Shakespeare: A Life (33 page)

Middlesex justices (each year from 1591 to 1594). He felt the freer to
do so, it seems, because of a connection in high places. He claimed to
be 'Hunsdons man', while wearing the livery of old Henry Carey, Lord
Hunsdon of the Privy Council.

This lord had a rather downright manner, a 'custom of swearing and obscenity', and the outlook of a politic old hedonist.
¹
When his mistress Aemilia Lanyer, who was the daughter of a court
musician, bore him a son called Henry in 1593, Lord Hunsdon was not
very badly inconvenienced; the child, after all, had a notional father
in her husband, the spendthrift musician Alfonso Lanier.
²
Hunsdon hardly concealed his follies, and in the obdurate old James
Burbage, defying the law with his nuts and drink, he had a loyal and
rugged admirer. More than once, Hunsdon's intervention saved the
Theater from hostile voices on the Privy Council, and Burbage played
Falstaff to a rather wheezy, ageing Prince Hal. Hunsdon was the
Queen's first cousin (he was the son of Anne Boleyn's sister) and in
view of Henry VIII's appetites he was said to be Elizabeth's
half-brother, too. If not always on perfect terms with the Queen, he
was one of her more trusted advisers. Moreover not long after his
son-in-law Charles Howard, Lord Howard of Effingham, became the Lord
High Admiral, Hunsdon was appointed the Queen's Chamberlain with control
of funds and play-censorship in the Revels Office.

In that office, economy was vital. Hunsdon knew for instance that it
cost his office three times as much to stage a masque for the Queen as
to pay for a play, and so, in league with Charles Howard, he usually
protected actors from the worst demands of Guildhall, while quietly
favouring the Queen's troupe, which was set up in 1583. But the
Queen's group split in two twice, and in the spring of 1594 its remnants
were in decline. Other acting companies were nearly bankrupted, melting
away, and two of the best player-patrons -- Sussex and Derby -- were
gone. Hunsdon and Howard had to move boldly to keep a stable, durable
troupe in the capital.

If the lords
took advice, two women would have heard of plans affecting the fate of
Shakespeare and other actors. It is unlikely that Hunsdon took five
major actors from the troupe of his own relative, Alice, Countess of
Derby -- Ferdinando's widow -- without consult-

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ing her. Derby's men performed in her name in May. Litigious,
abrasive, and later dissatisfied in a second marriage, the Dowager
Countess Alice oddly took a generous interest in poets and actors.
Hunsdon's daughter and Howard's wife, Catherine Carey, who was closer
to the Queen than either of them, would probably also have given
advice. What emerged, at any rate, was a sensitive theatrical plan of
considerable help to Shakespeare. Though nominally sponsored by two
Privy Council lords, it was not strictly a measure of the Queen's
government, and that made the plan somewhat fragile. But it ensured
the continuance of London playing, and, in the long run, the greatest
cultural success a modern nation had ever known.

Hunsdon and Howard's plan had a double-insurance feature in that two
troupes were set up with a 'family' at each centre for stability; the
two groups would straddle London, one north of the walls, one just
south of the river. Hunsdon would sponsor men and boys under the
Chamberlain's name at Shoreditch and thus oblige the profithungry old
Burbage and his two sons. ( Cuthbert Burbage, lately a servant, had been
baptized on 15 June 1565: he was now almost 29; young Richard, the
actor, baptized on 7 July 1568, was 25, with his main success still
ahead of him.) In turn, Howard would lend the Lord Admiral's name to a
troupe on Bankside with Edward Alleyn, his wife Joan, and
father-in-law Philip Henslowe at the centre.
³

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your lo
rdships
lovinge freind, H. Hounsdon
⁴

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

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

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

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

Nunc Wilhelmi dono Nobilissima Alisiae Comitissae
⁵

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

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

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

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

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

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

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