Shakespeare (39 page)

The general movement of Shakespeare’s dramatic verse can be characterised as one from formal regularity to irregularity. Rhymes, for example, become much less common. In his later plays, too, he pitches the natural stress of English speech against the melodious form of the iambic pentameter; he introduces parentheses, exclamations and “run on” lines that continue the cadence past its usual conclusion. He will also complete a sentence in the middle of the line, with a caesura, thus imitating the more irregular and disjunctive passages of thought and expression within his characters. There has been traced a characteristic curve in Shakespeare’s composition, a rhythmic evolution that reflects the unceasing development of the music of his being. As Pasternak observed, “rhythm is the basis of Shakespeare’s texts”;
¹
he composed, and imagined, in cadences; his head was filled with cadences, waiting to be born.

The Rape of Lucrece
can also be seen as a mine of gold for Shakespeare’s later dramas; he becomes fascinated by the idea of the unquiet conscience and by the murder of innocence. The poem may also be the forerunner of murders in the bed, among them those of Duncan and Desdemona. The musings of Tarquin, the rapist, might almost be read as the inner history of Richard III for which there is no space on the stage. It is the procedure of the great writer—Shakespeare knew what interested him, and what preoccupied him, only after he had written it down.

The dedication of
Lucrece
may solve a problem concerning Shakespeare’s financial status at this time. Where did he obtain the £50 that was needed as his premium to become a “sharer” in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men? Much of his income must by now have travelled back to Stratford in order to support a
wife and young family. It may be that the fee was waived on the understanding that he would write a certain number of plays each year; he may have bequeathed to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men the ownership of the plays he had already written. Or he may have been lent or given the money. There is a report by Nicholas Rowe that “my Lord Southampton, at one time, gave him a thousand Pounds, to enable him to go through with a Purchase which he heard he had a mind to.” Rowe had acquired the story from one “who was probably very well acquainted with his Affairs.”
²
Southampton was notably generous, but the sum seems extravagant even by his profligate standards. There is no indication that Shakespeare ever possessed, or invested, so large an amount of money at any one time. In fact “a thousand pounds” is a conventionally hyperbolic expression used by Shakespeare himself; it is the sum Falstaff believes that he will receive after Hal’s coronation. We may conjecture a figure nearer £50 or £100. The young earl may have rewarded the author of
Lucrece
and
Venus and Adonis
with this more modest sum.

There is another intriguing connection between
The Rape of Lucrece
and a noble family. It has been suggested that the poem was conceived and written under the auspices—or at least under the influence—of Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.
³
She was the sister of Sir Philip Sidney, and had in direct tribute cultivated her brother’s own literary ideals within her circle. She completed his poetic rendering of the psalms, and was herself a notable translator. She had also created an informal network of literary patronage, and under her direction three neo-classical tragedies were written or translated from the French. Mary Herbert herself translated one of them. Each of these tragedies concentrated upon the sufferings of noble heroines, among them Cleopatra and Cornelia, and in deference to Mary Herbert takes an almost “feminist” reading of women betrayed by a hostile male world.
The Rape of Lucrece
is very much part of this tradition. It is not otherwise clear why Shakespeare would have chosen such an apparently unpromising subject. Samuel Daniel wrote a poem,
The Complaint of Rosamond
, and dedicated it to the Countess of Pembroke; this poem also expresses the sorrows of a suffering woman. Shakespeare borrowed Daniel’s rhyme-royal stanza for his own narrative. In the same fashion the dramatic eloquence of Shakespeare’s poem also aligns it with the neo-classical tragedies that were part of Mary Herbert’s literary circle. So the connections are there. It should be recalled that Shakespeare was for a period a member of Pembroke’s Men, and it is known that Mary Herbert took a personal interest in the players. One of the actors named her as a trustee in his will. The association lends further significance
to Shakespeare’s early sonnets, which may have been commissioned by Mary Herbert.

The Rape of Lucrece
itself was almost as popular with the reading public as the earlier
Venus and Adonis
. It was reissued in six separate editions during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and in two after his death; in the year of its publication it is mentioned in several poems and eulogies. A university play of the period exclaims: “Who loves not
Adon’s
love, or
Lucrece
rape!” A reference in William Covell’s
Polimanteia
claims “Lucrecia” by “sweet Shakespeare” to be “all-praise-worthy,” and an elegy on Lady Helen Branch of 1594 includes among “our greater poets … you that have writ of chaste Lucretia.”
⁴
“The younger sort take much delight in Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis,” Gabriel Harvey wrote, “but his Lucrece” is considered “to please the wiser sort.”
⁵
In poetical anthologies of the period it was extensively quoted and in
England’s Parnassus
of 1600, for example, no fewer than thirty-nine passages were extracted for the delectation of the readers.

This in turn raises an interesting, if unanswerable, question. Why at the age of thirty did Shakespeare effectively give up his career as a poet and turn back to play-writing? From the extensive comment and praise that he received for his two narrative poems, his future and fame as England’s principal poet would seem to be assured; in one essay on the English tongue, written in 1595, he is placed in the same company as Chaucer and Spenser. But he chose another path. Perhaps he considered that his life with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men offered him financial security, away from the perilous world of private patronage; in this, his judgement proved to be correct. As Jonson wrote in
The Poetaster
, “Name me a profest poet, that his
poetrie
did ever afford so much as a competencie.” Shakespeare wanted more than a “competency.” In any case he loved the work of acting and play-writing at the heart of his own company. Otherwise he would not have chosen to continue it.

Yet the larger reason must reside in the promptings of his own genius; his instinct and judgement informed him that drama was his peculiar skill and particular speciality. Attention must also be paid to the urgency of his literary ambition and inventiveness. He had already excelled at stage comedy, at melodrama and at history. Where else might his genius take him? He knew well enough that he could write poetic narratives with ease and fluency, but the form did not challenge him in the same fundamental way as the newly emerging drama. As Donne said in a private letter, “The Spanish proverb informes me, that he is a fool which cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad
which makes two.”
⁶
He may have found it just too easy, which is perhaps why he carries his poetic effects to excess and why in
Venus and Adonis
he interleaves lyrical pathos with deliberate farce. He was even then beginning a sonnet sequence that would test the medium to breaking point, but it was not enough. He could perhaps have settled for a life as a “gentleman-poet,” like Michael Drayton, but that also was not enough.

S
oon after the formation
of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men Shakespeare and his fellows began a shared run with the Lord Admiral’s Men at the playhouse in Newington Butts. This association with their principal rivals did not last for long; it was a very wet summer and the takings were low. After about ten days the Lord Admiral’s Men decamped to the Rose.

The unique position of the two companies in the Elizabethan theatre of course created competition and rivalry. When the Lord Chamberlain’s Men put on Shakespeare’s plays of
Richard III
and
Henry V
, the Lord Admiral’s Men retaliated with
Richard Crookback
and their own version of
Henry the Fifth
. The Admiral’s Men performed
The Famous Wars of Henry the First
as a crowd-puller to rival Shakespeare’s episodes of
Henry IV
. When that was not successful they tried once more with
The True and Honourable History of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle
, an echo of Falstaff’s original name of Oldcastle. But the traffic was not always in one direction. When the Lord Admiral’s Men staged at least seven plays on biblical subjects, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men replied with
Hester and Ahasuerus
and other similar dramas. The Admiral’s Men performed two plays on the life of Cardinal Wolsey at the Rose, a theme that Shakespeare would later take up in
All Is True;
the Admiral’s Men also played a version of
Troilus and Cressida
at the same theatre, before Shakespeare had written his own variation upon an identical theme. While
one group had
The Merry Wives of Windsor
, the other staged a drama concerning the wives of Abingdon. Heywood’s
A Woman Killed with Kindness
vied at the Rose with
Othello
at the Globe, and they were no doubt viewed in the same light by the audiences who went from one theatre to the other. Two plays on the subject of Robin Hood, written by Munday and Chettle, were proving very popular at the Rose in 1598; Shakespeare retaliated with the sylvan romance
As You Like It
. So there was a constant cross-fertilisation of themes and ideas between the companies, fuelled by fashion and inspired by rivalry. The success of
Hamlet
provoked the Lord Admiral’s Men into reviving another revenge drama,
The Spanish Tragedy
, with special additions written by Ben Jonson. The popularity of Shakespeare’s play in fact unleashed a whole sequence of imitations such as
Hoffman, or A Revenge for a Father
and
The Atheist’s Tragedy, or The Honest Man’s Revenge
. It was not unusual for playgoers to attend the various productions of these theatrical rivals, and compare notes on their respective strengths. Was Burbage superior to Alleyn in such-and-such a role? Was Mr. Shakespeare—he had become “Mr.” on the playbills when he became a “sharer”—as excellent as Kyd?

After appearing at Newington Butts the Lord Chamberlain’s Men toured parts of the country, including Wiltshire and Berkshire, before returning to London for the winter season. On 8 October Lord Hunsdon, their patron, wrote to the Lord Mayor requesting him to allow his servants to play in the City; his new company were already at the Cross Keys in Gracechurch Street, and he wished to prolong their engagement. It is curious that they were not using the Theatre or the Curtain, but it is likely either that the playhouses were in a state of disrepair or that they were not considered suitable venues for the darker winter season. Hunsdon promised that they would begin at two in the afternoon rather than at four, and that they would use no drums or trumpets to advertise their presence. The Lord Mayor and his colleagues gave way to the Lord Chamberlain’s wishes, but this was the last time that any playing company ever used a city inn. The Lord Chamberlain’s Men also performed at court this winter, and played on two occasions before Elizabeth; on 26 and 28 December they attended her at her palace in Greenwich.

The actors did not simply arrive, with their costumes and instruments. They first had to rehearse the plays intended for Her Majesty’s pleasure before the Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney. His suite of apartments and offices was in the former Hospital of St. John in Clerkenwell; by one of those strange coincidences of London life, Clerkenwell had once been the site of the London mystery plays. Since the company performed at the playhouses
during the afternoon, these royal rehearsals must have taken place early in the morning or late at night. The chandler’s bill for the Office of the Revels records large payments for candles, coal and firewood. Tilney would act as censor, removing those lines that might be indelicate or offensive to the royal ear. He also loaned the company more sumptuous costumes if they were needed; at the court, some of their dresses and cloaks might have seemed threadbare. There are references to the actors borrowing “the monarch’s gown,” to save embarrassment before the great original, and “armor for knightly combatants” in case they were ridiculed by the more martial courtiers. The Master of the Revels also lent them “apt houses made of canvas,”“necessaries for hunters” and “a device for thunder and lightning.”
¹

When all was settled they took a boat downriver from one of the London wharves or “stairs,” with an attendant barge for their costumes and devices. The great hall at Greenwich had been cleared for the performance; the stage was at one end, decked out with perspective scenery devised by the Office of the Revels, and the royal dais was at the other. The hall, on this later winter afternoon and evening, was illuminated by candles and torches. The musicians were placed on the wooden balcony above the stage, and the actors could use the passage behind the screen as their “tiring-room.” The audience, invited at royal discretion, assembled in their formal robes before the arrival of the queen herself. It was the most fashionable entertainment of the year, and it would have been natural for Shakespeare and his fellows to experience a little nervousness. The names of the plays they performed on this occasion are not recorded, but it has been suggested that the queen witnessed
Love’s Labour’s Lost
as well as
Romeo and Juliet
. What better fillip for an ageing queen than tales of young lovers?