Shakespeare

Yet the most versatile comic actor in the company was undoubtedly William Kempe. The most famous clown in the country, he was small and stout, especially with padding or “bombasting,” but quick and nimble on his feet. He was well known, in particular, for his gigs and his morris-dancing. There are many references and allusions to his dances. When not dressing up as a female street-seller he wore the costume of a country clown; he had shaggy and unruly hair; his humour was farcical and often obscene; he had a great gift for extempore repartee, or “gagging,” with the audience. He could “make a scurvy face” and “draw his mouth awry,”¹ indicating that comic routines have not necessarily changed very much over the centuries. The humour of the Elizabethan stage, and indeed the humour of the medieval mysteries and interludes, survives still in farce and in pantomime. It is one of the unchanging features of the English imagination.

Kempe would often perform his own “routines” during the course of the play, and thus temporarily bring the action to a halt. Hamlet complains of the habit in his directions to the players, when he instructs them to “let those that play your clownes speake no more then is set downe for them, for there be of them that wil themselues laugh, to set on some quantitie of barraine spectators to laugh to”(1767-9). This was a direct hit against Kempe, who had just left the Lord Chamberlain’s Men after some disagreement with his fellows. The quarrel may have been over just such a matter of comic performance. It is possible that in an earlier version of Hamlet Kempe “gagged” too often in his role as the clown and gravedigger; there would be a certain poetical justice in reprimanding him in a later version of the same play.

At an earlier date, however, other playwrights welcomed his dances and improvisations. It saved them the labour of invention. There are even indications that they would mark Kempe’s entry in the playbooks, and then leave the rest to him. In one version of Hamlet (in this play, as in so many others, there is evidence of continual revision) Shakespeare even quotes some of Kempe’s catchphrases-” cannot you stay till I eat my porridge?” as well as “My coat wants a cullisen [scutcheon]” and “Your beer is sour,” the last line no doubt delivered with the mouth famously “awry.” There is no doubt, too, that when they first worked together Shakespeare fashioned parts specifically for Kempe. In a similar spirit of professionalism Mozart wrote operatic roles for specific singers, and often would not write an aria until he had heard the voice of the singer who would take the part. So when Grumio saws cheese with a dagger, or when Cade dances a morris or laps up drink from the earth, Shakespeare had Kempe’s drolleries very much in mind. Kempe played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. He played Falstaff in the two parts of Henry IV. In the second play there is a stage direction, “Enter Will,” a few lines before Falstaff begins singing a ballad “When Arthur first in court …” So Kempe was cued to enter, no doubt to the delight of the audience, a minute or two before breaking into song. At the end of the play Kempe appeared upon the stage, still dressed as Falstaff, and asks the audience: “If my tongue cannot intreate you to acquite mee, will you commaund me to vse my legges?” This is the cue for a jig, in which the rest of the players are likely to have joined. Shakespeare would have danced with him, too, and in that “merry moment”-to use an Elizabethan expression – we gain an authentic glimpse of the Elizabethan theatre.

In this same epilogue Shakespeare promises a further episode in the story “with Sir Iohn in it.” But in the succeeding play, Henry V, Falstaff mysteriously disappears and his death off-stage is merely described. There have been many critical and artistic interpretations for this absence, but the true reason may be more prosaic. In the interval between Henry IV, Part Two and Henry V, Will Kempe had left the company. Without the star comic player, there was no point in bringing back Falstaff. There was no one to play him. It is best to remember that the plays of Shakespeare are dependent upon theatrical circumstance. It may go against the current grain of interpretation to see Falstaff as a wholly comic character, complete with dances and extemporal quips; but, again, it is part of the more strident nature of the Elizabethan theatre. Falstaff’s wooden stick, red face and great belly would have immediately reminded the audience of the stock figure of the clown; anachronistically, Falstaff has more than a trace of Punch about him. But the clown was also a theatrical version of the Lord of Misrule, and what better description could there be of Falstaff himself?