Shakespeare

When Kempe left the Lord Chamberlain’s Men he performed a “wonder” by dancing all the way from London to Norwich, and described himself in a pamphlet as “Caualiero Kempe, head-master of Morrice-dauncers, high Head-borough of heighs, and onely tricker of your Trill-lilles and best bel-shangles betweene Sion and mount Surrey”²-a sentence suggesting that some elements of English humour have been lost for ever. If he had indeed left after a disagreement with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men it gives added resonance to his address to “My notable Shakerags” in the same pamphlet, by which name he subsumes all of his enemies or “witles beetles-heads” and “block-headships” who had been spreading rumours and slanders about him. In the same place he refers to “a penny Poet whose first making was the miserable stolne story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat: for I am sure a Mac it was.” It is generally assumed that he is not referring to Shakespeare’s Macbeth but, rather, to a ballad on the same subject. Nevertheless it is an interesting allusion.

In the company of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men there were some sixteen actors, including five or six boys who played the female parts. Although there was no guild of actors in sixteenth-century London these boys served an unofficial “apprenticeship”; their training was not fixed at the seven years required in other trades, and its length seems to have varied from three years to twelve years. The boys had a “master” in one of the older actors, with whom they lodged and by whom they were instructed. One contract reveals that the boy, or in fact the boy’s parents, paid a specified sum of £8 so that he could be taken into service; the master then promised to pay his charge 4 pence a day and to teach him “in playinge of interludes and plaies.” The ambition of these stripling players was to rise into the profession by degrees, and if possible become an integral part of the company with whom they were trained. As the wills and estates of Shakespeare’s fellow actors prove, it was about to become a very lucrative employment indeed. The boys were generally treated as part of the master actor’s family, and were often held in great affection by their theatrical parents. Edward Alleyn’s wife wrote to her husband, when he was on tour, asking if “Nicke and Jeames be well amp; commend them.” Shakespeare could not have had an apprentice because, unlike some of his colleagues, he belonged to no guild.

It is generally believed that only boys played the female roles on the Elizabethan stage, but there is some cause to doubt that assumption. Young adult males possibly took on the mature role of Cleopatra, for example, where the resources of even the most skilful boy might prove ineffectual. That there were very accomplished child actors is not in doubt. In Shakespeare’s company we know that there was a tall fair one and a short dark-haired one, simply because there are references in the texts to that effect. There is a remarkable sequence of comedies in which two girls vie for theatrical attention – Helena and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Portia and Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It, Olivia and Viola in Twelfth Night. It seems likely that the same gifted pair of boys played all of these parts, providing further evidence of the extent to which Shakespeare’s art was defined by the potential of his company.

There are other influences. The members of the company may have suggested to Shakespeare stories that were suitable for dramatisation; they may have lent him books and the texts of old plays. In rehearsal, too, there would undoubtedly have been suggestions from the actors on the revision of a scene or dialogue. His was not a case of single-handed or single-minded invention. There can be no doubt at all that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men helped to create Shakespeare as an “author”.