Shakespeare (35 page)

In Thomas Mann’s novel
Doctor Faustus
, the composer Adrian Lev-erkuhn conceives this play, in musical terms, as “a revival of
opéra bouffe
in a spirit of the most artificial mockery and parody of the artificial; something highly playful and highly precious.” The narrator of the novel describes it as “Leverkuhn’s exuberant youthful composition,”
⁴
like the play itself. Yet
Love’s Labour’s Lost
is almost
opéra bouffe
already. With its extravagance and lasciviousness, its rush of inventiveness, its prolificity, its ornamentation and decoration, its rapid changes of verse-scheme, its general testing of sixteenth-century English to the very bounds and limits of its capacity, it is one of the cleverest plays ever written. As one of the French courtiers admits of female wit (2010-11):

Shakespeare wrote some sonnets for the play itself, and these were later incorporated within an anthology,
The Passionate Pilgrim
, which included two of Shakespeare’s “real” sonnets. The “dark lady” of those sonnets seems to have some connection with one of the Princess’s entourage, Rosaline, who is described as being “as blacke as Ebonie”(1487). The connections are there. Whether they are real, or fanciful, is another matter.

Any interpretation is made more complicated by the evident fact that, after its first performances in 1593, Shakespeare revised the play before its presentation at the court of Elizabeth five years later. Many references would have been deleted or changed, and much additional material included. When the text of the play performed before the queen was published, it declared itself to be “Newly corrected and augmented
By W Shakespere”.
The printer did not always mark Shakespeare’s changes, however. It seems that the dramatist added material in the margins of his papers, or inserted additional sheets, while only lightly marking the passages to be deleted. So it is that, in the quarto text, two alternative versions of speeches may be printed one after the other.

The puzzle of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
is rendered more puzzling by references to a sequel entitled
Love’s Labour’s Won
. It is part of an inventory of Shakespeare’s plays compiled by a contemporary in 1598, and a bookseller’s catalogue of 1603 proves that it was printed and sold. But it has entirely disappeared.
There have been attempts to identify it with
The Taming of the Shrew
and with
As You Like It
, but the difference in title remains a clear obstacle. We must simply assume that it is a “lost” play by Shakespeare, to be placed with another “lost” play entitled
Cardenio
.

Shakespeare was at ease with his courtly audience, and with the composition of the gentle comedy of
Love’s Labour’s Lost
he played the role of a privileged servant. He knew the formalities and informalities of court life, just as he knew the exact tone with which noblemen addressed each other. He was at home with the learning of the period, and with the most important scholars and literary men around him. He was, in other words, part of one of the inner circles of Elizabethan society. There are also allusions in
Love’s Labour’s Lost
to the military campaigns of the Earl of Essex—to the extent that one biographer has suggested that the play is in part a tribute to him
⁵
—and of course Southampton himself was a close ally of Essex in the world of court intrigue. If Shakespeare was not part of “Essex’s affinity,” to use the formal word for the noble earl’s friends and associates, he was well acquainted with those who were. We may note in a similar spirit of kinship that if Shakespeare was not himself a recusant, he was in close association with fervent adherents to the old faith. Within this cluster of interests—Essex, Southampton, Strange, Roman Catholicism—his own affinities lay.

The
Nine Daies Wonder
of William Kempe, whose dance routines were as famous as his clowning and acting. He morris-danced all the way from London to Norwich.

S
hakespeare did not stay
within Southampton’s immediate circle. With the disintegration of Pembroke’s Men in the late summer of 1593, and perhaps after a short period as Southampton’s secretary at the time of the plague, he joined another theatrical company. The sequence of attributions in the playbooks of his drama suggests very strongly that he served briefly with the Earl of Sussex’s Men until the formation of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men in the following year. If he had in fact joined Sussex’s Men soon after leaving Pembroke’s, then he is likely to have toured with them in the autumn and winter of 1593. They were at York in late August, moving on to Newcastle and to Winchester. At the beginning of 1594 they had returned to London, where the theatres had been permitted to reopen for the Christmas season. They performed Shakespeare’s
Titus Andronicus
on three occasions at the Rose before the theatres were again closed down as a result of the plague. In his diary Henslowe registered it as “ne,” but the significance of this is unclear. It cannot mean “new,” as is sometimes supposed, since one play is twice given the same notation. It may mean that the play has been newly licensed by the Master of Revels, the censor of the period, or it may mean that it was new to a particular company’s repertory. Other theatrical historians have supposed that it is an abbreviation for Newington Butts. The most likely meaning, in the context of
Titus Andronicus
, is that it
was newly revised from an original play entitled by Henslowe
tittus & vespacia
and performed by Lord Strange’s Men three years before.

On the last day of performance, 6 February,
Titus Andronicus
was entered on the Stationers’ Register for publication. Shakespeare had brought it with him from Strange’s Men to Pembroke’s Men, and then from Pembroke’s Men to Sussex’s Men; on his joining the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in the summer of 1594, the new company performed his play once more. If we follow the successive productions of the play, we are also following Shakespeare’s own trajectory. The publication of
Titus Andronicus
immediately after the theatres were closed down suggests that Shakespeare saw a chance to make some profit out of a successful venture; the publisher or stationer, John Danter, by chance Nashe’s friend and landlord, also issued a ballad on the same subject as a way of gaining some additional pennies.

In the Easter season of 1594, the theatres were again opened for a short period. For eight evenings Sussex’s Men joined with the Queen’s Men to perform at the Rose, their combined forces perhaps signalling the hard times of the previous months, and in the first week of April
King Leir
was performed on two occasions. This was the play in which Shakespeare acted and which at a later date he transformed utterly.

He changed his address in this period, and in the available records he is found to be living in Bishopsgate rather than in Shoreditch. The two neighbourhoods are in fact only a short distance apart—no more than five minutes’ walk—but Bishopsgate was a more salubrious area, with less taint of the brothel and the low tavern. He was part of the parish of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, just by the wall in the north of the city, and close to the church that was reputed to have been founded by the Emperor Constantine. This was the church where he was obliged to worship, and where he would surrender a metal token at the communion table as a sign of his presence. In the assessment roll of the parish he is listed nineteenth, and the relatively small valuation of 13
s
4
d
reflects the value of his furniture and his books. He lodged in a set of chambers within one of the tenements here.

It was a residential area favoured by the richer merchants, among whose number could be counted Sir John Crosby and Sir Thomas Gresham. Crosby Place was in the parish, a late fifteenth-century mansion in which Richard III had lodged when he was Lord Protector; Shakespeare knew it well, and set part of
The Tragedy of King Richard III
there. It had also been owned by Sir
Thomas More and, at the time of Shakespeare’s residence, it was inhabited by the Lord Mayor. The parish was also a harbour for several families of French or Flemish origin, and in fact there was a slightly less agreeable area known as “Petty France.” At a later date he would lodge with a Huguenot family in Silver Street; he preferred the company of what were termed “strangers” in the course of his restless London life. Another neighbour was Thomas Morley, the madrigalist and gentleman of the Chapel Royal; since Morley wrote the music for two or three of Shakespeare’s songs, at some stage they became acquainted. As an actor Shakespeare would also have been trained as a singer, and in his plays he displays a technical knowledge of musical terms. Is it too much to speculate that he and Morley joined in the universal Elizabethan pastime of music-making?

John Stow, the sixteenth-century London topographer, described the parish as containing “divers fair and large built houses for merchants and such like … many fair tenements, divers fair inns, large for receipt of travellers, and some houses for men of worship.” There was a new water conduit in the neighbourhood which, in the sanitary conditions of the period, was of great local benefit. So Bishopsgate had certain advantages over Shoreditch. The large inns here—among them the Bull, the Green Dragon and the Wrestlers—were well known for their commodious quarters. One of them, the Bull, had its own public stage where the Queen’s Men used to perform.

If Shakespeare was not quite yet a “man of worship,” in Stow’s sense, he was travelling ineluctably in that direction. His move to Bishopsgate may in fact have coincided with his admission into the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, in which he also progressed from “hired man” to “sharer.” The company was established in the spring of 1594 by Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, who wanted to bring order into the general confusion of the London playing companies. The connection of the companies and the court should never be forgotten, since the principal purpose of the players was theoretically to provide entertainment for Her Majesty. The quality and continuity of that entertainment were now in jeopardy. The plague and the subsequent closure of the theatres had affected all of the companies. Some of them, like the Queen’s Men, had divided. In April Lord Strange had died, under mysterious circumstances, and Lord Strange’s Men came under the less certain patronage of his widow. So it became the Lord Chamberlain’s business to provide a durable and reliable source for the queen’s entertainment.

And so Hunsdon advanced an ambitious scheme. He established a duopoly in the city. He would patronise a new company to be called the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men while his son-in-law, Charles Howard, the Lord High Admiral, would patronise and support a group of players to be known as the Lord Admiral’s Men. The Lord Admiral’s Men would be led by Edward Alleyn, and would perform at the Rose in Southwark owned by Philip Henslowe; the Lord Chamberlain’s Men would be led by Richard Burbage, and would perform at James Burbage’s theatres at Shoreditch. One troupe would command the south of the river, in other words, and the other would dominate the northern suburbs. As a concession to the civic authorities, who were not happy to see playhouses formally established in the suburbs, Huns-don agreed that no inns would be employed for the staging of the drama. It was a very neat arrangement that, in its pristine form, did not last for very long.

Hunsdon acquired the players for his new venture by poaching the best actors from a variety of companies—among them Lord Strange’s Men, the Queen’s Men and Sussex’s Men. From Sussex’s Men, he took William Shakespeare. Several of the players in Sussex’s Men went over to the Lord Chamberlain’s with Shakespeare; among them we find John Sincler and Richard Burbage himself. There seems to have been one other division of the spoils. When the Lord Admiral’s Men took Alleyn they were also granted the bulk of Marlowe’s dramas. When Shakespeare joined the Lord Chamberlain’s, he brought with him all of his plays. This was their great advantage. From this time forward the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were the sole producers of Shakespeare’s drama. In the whole course of his career only they ever performed his plays. Soon after their union, in fact, they were performing
Titus Andronicus, The Taming of a Shrew
and a play called
Hamlet
. At the time of their formation they may also have inherited plays from other companies. They may have given these plays, such as
Hamlet
and
King Leir
, to their resident playwright for the purposes of reshaping and rewriting for the new cast of players. It is also likely that, in these circumstances, Shakespeare would feel moved to rewrite his own earlier plays for the new company. It was, after all, a fresh start. The company was an innovation. It deserved new-minted texts. It has been estimated that 90 per cent of their plays have not survived the trials of time and usage; certainly almost half of their extant texts are by Shakespeare himself, which at least testifies to his endurance and popularity. They were saved and reissued; the others were simply discarded and forgotten.