 Henry IV, stripped around 1622 of its comic scenes to make a single play for private performance (Krivatsy and Yeandle, 1992; Williams and Evans, 1974). Perhaps even more intriguingly, a partial cast‐list is attached to that manuscript, apparently for an amateur performance of Fletcher’s The Spanish Curate, marked up with roles for Dering himself, family, and friends, their servants and one “Jack of the Buttery” (Gibson, 2002, 1383, note to p. 916). The evidence ties this to 1622–24, which is remarkable since the play was not licensed until 1622 and not printed before 1647; Dering would have had to approach Fletcher or the King’s Men for a copy. In 1623 he also bought six copies of a comic university allegory, “Ruff and Cuff,” in which articles of clothing argue with each other; six copies would probably have been enough to allow the cast to rehearse (Wiggins, 2005). And he recorded buying “heads of hair and beards” (Krivatsy and Yeandle, 139). Clearly, Dering took household performance seriously and personally, performing himself and expecting family and friends to do likewise, with help from the servants. He had grown up through the theatrical revolution to which Shakespeare himself was central, with its attendant explosion of plays in print. The same resources would only have been available to a Sir Thomas Hesketh back in the 1580s on a much more modest scale. But there is no reason to suppose that the same enthusiasm might not have been there, perhaps relying on more traditional fare. Christopher Sly, tricked in the induction to The Taming of the Shrew into thinking he is a lord, can only imagine that his players might offer “a comonty [comedy?] a Christmas gambold [gambol, lively merrymaking and leaping] or a tumbling trick” (133–4). The Page patiently explains that the “pleasant comedy” that has been announced will be “more pleasing stuff … a kind of history” (126, 135, 137). The Slys of the world, rather like the “rude mechanicals” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are not really conversant with fashionable, sophisticated theatre.
One significant resource available to Hesketh was a room big enough to stage theatrical events. Rufford Hall (see Figures 2.2 and 2.3), built in the early sixteenth century, boasts a Great Hall which survives to this day. It is very similar in size to the upper Hall in Stratford Guild Hall, some 39 ft long and 23 ft wide (14.2 m × 6.7 m), a typical ratio for such rooms. It boasts a splendid hammerbeam roof, the timbers of which sit on a low stone wall. The woodwork is heavily decorated (each hammerbeam has a carved angel at either end), with some conservative religious iconography. At the low end of the hall is a unique wooden, elaborately carved screen, creating a spere passage leading to the original kitchen and buttery. At the high end, where the principal dining table would normally sit, there are two doors. These originally gave access to living quarters in the west wing of the house, which is no longer there (so they lead out now into the grounds). Looking towards that high end, on the right wall there is a bay measuring 10' 7″ [3.21 m] wide and a similar depth at its deepest point.
Figure 2.2 Interior of the Tudor Great Hall at Rufford Old Hall.
Source: The National Trust Photolibrary / Alamy Stock photo.
Figure 2.3 Interior of the Tudor Great Hall at Rufford Old Hall.
Source: The National Trust Photolibrary / Alamy Stock photo.
The bay and the screen are somewhat unusual, but in other respects this is quite a typical Tudor hall in size and shape. It does not, however, have a minstrel gallery or any other potential upper playing space, as many do. As in the discussion of Stratford Guild Hall it is readily possible to imagine performances at either the high end or the low end of the room; doors are conveniently located at both ends (though whether actors could have used those to the family’s living quarters is another matter). The screen creates a somewhat unusual configuration but ultimately would not interfere. The evidence, however, that playing commonly took place in colleges and at court immediately below the high table weighs heavily, and that probably happened here too. Significantly, a padded bench runs along the wall for the use of those at high table; at its center is a more elaborate seat for the head of the household – a more modest version of Elizabeth’s “state” (see p. 120). The bay, curtained off, might well have served as a tiring room. The Heskeths and their principal guests would have presided over all – unless, like Sir Edward Dering, they were minded to be involved in the entertainment themselves. Fulke Gillom and William Shakshafte might well be imagined to have suspended their other duties for the festive season to take an active role in staging it all.
With any arrangement, even in daylight hours and certainly at night (theatricals elsewhere are recorded both in afternoons after dinner, around 2 p.m., and after supper, around 9 p.m.), it would be necessary to increase the provision of lighting in the room for the performance to be visible to all. At court and the Blackfriars there was an elaborate provision of candles throughout the hall (not just on the stage), which needed to be trimmed and replaced several times during a performance, necessitating breaks in the action. Here it seems likely that extra torches or standing candelabra around the room would serve. Wherever the stage was set, it is easy to imagine a hundred people, possibly more, on benches in an audience; Hesketh could readily assemble family, friends, and servants for a cohesive festive occasion.
We may imagine all this in the spirit of convivial recreation, but that was evidently not always quite the case. In 1609 Sir John Yorke, of Gouthwaite (or Gowlthwaite) Hall in West Yorkshire, entertained some hundred of his friends and neighbors at Christmas, in an event which acquired some notoriety. Sir John at least notionally conformed to the Church of England, but his wife, Lady Juliana, was actively Roman Catholic. Entertainment was provided by Sir Richard Cholmely’s players, based at Cholmely’s estate in Whitby and led by Christopher and Robert Simpson. They offered the Yorkes a repertoire of four plays from which to choose: interestingly King Lear, Pericles, The Travailes of Three English Brothers (all King’s Men plays, all published far away in London recently), and a traditional saint’s play, The Play of St Christopher, with inevitable Catholic associations. They chose the saint’s play. Whether the Yorkes knew about it in advance or not, the players included a raucous scene of a dispute between two characters, a Protestant minister and a Catholic priest, which ended with the Protestant being dragged to hell by the Devil and the Catholic going to heaven. Most of the audience (many of whom were later recorded as being recusant Catholics) enjoyed this immensely, but one Elizabeth Stubbs, a former servant at Gouthwaite, reported it to the Justice of the Peace (Boddy 1976; Jensen 2004).
There were serious consequences all round, some of which are informative about playing in general. In 1614 Sir John and Lady Juliana were tried in Star Chamber (mainly composed of the King’s chief ministers) for allowing a seditious play to be performed. They were fined £1,000 each for allowing the extra scene to be acted, and were imprisoned in the Fleet Debtors’ Prison for three years, being released in February 1617 when they paid part of the fine. The Simpsons and their associates probably lost Sir Richard’s patronage as a result of what happened at Gouthwaite Hall and acquired a substantial track‐record between 1612 and 1619 of prosecutions for being “vagabond” players and recusants. From these we learn that the players were all, like the “mechanicals” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, qualified tradesmen. The Simpsons were both shoemakers; their associates included weavers, a tanner, and a mason. We do not know if they continued to work at their trades when not performing, though it is likely. But it is quite clear that they persisted in their playing despite all the harassment and that there were plenty of households prepared to welcome them, despite (or perhaps because of) their reputation, even though they risked being fined for doing so (ES, 1: 305, n.1).
An interesting deposition to emerge from the enquiries which followed the St Christopher performance contains the complaint of one Thomas Pant, who actually gave one of the most detailed accounts of the play. He was apprenticed to Christopher Simpson, doubtless in his capacity as a shoemaker, but complained that he had been “trained up for these three years to wandering in the country and playing of interludes” – that is, he was being used as a boy player, not learning the trade of shoemaker (ibid.). Whether Pant had ever really expected to become a shoemaker may be questionable, but he took this opportunity (perhaps feeling threatened by the attention of the authorities) to challenge the terms of his apprenticeship; he was released from his indenture as a result. There were, of course, no women on Elizabethan stages. Their roles were normally played by boy actors liked Pant, who would be apprenticed like this to adult players under the aegis of their trade guild affiliations. But it is unlikely that any of those Shakespeare worked with in London were under any illusions about what they were training for. I discuss the boy actors further in Chapter 4.
The whole history of the Simpsons and the kinds of records we have seen in Lancashire attest to robust traditions of playing in provincial England during Shakespeare’s lifetime, ranging from semi‐professional to neighborly to purely domestic, tied to some extent to local affiliations, traditions, and beliefs. And it all went on, as it were, under the radar, since under the terms of the 1572 Act for the Punishment of Vagabonds (and an even more draconican measure passed in 1598) all traveling players were supposed to be attached to a “baron of the realm or any other honourable person of greater degree” (ES, 4: 324). Custom and practice doubtless kept such local playing in being, with the tacit assumption that the local gentry would keep their own in order. But there were obviously exceptions. Remarkably, the Yorkes seem not to have learned their lesson. In 1628 a player named Christopher Malloy was prosecuted in the Court of Star Chamber for playing the devil in a performance at their house; in the course of the role he carried someone playing the late King James on his back to hell, and alleged that all Protestants were damned (ES, 1: 328, n. 3). In an age of such divided religious loyalties theatre always had the potential to be inflammatory, contentious, or subversive, even in remote provincial manor houses. Sir Thomas Hesketh was never involved in any such scandal and to all appearances was a stalwart of the Tudor regime, serving as High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1562. But his wife and at least one of his sons were actively Catholic, and Samuel Schoenbaum maintains that he was too (1987, 114).
Strange’s Men
This doubleness also characterizes the Stanley Earls of Derby, who were the Heskeths’ own patrons. The first earl won his title for supporting Richmond (Henry VII) at the Battle of Bosworth Field – events depicted by Shakespeare in the closing scenes of Richard III. Thereafter the family were staunch supporters of the Tudor regime, though successive earls were suspected of Catholic sympathies. This plays into the last link in the Hoghton Will theory of Shakespeare’s move to London. Hesketh died in 1588. Then if not before it has been supposed that “William Shakshafte” passed into the service of the Stanleys, and specifically of the enigmatic Ferdinando, Lord Strange heir to the earldom.
They had long welcomed traveling players at their three great estates in south Lancashire, Lathom House, New Park, and Knowsley Hall. We can catch a glimpse of the splendor in which they lived from the description of an elaborately carved hall screen at Lathom House, done by one Parker and celebrated in a poem by Thomas Chaloner. It depicted landscape, together with the astronomical and astrological workings of the heavens, showing:
how and when the moon in every month doth change,
And how she doth her light augment; and how she fades again,
And how she quarterly doth stand. Here may’st thou see full plain
The course of all the planets brought arising at the east,
By prim’ mobile, being led to sit again at west:
A deep design, it represents a practice good also,
That with his pains on earth the manor of the heavens doth show,
And how therewith the dozen signs are led and brought about,
A needful thing in such a place and to effect no doubt,
To show thee when the day is long and how it shortens night …19
It stood as both astrological chart and perpetual calendar, “amount[ing] to a theatrum mundi or depiction of the cosmos” (Manley and MacLean, 2014, 268). This was obviously by several orders of magnitude grander even than the fine hall screen at Rufford Old Hall, which gives some measure of the Stanleys, only one step below royalty (see p. 56). Lawrence Manley describes it as a possible “microcosmic backdrop” to playing at Lathom. I have argued earlier that it would be against necessary seating protocol for hall screens to act as “backdrops” to theatrical performances (p. 24). But it would certainly be a significant presence in a room doubtless also hung with fine tapestries, locating plays and players within their widest social and political contexts.
The Stanleys also had a long tradition of patronizing players, not just locally but in troupes which traveled the country extensively (MacLean, 2004). As mentioned when we considered Stratford, both the fourth earl and his son had troupes that were received at court in the early 1580s, though Strange’s troupe at that time seem to have been primarily acrobats; their court visits in late 1581 and early 1583, for example, are recorded as “activities” rather than play‐performances. But by the Revels season of 1591/2 we find them putting on no less than six plays there, an unprecedented number by a single company in a season; even the Queen’s Men (who that year only appeared once) had never performed more than five times.
Quite how the company managed this transformation into the highest league remains uncertain, though Lawrence Manley and Sally‐Beth MacLean’s Lord Strange’s Men and their Plays (2014) puts everything in much clearer perspective than it has been before. The following details, however, seem pertinent. The Earl of Leicester’s Men, already fractured in 1586 when Leicester took a troupe with him on his expedition to fight Spain in the Low Countries, was finally dissolved when he died in 1588. Some of his former players became Strange’s Men, including the great clown, Will Kemp. By November 1589 the company can be traced playing in London. The Lord Mayor attempted to close the playhouses and summoned the two troupes he could trace, the Lord Admiral’s and Strange’s. As he reported to Lord Burghley and the Privy Council: “The Lord Admiral’s players very dutifully obeyed, but the others in very contemptuous manner departing from me, went to the Cross Keys [an inn] and played that afternoon, to the great offence of the better sort that knew they were prohibited by order from your Lordship” (ES, 4: 305). Like James Burbage on an earlier occasion (see p. 31), players in the service of a great aristocrat stood on that dignity to resist “lesser” authorities. In this instance Lord Mayor Harte, who was acting on Privy Council instructions, imprisoned some of them for their contempt.
By this time the company seems to have lost the services of John Symons, their leader when their forte was acrobatics. In 1590 they apparently formed an association of sorts with the Admiral’s Men, then working with James Burbage at the Theatre; they put on a joint play and activities at court that December.20 But even by November 1590 there were tensions between Burbage and the Admiral’s Men, some of whom became involved in a dispute between him and Margaret Brayne, the widow of his former partner, who was claiming a moiety (share) in the profits of the Theatre. John Alleyn (Edward’s elder brother, also a player) later deposed that he “found there … Richard Burbage, the youngest son of the said James Burbage there, with a broom staff in his hand, of whom when this deponent asked what stir there was, he answered in laughing phrase how they came for a moiety. But quod he (holding up the said broom’s staff) I have, I think, delivered him a moiety with this and sent them packing” (ES, 2: 307). The man with the broom staff was shortly to become one of Shakespeare’s closest colleagues and one of the great actors of the era. When Alleyn threatened to “complain to their lord and master, the Lord Admiral [Howard]” about their behavior, the irascible James Burbage “in a rage” declared “by a great oath that he cared not for the three of the best lords of them all.”21
By February 1592, and probably somewhat earlier, Edward Alleyn had joined Strange’s Men (while anomalously remaining in the service of the Lord Admiral), possibly bringing a few of his fellow Admiral’s Men with him. And they had transferred to Henslowe’s Rose, on the Bankside (p. 32). Apparently in anticipation of this Henslowe spent over £100 rebuilding the Rose’s stage and tiring house, built only five years earlier, installing for example a permanent roof over the stage for the first time – which would not only keep the stage and the actors dry but might allow for relatively sophisticated “descent” scenes (J. Greenfield, 2007; Bowsher 2007). In October 1592 Alleyn married Henslowe’s stepdaughter, Joan.
It seems indisputable that what finally transformed Strange’s Men into the leading company of its day in 1591/2 was Alleyn’s star power. In Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil (1592) Thomas Nashe praised him extravagantly: “Not Roscius nor Aesop, those admired tragedians that have lived ever since before Christ was born, could ever perform more in action than famous Ned Allen” (F4v). But something else about this company was distinctive. Wherever exactly they played immediately after the falling out with Burbage they must have done so long enough and with a sufficiently varied repertoire to convince Edmund Tilney, Master of the Revels, that they warranted six slots on the Revels calendar of 1591/92 and a further three (again the highest number) the following year. What we can say incontrovertibly is that between February 19 and June 22, 1592 they performed the first fully recorded London season, playing continuously at the Rose; we know this – with the names of all the plays they performed, and Henslowe’s share of the takings – because of Henslowe’s so‐called Diary (see p. 13ff).
Prior to this, to the best of our knowledge, no company had attempted to set up more‐or‐less permanent residence in London. Companies had visited London as part of their touring circuit, hiring amphitheaters like the Theatre and the Rose, or (in winter) inns within the city for a time, probably exhausting their limited repertoire; but then moving on. There must have been some calculation on the part of Alleyn and Henslowe, in conjunction with the senior sharers in Strange’s Men that the time was ripe – the population of London was now around 200,000 – for a settled operation there. Attempts to identify the personnel of the company, and to estimate its size, are bedeviled by the contested status of two “plots” of plays that may have belonged to them, those of 2 The Seven Deadly Sins, and The Dead Men’s Fortune, which name quite a few players (see p. 205–6 and Kathman, 2004a). But we can be certain of the core personnel as of May 6, 1593, since the Privy Council gave them a special licence to tour during the time of plague, naming “Edward Alleyn, servant to the right honourable the Lord High Admiral, William Kemp, Thomas Pope, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips and George Bryan, being one company, servants to our very good the lord the Lord Strange” (ES, 2: 123). Leaving aside Alleyn, all the others named were to be founder‐members with Shakespeare of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in 1594/5.
All this strictly tells us is that Shakespeare was not one of the sharers of the company, the senior personnel who normally put capital into the enterprise and shared in the profits (see p. 140). He might have been a hired man, acting as required for a weekly wage. And/or he may simply have been employed to write for them. Among the plays which Henslowe lists in that first season is “harey the vi,” which was probably 1 Henry VI.22 Even as Nashe was praising Alleyn he was also deeply struck by this play: “How would it have joyed brave Talbot (the terror of the French) to think that after two hundred year in the tomb, he should triumph again on the stage, and have his bones new embalmed by the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding” (Pierce Penniless, F3r). This was one of twenty‐seven plays that Strange’s Men staged in the 105 days of that first recorded season, a portent of one of the most striking differences between London playing and what had been the practice of traveling companies. As we saw, the Simpsons had precisely four plays that they were ready to perform (though three of them were surprisingly new). But even the grander companies would hardly have needed twenty‐seven plays in repertoire as they toured to be able to offer their customers variety. They could probably have made do with half as many, and there would be relatively little pressure to renew them. But in London there was a constant need for novelty to keep a limited pool of customers coming back for more. That was an essential precondition of the kind of career Shakespeare was to have from now on.
“Harey the vi” was certainly one of the hits of that early 1592 season. It is first recorded on March 3, marked a “ne,” one of Henslowe’s enigmatic annotations which usually seems to mean that it was a new play that day or at least a revised and relicensed one; companies charged novelty‐seeking audiences more, usually double, for such first performances. Henslowe also recorded takings of 76s. 8d. (£3 16s. 8d.).23 This was not the full income for the day but reflected Henslowe’s own proportion of the take, his income for allowing the actors to use his theatre (Henslowe, xxxii). We are not certain about his arrangement with Strange’s Men, but it would be typical if his share derived from takings in the galleries, the tiered, covered sections around the inner wall of the Rose, where customers paid more for the luxury of shelter and seating (see p. 93). Whatever precisely was the case, this was a healthy return for the new play.
It was staged again on March 7 (60s.); March 11 (47s. 6d.); March 16 (31s. 6d.); March 28 (68s.); April 5 (41s.); Apri l 13 (26s.); April 21 (33s.); May 4 (56s.); May 7 (22s.); May 14 (50s.); May 19 (30s.); May 25 (24s.); June 12 (32s,); June 19 (31s.). Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta – not, apparently, new but a famous role for Alleyn – actually did better in the run overall, but I Henry VI generated the second best returns. There were three other “ne” plays in this season, Titus and Vespacia (or Vespasian), The Tanner of Denmark, and A Knack to Know a Knave24. All three started with takings over 60s. but, though the other two settled into the repertory well enough, The Tanner of Denmark never recurs again in Henslowe’s accounts. Our best guess for an explanation would have to be very negative audience response to the first performance. In a business where the margins were probably always tight and interruption by the plague was a constant threat, failure had to mean failure.25
Plague was certainly part of the undoing of Strange’s Men, but the loss of their patron was the final blow. The Privy Council ordered all London playing to stop on June 23, 1592 because of the level of plague deaths. The company took to the road by July 13 and were still traveling on December 19. They were back at the Rose for a very brief season, from December 29 to the end of January 1593. But that is their final appearance in Henslowe’s Diary (19–20). The plague set in again with a vengeance and scarcely remitted until the middle of 1594. They seem to have hung on as long as they could in London, until need drove them back on the road, under the special Privy Council licence quoted above. Among various letters that have survived from this period, between members of the Henslowe/Alleyn family, one from Edward Alleyn to his wife, Joan, gives some sense both of the terror of the plague and of the privations of touring:
Emmanuel
My good sweet mouse, I commend me heartily to you, and to my father, my mother and my sister Bess, hoping in God though the sickness be round about you yet by his mercy it may escape your house. Which by the grace of God it shall therefore use this course: keep your house fair and clean, which I know you will, and every evening throw water before your door and in your backside, and have in your windows good store of rue and herb of grace, and withall the grace of God which must be obtained by prayers. And so doing no doubt but the lord will mercifully defend you.
Now, good mouse, I have no news to send you but this that we have all our health, for which the Lord be praised. I received your letter at Bristol by Richard Cowley [an actor], for which I thank you. I have sent you this bearer, Thomas Pope’s kinsman, my white waistcoat, because it is a trouble to me to carry it; receive it with this letter. And lay it up for me till I come. If you send any more letters, send to me by the carriers of Shrewsbury or to Westchester or to York to be kept till my Lord Strange’s players come. And this sweet heart with my hearty commendations to all our friends I cease.
From Bristol this Wednesday after St James his day, being ready to begin the play of Harry of Cornwall. Mouse, do my hearty commendations to Master Griggs [the carpenter who built the Rose and refurbished it in 1592], his wife and all his household, and to my sister Phillips.
Your loving husband, E. Alleyn
Mouse, you send me no news of any things you should send of your domestical matters, such things as happens at home, as how your distilled water proves, or this or that or anything what you will.
[vertically in margin] And Jug, I pray you let my orange tawny stockings of woolen be dyed a very good black, against I come home to wear in the winter. You sent me not word of my garden, but next time you will. But remember this in any case: that all that bed which was parsley, in the month of September you sow it with spinach, for then is the time. I would do it myself but will not come home till Allholland tide [All Saints’ Day, November 1]. And so sweet mouse farewell, and brook our long journey with patience.
[addressed] This to be delivered to Mr Henslowe, one of the grooms of Her Majesty’s Chamber, dwelling on the Bankside, right over against the Clink [a prison].
(Henslowe, 276–7)
It tells us something that this Bristol performance appears in no official city record. Those records, as we have seen, only record payment for the “Mayor’s play” but no such record for Strange’s Men appears in this period. Possibly that formality was sometimes overlooked, yet some commercial performances allowed. It would indeed have been a long journey, from Bristol, up the Welsh marches and on to York. But the record shows that they in fact turned to Bath before heading all the way to Norwich on the east coast, and then the usually lucrative east Midland centers of Coventy and Leicester. Possibly the change of plan was linked with a change in status of their patron: on September 25 Lord Strange succeeded his father as Earl of Derby, and henceforth his players were Derby’s Men. But this only lasted until April 16, 1594, when the new earl in turn died, amid rumors of poison (Kathman, 2004c). A troupe of the same name toured under the patronage of his brother, the sixth earl, but by then they had lost all their key personnel and their access to court.
Strange’s Men have the unique distinction of being the first known truly London‐based company and the presence of what at least seems to be 1 Henry VI in their repertoire associates Shakespeare with them. The title page of Titus Andronicus, as we have seen, also suggests a link with them (see p. 37, Note 14). But nothing else strictly does, though Shakespeare’s depiction of the Stanleys in his history plays and the use of Lord Strange’s unusual name, Ferdinand, for the King of Navarre in Love’s Labour’s Lost fuel speculation (Manley and MacLean, 2014, 280–320). Shakespeare’s name appears in none of the “plots” possibly associated with the company, nor in the Alleyn–Henslowe correspondence, nor in their special traveling licence. So possibly he was just a hired man, or simply a playwright who wrote for a fee. Nevertheless, as Terence G. Schoone‐Jongen observes, “The belief that Shakespeare performed with Strange’s [Men] is probably the most popular” of all the theories about Shakespeare’s early career (2008, 103). But none of this requires that he should have been part of Strange’s Men before they settled in London.