31 The journey to London. IV ON THE LONDON STAGE To London Shakespeare naturally drifted, doubtless trudging thither on foot during 1586, by way of Oxford and High Wycombe.1 Tradition points to that as Shakespeare's favoured route, rather than to the road by Banbury and Aylesbury. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon near Oxford, 'he happened to take the humour of the constable in "Midsummer Night's Dream"-by which he meant, we may suppose, 'Much Ado about Nothing'-but there were watchmen of the Dogberry type all over England, and probably at Stratford itself. The Crown Inn (formerly 3 Cornmarket Street) near Carfax, at Oxford, was long pointed out as one of his resting-places. To only one resident in London is Shakespeare likely to have been known previously.2 Richard Cf. Hales, Notes on Shakespeare, 1884, pp. 1-24. erroneous. 2 The common assumption that Richard Burbage, the chief actor with whom Shakespeare was associated, was a native of Stratford is wholly Richard was born in Shoreditch, and his father came from Hertfordshire. John Heming, another of Shakespeare's actor-friends who has also been claimed as a native of Stratford, was beyond reason. able doubt born at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Thomas Greene, a Richard Field, a native of Stratford, and son of a friend of Shakespeare's father, had left Stratford in 1579 serve an apprenticeship with Thomas Vautrollier, the London printer. Shaketownsman. speare and Field, who was made free of the Stationers' Company in 1587, were soon associated as author and publisher; but the theory that Field found work for Shakespeare in Vautrollier's printing-office is fanciful. No more can be said for the attempt to prove that he obtained employment as a lawyer's clerk. In view of his general quickness of apprehension, Shakespeare's accurate use of legal terms, which deserves all the attention that has been paid it, may be attributable in part to his observation of the many legal processes in which his father was involved, and in part to early intercourse with members of the Inns of Court.2 Tradition and common-sense alike point to one of the only two theatres (The Theatre or The Curtain) that existed in London at the date of his Theatrical employ ment. arrival as an early scene of his regular occupation. The compiler of 'Lives of the Poets' (1753) was the first to relate the story that popular comic actor at the Red Bull Theatre early in the seventeenth century, is conjectured to have belonged to Stratford on no grounds that deserve attention; Shakespeare was in no way associated with him. 1 Blades, Shakspere and Typography, 1872. 2 Cf. Lord Campbell, Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements, 1859. Legal terminology abounded in all plays and poems of the period, e.g. Barnabe Barnes's Sonnets, 1593, and Zepheria, 1594 (see Appendix IX.) * Commonly assigned to Theophilus Cibber, but written by Robert Shiels and other hack-writers under Cibber's editorship. his original connection with the playhouse was as holder of the horses of visitors outside the doors. According to the same compiler, the story was related by D'Avenant to Betterton; but Rowe, to whom Betterton communicated it, made no use of it. The two regular theatres of the time were both reached on horseback by men of fashion, and the owner of The Theatre, James Burbage, kept a livery stable at Smithfield. There is no inherent improbability in the tale. Dr. Johnson's amplified version, in which Shakespeare was represented as organising a service of boys for the purpose of tending visitors' horses, sounds apocryphal. There is every indication that Shakespeare was speedily offered employment inside the playhouse. In 1587 the two chief companies of actors, claiming respectively the nominal patronage of the Queen and Lord Leicester, returned to London from a provincial tour, during which they visited Stratford. Two subordinate companies, one of which claimed the patronage of the Earl of Essex and the other that of Lord Stafford, also performed in the town during the same year. Shakespeare's friends may have called the attention of the strolling players to the homeless lad, rumours of whose search for employment about the London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford. A playhouse servitor. From such incidents seems to have sprung the opportunity which offered Shakespeare fame and fortune. According to Rowe's vague statement, 'he was received into the company then in being at first in a very mean rank.' D William Castle, the parish clerk of Stratford at the end of the seventeenth century, was in the habit of telling visitors that he entered the playhouse as a servitor. Malone recorded in 1780 a stage tradition 'that his first office in the theatre was that of prompter's attendant' or call-boy. His intellectual capacity and the amiability with which he turned to account his versatile powers were probably soon recognised, and thenceforth his promotion was assured. Shakespeare's earliest reputation was made as an actor, and, although his work as a dramatist soon The acting eclipsed his histrionic fame, he remained a companies. prominent member of the actor's profession till near the end of his life. By an Act of Parliament of 1571 (14 Eliz. cap. 2), which was re-enacted in 1596 (39 Eliz. cap. 4), players were under the necessity of procuring a license to pursue their calling from a peer of the realm or 'personage of higher degree;' otherwise they were adjudged to be of the status of rogues and vagabonds. The Queen herself and many Elizabethan peers were liberal in the exercise of their licensing powers, and few actors failed to secure a statutory license, which gave them a rank of respectability, and relieved them of all risk of identification with vagrants or 'sturdy beggars.' From an early period in Elizabeth's reign licensed actors were organised into permanent companies. In 1587 and following years, besides three companies of duly licensed boy-actors that were formed from the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Chape` Royal and from Westminster scholars, there were in London at least six companies of fully licensed adult actors; five of these were called after the noblemen to whom their members respectively owed their licenses (viz. the Earls of Leicester, Oxford, Sussex, and Worcester, and the Lord Admiral, Charles, lord Howard of Effingham), and one of them whose actors derived their license from the Queen was called the Queen's Company. The patron's functions in relation to the companies seem to have been mainly confined to the grant or renewal of the actors' licenses. Constant alterations of name, owing to the death or change from other causes of the patrons, render it difficult to trace with certainty each company's history. But there seems no doubt that the most influential of the companies named-that under the nominal patronage of the Earl of Leicester-passed on his death in September 1588 to the patronage of Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange, who became Earl of Derby on September 25, 1592. When the Earl of Derby died on April 16, 1594, his place as patron and licenser was successively filled by Henry Carey, first lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain (d. July 23, Chamber- 1596), and by his son and heir, George company. Carey, second lord Hunsdon, who himself became Lord Chamberlain in March 1597. After King James's succession in May 1603 the company was promoted to be the King's players, and, thus advanced in dignity, it fully maintained the supremacy The Lord lain's D 2 |