Shakespeare

From the evidence of the manuscript of Sir Thomas More Shakespeare wrote at extreme speed and intensity; he seems to have been able to summon up the energy and the inspiration at will, with the words and cadences emerging from some deep well of his being. He left some lines unfinished in the rapidity and restlessness of creation. In Timon of Athens the protagonist is described as begging “so many” talents; Shakespeare clearly meant to add an exact figure at a later stage. But he simply had to get on. He hardly ever punctuated, preferring to rely instead upon the roll and rush of creation. In some instances he seems to have left spaces between his words, where punctuation marks could be inserted after the fit had passed. He did not mark act or scene divisions. Ludwig Wittgenstein gained the impression that his verses were “dashed off by someone who could permit himself anything, so to speak.”¹ Samuel Johnson remarked that the endings of his plays were sometimes written with undue haste, as if the exigencies of the moment forced him to hurry.

It seems likely that he wrote on loose sheets of paper, and he may have embarked upon separate scenes as his inclination took him. He might, for example, have completed the first episodes and the last episodes before turning his attention to the intervening scenes. There is a report by Ben Jonson, in his notebooks, of a contemporary writer, that may bear some relation to this. He was one who when “he hath set himself to writing he would join night and day and press upon himself without release, not minding it till he fainted.”² If this is a description of Shakespeare, however, it is odd that Jonson does not name him.

There are of course more precise descriptions of his practice from his contemporaries. John Heminges and Henry Condell concluded, in their joint preface to the First Folio, that “His mind and hand went together: And what he thought, he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers.” That may not be altogether true, but Heminges and Condell were concerned to emphasise the extraordinary facility of his invention. His ease or “easinesse,” too, was part of the wondrous effect; the verse flows naturally and instinctively from each character.

Ben Jonson was less sanguine about his fluency. In Timber, or Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter he wrote that

I remember, the Players have often mentioned it as an honour to Shakespeare, that in his writing, (whatsoever he penn’d) hee never blotted out line. My answer hath beene, would he had blotted a thousand. Which they thought a malevolent speech. I had not told posterity this, but for their ignorance, who choose that circumstance to commend their friend by, wherein he most faulted.

He goes on to conclude that “hee flow’d with that facility, that sometime it was necessary he should be stop’d; Sufflaminandus erat; as Augustus said of Haterius. His wit was in his owne power; would the rule of it have beene so too.” Shakespeare may not have been the most prolific of his contemporaries – Thomas Heywood seems to have written wholly or in part some 220 plays – but it is clear enough that he had a reputation for rapid and inspired composition.

So we may plausibly see him at work, sitting in a standard panel-backed chair at his table. If he had a study, it was one that he had fitted up for himself in the sequence of London lodgings that he rented. It is sometimes suggested that he returned to his house in Stratford in order to compose without noise or disturbance, but this seems most unlikely. He wrote where he was, close to the theatre and close to the actors. It is doubtful if, in the furia of composition, noise or circumstance affected him. It is likely in any case that, as a result of his various employments in the theatre, he was obliged to write at night; there are various references in the plays to “oil-dried lamps,” to candles, and to “the smoakie light” that is “fed with stinking Tallow”(Cymbeline, 632-3).

He would have possessed a small “desk box” together with pen-case, pen-knife and inkwell; he is also likely to have owned a book-chest and a book-rest for the proper perusal of the bulky histories and anthologies from which he gathered his material. He may also have made notes in what were known as “table-books” or bound notebooks; Hamlet calls for “my tables” to “set it downe”(725). He could have jotted down notes or passages that occurred to him in the course of the day; other writers have found that walking through the busy streets can materially aid inspiration.