Shakespeare was one of the best known and successful men of his day, despite the fact that the still-evolving theatre was regarded by many as disreputable and its practitioners no better than rogues and vagabonds. But Shakespeare and his fellows succeeded in turning that perception around. They attracted the patronage and protection of eminent noblemen and, finally, Queen Elizabeth and King James. Many theatre practitioners became wealthy men and some, including Shakespeare, were granted a coat of arms and the title of ‘Gentleman’.

There are over fifty documents relating to Shakespeare, his family and his acting company in the London Public Record Office alone, and there are many references to him by contemporaries—friends, colleagues, other writers—and by those who came shortly after. Here are just a few of them:

. . . he was a handsome well-shaped man . . . a very readie and pleasant smooth wit.

John Aubrey (1681)

Everyone who had a true taste of merit, and could distinguish men, had generally a just value and esteem for him . . . a good-natured man, of great sweetness in his manners, and a most agreeable companion.

Nicholas Rowe (1709)

This William being inclined naturally to poetry and acting came to London I guess about 18 and was an actor at one of the playhouses and did act exceeding well.

William Beeston (1610) (actor in Shakespeare’s company)

The sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his sugared sonnets . . .

Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia: Wit’s Treasury (1598)

As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latins, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage. For comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love Labour’s Lost, his Love Labour’s Won, his Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the 2.; Richard the 3., Henry the 4., King John, Titus Andronicus and his Romeo and Juliet.

Francis Meres

The younger sort takes much delight in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis: but his Lucrece and his tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, have it in them to please the wiser sort.

Gabriel Harvey (1610)

to our English Terence,

Mr Will Shakespeare . . .

Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,

Hadst thou not played some kingly parts in sport,

Thou hadst bin a companion for a King.

John Davies (1610)

From ‘In remembrance of Master William Shakespeare. Ode’:

Beware, delighted poets, when you sing

To welcome nature in the early spring,

Your num’rous feet not tread

The banks of Avon; for each flower

(As it ne’er knew a sun or shower)

Hangs there the pensive head . . .

Sir William Davenant, Poems (1637)

‘Upon the Lines and Life of the Famous Scenic Poet, Master William Shakespeare’:

Those hands which you so clapped go now and wring,

You Britons brave, for done are Shakespeare’s days.

His days are done that made the dainty plays

Which made the globe of heav’n and earth to ring . . .

For though his line of life went soon about,

The life yet of his lines shall never out.

Hugh Holland, in Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1623)

‘To the Memory of the deceased author Master William Shakespeare’:

Shakespeare, at length thy pious fellows give

The world thy works, thy works by which outlive

Thy tomb thy name must; when that stone is rent,

And time dissolves thy Stratford monument,

Here we alive shall view thee still. This book,

When brass and marble fade, shall make thee look

Fresh to all ages. When posterity

Shall loathe what’s new, think all is prodigy

That is not Shakespeare’s ev’ry line, each verse

Here shall revive, redeem thee from thy hearse . . .

Be sure, our Shakespeare, thou canst never die,

But crowned with laurel, live eternally.

Leonard Digges, in Comedies, Histories and Tragedies (1623)

‘To the memory of Master W. Shakespeare’:

We wondered, Shakespeare, that thou went’st so soon

From the world’s stage to the grave’s tiring-room.

We thought thee dead, but this thy printed worth

Tells thy spectators that thou went’st but forth

To enter with applause. An actor’s art

Can die, and live to act a second part.

That’s but an exit of mortality;

This, a re-entrance to a plaudity.

James Mabbe, commendatory poem in the First Folio (1623)

‘An Epitaph on the Admirable Dramatic Poet, William Shakespeare’:

What need my Shakespeare for his honoured bones

The labour of an age in piled stones,

Or that his hallowed relics should be hid

Under a stary-pointing pyramid?

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame,

What need’st thou such dull witness of thy name?

Thou in our wonder and astonishment

Hast built thyself a lasting monument . . .

John Milton (1630)

‘An Elegy on the death of that famous Writer and Actor, Master William Shakespeare’:

I dare not do thy memory that wrong

Unto our larger griefs to give a tongue;

I’ll only sigh in earnest, and let fall

My solemn tears at thy great funeral,

For every eye that rains a show’r for thee

Laments thy loss in a sad elegy.

Nor is it fit each humble muse should have

Thy worth his subject, now thou’rt laid in grave . . .

. . . Sleep, then, rich soul of numbers, whilst poor we

Enjoy the profits of thy legacy,

And think it happiness enough we have

So much of thee redeemed from the grave

As may suffice to enlighten future times

With the bright lustre of thy matchless rhymes.

Anon (1640)

‘Upon Master William Shakespeare, the Deceased Author, and his Poems’:

Poets are born, not made: when I would prove

This truth, the glad remembrance I must love

Of never-dying Shakespeare, who alone

Is argument enough to make that one . . .

. . . but O! what praise more powerful can we give

The dead than that by him the King’s Men live,

His players, which should they but have shared the fate,

All else expired within the short term’s date,

How could the Globe have prospered, since through want

Of change the plays and poems had grown scant . . .

. . . And on the stage at half-sword parley were

Brutus and Cassius; O, how the audience

Were ravished, with what wonder they went thence,

When some new day they would not brook a line

Of tedious though well-laboured Catiline.

Sejanus too was irksome, they prized more

Honest Iago, or the jealous Moor . . .

. . . when let but Falstaff come,

Hal, Poins, the rest, you scarce shall have a room,

All is so pestered. Let but Beatrice

And Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice

The cockpit galleries, boxes, all are full

To hear Malvolio, that cross-gartered gull.

Brief, there is nothing in his wit-fraught book

Whose sound we would not hear, on whose worth look;

Like old-coined gold, whose lines in every page

Shall pass true current to succeeding age.

But why do I dead Shakespeare’s praise recite?

Some second Shakespeare must of Shakespeare write;

For me ’tis needless, since an host of men

Will pay to clap his praise, to free my pen.

Leonard Digges (1640)

Gullio: O sweet Master Shakespeare,

I’ll have his picture in my study

At the court . . . I’le worship sweet Mr Shakespeare and to honour him will lay his Venus and Adonis under my pillowe.

Anon, The Return from Parnassus (1600)

Let this duncified world esteem of Spenser and Chaucer, I’ll worship sweet Mr Shakespeare.

Anon (1599)

The following well-known anecdote was recorded by Sir John Manningham in his diary in 1601. It may be apocryphal but even so, it attests to the interest in gossip about theatre folk of the day and implies that the names of both Burbage and Shakespeare were well known. It also assumes that both were well enough known as ‘ladies’ men’ for the story to have some credence:

Upon a time when Burbage played Richard III, there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him, that before she went from the play she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard the Third. Shakespeare, overhearing their conversation, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbage came. Then, message being brought that Richard III was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third.

Let’s give the last word to Shakespeare’s greatest contemporary, friend and rival, Ben Jonson:

. . . Yet must I not give nature all, thy art,

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part.

For though the poet’s matter nature be,

His art doth give the fashion; and that he

Who casts to write a living line must sweat—

Such as thine are—and strike the second heat

Upon the muses’ anvil, turn the same,

And himself with it that he thinks to frame;

Or for the laurel he may gain a scorn,

For a good poet’s made as well as born.

And such wert thou. Look how the father’s face

Lives in his issue, even so the race

Of Shakespeare’s mind and manners brightly shines

In his well-turned and true-filed lines,

In each of which he seems to shake a lance,

As brandished at the eyes of ignorance.

Sweet swan of Avon! What a sight it were

To see thee in our water yet appear,

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames

That so did take Eliza and our James!

But stay, I see thee in the hemisphere

Advanced, and made a constellation there!

Shine forth, thou star of poets, and with rage

Or influence chide or cheer the drooping stage,

Which, since thy flight from hence, hath mourned like night

And despairs day, but for thy volumes’ light.

Ben Jonson, the First Folio (1623)