Shakespeare (23 page)

It has been calculated that in its original form the Rose held some nineteen hundred people and, after a remodelling of its interior five years later, some 2,400 customers. But the diameter of the theatre measured only 72 feet, roughly the size of London’s smallest contemporary theatres. The diameter of the inner yard itself was some 46 feet. When it is recalled that one of London’s largest theatres, the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, has a maximum
capacity of less than nine hundred, the sheer accumulation of people in the Rose is little short of astonishing. It was jammed at least three times as full as any modern place of entertainment. It smelled of rank human odours, of bad breath and of sweat, of cheap food, of drink. The theatres were open to the air in part to expel this miasma of noisome savours. That is perhaps why Hamlet, when meditating upon the stage scenery of the world with its “majestical roof fretted with golden fire,” then alludes suddenly to “a foule and pestilent congregation of vapoures” (1233-4). This was the atmosphere in which the young Shakespeare acted and in which the plays of Marlowe were performed.

These theatres, north and south of the river, north and east of the city walls, varied in size and in construction. It has long been debated whether they were built upon classical principles, or whether they were modelled upon the more impromptu art of the street theatre. Theatrical historians have reached some consensus, however, that these buildings represented the first public theatres in London. But there is reason to doubt that claim. There were certainly public theatres in Roman London, and it seems likely that there were popular venues in the period after the re-emergence of London in the ninth century. In the early twelfth century William Fitzstephen, the first historian of London, noted the prevalence of dramatised saints’ lives in public places. There are also references to
“spectaculis theatralibus”
and
“ludis scenicis.”
¹²
In 1352 Bishop Grandisson of Exeter referred to
“quondam ludum noxium,”
a certain unpleasant entertainment,
“in theatro nostrae civitatis”
in the theatre of our city.
¹³
This plainly suggests that there was a building in Exeter which was popularly known as a
“theatrum.”
If there was one in a provincial city, it seems likely that there was also one and perhaps more in London itself. All the evidence suggests that there was much more secular dramatic activity than is generally recognised, and that certain places in the city were designated as playing areas. Why not, for example, the old amphitheatre that has recently been discovered by the Guildhall? There was also an amphitheatre at Southwark at a very early date.

It has also been argued that the
mimi
and
histriones
of medieval provenance continued their work well into Shakespeare’s own period. The
mimus
put on an ass’s head, as did Bottom in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream;
he worked with a dog, as did Launce in
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
. Thus Shakespeare, and other sixteenth-century dramatists, emerged from many
hundreds of years of cultural practice. What could be more natural—inevitable, almost—than continuity rather than abrupt or unanticipated change? Life is a process rather than a hurdle race. It is wrong to assume that somehow the English drama began with the emergence of Shakespeare. He entered what was already a swiftly flowing stream.

S
hakespeare arrived in the city
at the most opportune possible moment, when the drama of Peele and Lyly had become highly fashionable and the new drama of Kyd and Marlowe was just emerging. By the late 1580s and early 1590s the theatrical companies were performing six days a week with a different play each day. The Admiral’s Company launched twenty-one new plays in one season, and performed thirty-eight plays in all. The Queen’s Men were performing on different occasions and in different seasons at the Bull in Bishopsgate Street, the Belsavage on Ludgate Hill, the Theatre and the Curtain. Lord Strange’s Men were at the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, the Theatre and then the Rose. There was much movement and change in the theatrical world. The Queen’s Men lost their position of primacy in 1588, as we have observed, and were supplanted by the combined talents of the Lord Admiral’s Men and Lord Strange’s Men. This may have been the moment when Shakespeare himself joined Strange’s company.

There were, in addition, such groups as the Earl of Warwick’s Men, the Earl of Essex’s Men and the Earl of Sussex’s Men; they made extended tours of the country, but of course they also performed in London. Gabriel Harvey, a close companion of Edmund Spenser, wrote to Spenser of “freshe starteupp comedanties” with “sum newe devised interlude, or sum malt-conceivid comedye fitt for the Theater or sum other paintid stage whereat
thou and thy lively copesmates in London maye lawghe ther mouthes and bellyes full for a pence or twoepence apiece.”
¹
We may assume that all the possible venues for theatrical performance were fully booked, by the companies then being formed or consolidated, and that Shakespeare had stepped into an environment where his talents could be fully exploited.

The principal theatrical companies themselves were significantly larger than they were at a later date, but this may in part have been the result of loose associations and amalgamations. The number of players in each company, men and boys, rose from an average of seven or eight to more than twenty. A play like Peek’s
The Battle of Alcazar
demanded a stage company of some twenty-six players. As a result of larger companies, too, there was more ingenuity in staging, with rapid scene-changing and more spectacular effects. The playwrights themselves grew more ambitious, and began working on a larger scale; by some strange natural process, too, the plays themselves grew longer. All of these forces helped to create a truly popular drama, of which Shakespeare was the principal beneficiary. It was a small world, comprising no more than two or three hundred people at most, but it had a disproportionately large effect upon the London public. It was the most urgent and the most popular form of artistic expression, and in that sense helped to create the new atmosphere of urban life.

The boys’ companies were the darlings of the hour, taking their roles in allegorical drama, classical drama and satirical drama. It may now seem to be an odd taste, among the Elizabethans, for child actors rather than adult actors; but it is connected with the sacred origins of the drama and with the desire to purge it from all associations with vulgarity or vagabondage. Theirs was a form of “pure” theatre in every sense. There were the Children of St. Paul’s, who performed in the precinct of the cathedral, and the Children of the Chapel Royal, who made use of rooms in the old monastery of Blackfriars by the river. They became part of the theatrical ferment of the time. After James Burbage had erected the Theatre in 1576 a musician and playwright, Richard Farrant, rented a hall in the Blackfriars which became known as “the private house in the Blackfriars”; here, under the pretext that they were rehearsing for the queen’s court performances, the Children of the Chapel Royal could attract high-paying customers. From so early a date, therefore, there was in London an “indoor” as well as an “outdoor” playhouse. It would have been inconceivable at the time that the “indoor” theatre would eventually become the choice of the world.

In 1583—through the agency of the Earl of Oxford—the Children of the
Chapel Royal secured the services of John Lyly who, with euphonious and stylised dramas such as
Campaspe
and
Sapho
and
Phao
, diverted the more discerning playgoer with displays of courtly dialogue and intricate plots. Lyly had already gained a considerable reputation with his narratives
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
and
Euphues and His England
, two prose romances which with their intricate and rhetorical style created the literary fashion known as “euphuism”; it was a style that Shakespeare imitated and parodied in equal measure, but it is true to say that none of his comedies is unaffected by it. It was the modern style. Anyone who wished to be contemporary, and of the moment, used it. Like all egregiously modern styles it faded very rapidly.

The residents of Blackfriars were not happy with the press of people who attended the productions of the Chapel Royal Children, however, and in 1584 the owner of the building forced out the boys and masters. So Lyly transferred his attentions to the Children of St. Paul’s, and for some years his “court comedies” continued to charm private audiences. More importantly, for him if not for posterity, his plays were also regularly performed at court, where Elizabeth herself was entertained by the classical allegories he devised. His was in a sense a royal art. When Shakespeare arrived in London Lyly was reaching the height of his success; the most distinguished and artful of all his productions,
Endimion
, was performed in 1588. He wrote about the mysteries and possibilities of love, both in comic and in sentimental manner; he employed pastoral settings; he created intricate patterns of human behaviour as if they were part of a measured dance; he mixed farce and bawdry with romance and mythology; he charmed audiences with the beauty of his expression; he infused his plots with comedy and with an overwhelming geniality of mood. It is easy to understand the effect upon the young Shakespeare, who had never before seen such plays. It was a new dramatic world of lyrical statement and romantic intrigue. Where would
Love’s Labour’s Lost
and
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
be without the influence of Lyly? There are many passages in Shakespeare’s plays that are strikingly reminiscent of Lyly. Shakespeare was indeed a great cormorant of other writers’ words. Moreover Lyly, just ten years older than Shakespeare, was already a fashionable and relatively wealthy man who was about to be appointed as a Member of Parliament. There was no better advertisement for the rewards of the theatre, albeit of the courtly or private kind. He spurred Shakespeare’s ambition as well as his creation.

Yet the rise of the professional adult companies, employing young
playwrights and larger bands of actors, steadily eclipsed the popularity of the boys and displaced the reputation of John Lyly. By 1590 the children had effectively disappeared, only to emerge a decade later under the guidance of yet another new wave of playwrights. Lyly spent his last years vainly seeking court preferment, as aspiring Master of the Revels, and living in what might be called genteel poverty. He wrote nothing for the last twelve years of his life, since the wheels of fashion and literary taste had turned a revolution. “I will cast my wits in a new mould,” he wrote in 1597, “for I find it folly that one foot being in the grave, I should have the other on the stage.”
²

The luxury of choice was not given to another contemporary dramatist, George Peele, of whom there is a memorable image in a small volume entitled
The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele
. He is described in this catchpenny pamphlet as lodging with his wife and family in Southwark beside the playhouses; here he is to be seen wrapped in a blanket, writing furiously, while his wife and young daughter cook larks for supper. He is also described as “of the poeticall disposition, never to write so long as his mony lasted.” The real and historical Peele became acquainted with Shakespeare soon after Shakespeare’s arrival in London. Peele had a measure of success with drama, but he was equally well known to his contemporaries as an inventor of street pageants and other public shows. That is why his plays were notable for their ceremonial and ritual aspects, and for the expressive clarity of their language. He also catered to the popular taste in blood and gore, in murder and madness. One of his stage directions records the entry of “Death and three Furies, one with blood, one with Dead mens heads in dishes, another with Dead mens bones.” Shakespeare is widely credited for having taken over the first act of
Titus Andronicus
from Peele and completing the play, while elaborating upon the older writer’s sensationalistic effects. This was the theatrical world that Shakespeare inherited.

Shakespeare was later to parody Peek’s bombast in his history plays, and there may have been some cause for disagreement between the two men. Peele, the son of a London charity school clerk, was proud of his education at Oxford and his status as Master of Arts. Yet it was difficult for even a university-educated dramatist to make his way in the capital; there were too many clerkly writers and too many claimants to noble purses. There is every reason to suppose that young writers were attracted to London because of the rise of the playhouses there, but expectations of plenty are not always rewarded.
So Peele tried his hand at various kinds of verse and drama—translations, university plays, pastorals, patriotic shows, biblical plays and comedies. Like literary young men of any and every period, he had to make money whatever way he could; he could have come out of George Gissing’s
New Grub Street
rather than a sixteenth-century chapbook.