Shakespeare: A Life (51 page)

obligatory, although his supposed flattery of King James is a delicate
and somewhat controversial topic. It is complicated, from time to
time, perhaps, by a tendency on Shakespeare's part to find himself in
general accord with the views of a Stuart sovereign. That must be set
against his clear, matter-of-fact view of his own and his troupe's low
status even as royal servants. Unlike Jonson, he kept at a distance
from the Stuart court at which he and the actors performed.

Yet the King's men were encouraged. They were optimistic: they took
on new shareholders either in June, or, anyway, before the end of the
year. But they had no assurance that they could meet rising costs, or
maintain their holdings including the Globe in plague-time. In 1603
Bryan had left, and Pope was dying. Kempe had been replaced by the
clown Robert Armin, a former goldsmith's apprentice recruited from
Lord Chandos's men in Gloucestershire. One of the new sharers was
Burbage's protégé, Nicholas Tooley; and another was Alexander Cooke,
who must have been Heminges' apprentice. A third was Lawrence
Fletcher, who had led a troupe in Scotland in 1595, 1599, and 1601,
won King James's favour as a 'comediane to his Majestie', and been
granted the freedom of Aberdeen.
⁸
Though unnamed in the Folio list of actors in Shakespeare's plays,
Fletcher was recalled in Augustine Phillips's will in 1605.

The last of the new sharers, John Lowin, was recruited from
Worcester's troupe -- but probably at first as a hireling who looked
forward to early promotion. As a mainstay of the King's men until the
outbreak of the Civil War, he resided at St Saviour's parish in South-

wark, often 'near the playhouse', and carried memories of Shakespeare
down to the closing of the theatres in 1642. From about 1604

or 1605 on, the troupe were usually to have twelve or thirteen shareholders.
⁹

King James was crowned before a limited assembly at Westminster Abbey
on his saint's day, 25 July, but his grand public entry into the city
had to wait for nearly a year because of plague. To avoid what was a
severe epidemic the court went on a progress in Surrey to Pyrford,
where the poet John Donne -- in disgrace over an impolitic marriage --
was then languishing; and continued into Hampshire, Berkshire, and
Oxfordshire with death nearly at their heels. Close to

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Oxford at Woodstock, they received word that Oxford's colleges were closing. Plague was 'daily acquiring greater strength'.
¹⁰
But after a voyage to the Isle of Wight, James at last reached
Wiltshire for a prolonged stay at Wilton House with the young Earl of
Pembroke.

Shakespeare's troupe, not
in obvious despair, had already taken to the road, though touring was
disliked -- and between 1597 and 1603 there was really less of it for
actors than at any other time in his life. After about 1605 as a rule,
younger men were delegated for touring. In this plague-ridden year
wagons of the King's actors rolled north to Coventry and west to
Shrewsbury. They also reached Bath, but 3,000 people died in this year
at nearby Bristol, and the plague touched towns such as Norwich,
Northampton, and Chester. By October the actors had prudently
retreated to a small western suburb of London.

This was Mortlake -- just beyond Fulham and near Fichmond Castle.
Augustine Phillips had bought a house at Mortlake near the river, at
some point before 1604, and here the troupe appear to have waited for
the sickness to lift. Nevertheless late in the autumn they received an
order to go from Mortlake to Wilton to meet with their royal patron,
and John Heminges later received £30 'for the paynes and expences of
himself and the rest of the company in comming from Mortelake in the
countie of Surrie unto the courte aforesaid and there p'senting before
his majestie one playe'.
¹¹
Wilton House was the country seat of the Earls of Pembroke. James had
just elevated young Pembroke as a Knight of the Garter. The earl's
mother was Sir Philip Sidney's sister, and the house often attracted
poets and inspired legends. As late as mid-Victorian times, in August
1865, William Cory, an Eton College master staying over as Greek
tutor, jotted an odd report he had just heard from the then Lady
Herbert. 'The house is full of interest', Lady Herbert had told Cory,
and added, to his surprise: 'above us is Wolsey 's room; we have a
letter, never printed, from Lady Pembroke to her son, telling him to
bring James I from Salisbury to see
As You Like It;
"we have the man Shakespeare with us". She wanted to cajole the King in Raleigh's behalf -- he came.'
¹²

An attractive story. Cardinal Wolsey died in 1530, so he could not
have stayed in a house built after 1544, when the first Earl of Pembroke
was granted the abbey and estate of Wilton. Lady Herbert, it may be,

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called a chamber ' Wolsey 's room' because it had a picture of the
Cardinal on the wall, but she suffered incurably from ' Shakespeare
fantasies'; and a letter about Shakespeare being 'with us' has never
been found. In 1996 though, Peter Davison discovered something valid
enough in that the Wilton burgesses paid out the sum of £65
s. od.,
in 'giftes and fees unto the kinges servantes', in 1603
¹³
(a fair if not a munificent sum for royal actors). If that refers to
the King's men, they possibly acted for the local burgesses, but their
chief duty was to the King. At Wilton House they put on at least one
play, not necessarily
As You Like It.
Also, they learned that
they would be needed for the holidays at Hampton Court, and that they
might have to offer help, this winter or later, with the amateur court
masques beloved by Queen Anna.

After performing for James, Shakespeare's men had no more status at
court than low-paid lackeys. Though one acted a king, when a play
ended one became subservient or invisible. So it had been in the 1590s,
and this amusing metamorphosis, from consequence to nothingness, he
had, in effect, pictured in Sly of the
Shrew,
or in Bottom of the
Dream.
But since they were welcome for their skills, his actors were invited
back to court for an unprecedented eight shows in this winter, and
for eleven in the next; Queen Elizabeth had been less solicitous. In
the ten years up to 1613, they were to give at least 138 royal
performances. These had more than a tangible monetary value for a
Stratford poet who, with his fellows, studied the royal court. And
their prestige as the King's Servants did them no harm at the Globe,
which offered a source of income that only the terror of plague, or
fire, flood, censors, the Stuart King, or diabolic luck were likely to
stop.

The relief of Londoners in having crowned a new monarch without
bloodshed and a sense of the artful ingenuity that he and Anna might
inspire were evident in 1604. With a ruler priding himself on good
sense, the changeover was hopeful -- at least until faults emerged, in
his extravagance, absenteeism, and his somewhat impatient ways. Yet

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in the first ten years of his reign, works of high art, intelligence,
and spiritual strength came into being, and in the Queen's court a
fresh atmosphere, a promise, a large-mindedness indirectly affected
the theatres -- and Shakespeare's own audacity.

For the 'royal entry' into London the playwright and eight of his
fellows were each given four and a half yards of cheap red cloth for
gowns, since the troupe was a royal organization; from the Crown that
was a routine gift. Troupes did not parade in the streets on 15 March,
so, it seems, Shakespeare did not march, but, whether or not he wore a
scarlet gown of low-grade fabric, he would have been keen to see how
royalty was perceived. He was obliged to study his rivals and the
public's taste. In this period, there were several kinds of pageantry
-- including outdoor shows for the sovereign on tours or progresses,
the annual Lord Mayor's Show at that officer's inauguration on 29
October, and scenes enacted
en route
during a sovereign's entry into the City.
¹⁴
Londoners had not witnessed a great royal entry, with enacted scenes, since Elizabeth's coronation in 1559.

For James's grandiose event, Stephen Harrison had designed tall forms
of wood and plaster, the largest of which was ninety feet high and
fifty feet wide. With pillars, domes, obelisks, and pyramids, the
triumphal arches were overlaid with symbolic ornaments, and had
painted cartouches, grotesque caryatids, and flat perches aloft for
living actors, as though the city were a public playhouse.

Having slept overnight at the Tower, the King, who disliked crowds,
set out in the packed, clamorous ways on 15 March. First along the
route was Fenchurch's arch, in the charge of Ben Jonson. At James's
approach, a curtain drew back, and a figure clothed as the Genius of
the City began a dialogue with the God of the Thames, who poured live
fishes out of a pot. Other figures, coming to life, twitched overhead.
Supported by Sage Counsel and Warlike Force, the Genius appeared with
his daughters -- Gladness, Veneration, Promptitude, Vigilance,
Affection, and Unanimity. Holding a squirrel and a censer, to suggest
nimbleness and the 'perfume of prompt action', Promptitude, for example,
'was attired in a short tuck't garment of flamecolour, wings at her
back, her hair bright, and bound up with ribands; her breast open,
virago-like'.
¹⁵
While the King fidgeted, the Genius

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told of the nation's ancient Trojans, and brought the story down to their true inheritors, the Stuarts.

The King next moved on to the modest arches of the city's Italian and
Dutch communities, then to Thomas Dekker's spectacular 'Nova Arabia
Felix' arch at Cheapside. Here King James found himself imaged as a
beaming, well-feathered Phoenix, who had given to 'a new Arabia, a new
spring'. Music sounded, and two choristers from St Paul's sang in
'ravishing voices'. But, it seems, after a ninety-foothigh New World
Arch with a giant globe, royal patience had worn thin. Beyond an arch
at Temple Bar, he was stopped by a tailpiece, thrown up at the last
moment, in which a rainbow, the sun, moon, and the Pleiades soared
between two seventy-foot obelisks, and a human comet, Electra, hailed
him as the new Augustus of the British Isles.

Despite inaudible actors and the King's glassy-eyed disgust, the day
was hardly a failure. The royal 'entry' into London advertised the
skills of writers, actors, and iconographers, and if the courtly
pageantry was recondite, it was also profuse, non-literal, and
imaginative in trying to picture the truths that lie behind kingship
and the ordering of society.

And that
boded fairly well for new masques and stage plays. Anna, who was
impressed, took on John Florio the translator, and Samuel Daniel the
poet, as Grooms of her Privy Chamber, besides employing Jonson and
Inigo Jones. Bizarre as it was, the iconography had set a high
standard in public entertainment, challenging and appealing to the
mind, offering erudition, beauty, and elaborate detail. The gentry, in
effect, were being prepared for intelligent, richly allusive dramas,
even for the range and grandeur of
King Lear or Antony and Cleopatra.
Anna's court became a hothouse of talent, as it drew in men and women
from varied social ranks and backgrounds. Her entourage abetted
follies, but art and intelligence are not unknown to thrive on gaiety
of spirit and some tolerance. The royal consort was Catholic and her
husband a Protestant, but James called the Roman Church 'our mother
church', and claimed to revere works by St Bernardof Clairvaux and St
Augustine. At least at first, he encouraged a climate which favoured
poets and Anglican divines in casting a light on the whole spiritual
history of Britain. He was to respond harshly to Catholics. He treated
his Church's Puritan wing rudely, but he set in

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motion this year at his Hampton conference the translators who were
to produce the King James Version of the Bible. Now and then, he
laughed at an entertainment. Perhaps he really approved
The Merchant of Venice
, staged one Shrove Sunday and again, for Prince Henry, on Shrove Tuesday, "by the 'K.'s Command'.
¹⁶
Anna's appetite was hardly sated by that: 'Burbage is come and says
there is no new play the Queen has not seen, but they have revived an
old one called
Love's Labour Lost
,
which for wit and
mirth he says will please her exceedingly', Sir Walter Cope told Lord
Cecil. 'And this is to be played tomorrow night at my Lord of
Southampton's, unless you send a writ to remove. . . . Burbage is my
messenger ready attending your pleasure.'
¹⁷
That must have been Cuthbert Burbage, Richard's brother, who had been
in Sir Walter's service, and the letter suggests Anna sees more plays
than her husband.

Among new works the King's players acted at court were
Measure for Measure
and
All's Well That Ends Well
.
Both were generally ill accord with James's views in showing potent,
natural urges of sexual love, waywardness in men, and illusions of
redemption. Both evoke spiritual grace.
Measure for Measure
by one 'Shaxberd' was acted in Whitehall's banqueting hall oil St Stephen's night, 26 December 1604.
¹⁸

Its composition date is unknown, but this play alludes to events of
1603. Written in -- or close to -- its author's fortieth year, it may
well be an early product of his troupe's reorganization and expansion
when Tooley and Cooke were promoted to the sharers' group, if
Shakespeare renegotiated his own arrangements. Either under a contract
or by an 'understanding' he had written about two new plays a year,
but in the Jacobean era that rate was to be halved: on average he
offered one new play a year for the rest of his working life. Stage
closures during outbreaks of plague, his actors' needs, or his own
convenience would have influenced his rate; also, it cannot be shown
that in one year he worked on only one play. He could have begun a
complex project such as
King Lear,
put that aside for
Macbeth,
and finished both playbooks at nearly the same time; but to speak of a
tendency, he was soon writing less. His handwriting had deteriorated
(to compare the writing in
Thomas More's
early 'Hand D' with Othello's textual

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