Shakespeare

There were ideas and projects that he abandoned as unpromising or unworkable. And of course he changed his mind about plot and characterisation as he went along. He had already read around the subject, perhaps over a period of weeks or even months, and the principal lines of action were clear to him. It is not necessary to suppose that he kept elaborate synopses or schemes before he began composition, and it is in fact more likely that he retained the entire play in his capacious memory. The play hovered in the air, as it were, in inchoate shape. That is why he could change direction as he wrote; he could alter motive and character, create fresh scenes and provoke new debates. In his speech-prefixes stock names slowly give way to personal names as Shakespeare deepens and extends their characterisation; in All’s Well That Ends Well, for example, “Clown” becomes “Lavatch” and “Steward” becomes “Rynaldo.” They are coming to life in front of him.

He lost interest in certain plot lines after he had introduced them. Nothing, for example, is made of the Princess’s early demands for the territory of Aquitaine in Love’s Labour’s Lost. The business between Lorenzo and Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice is left unresolved. In that play, too, it is clear that Shakespeare gained interest in Shylock while at the same time noticeably losing enthusiasm for Antonio. Antonio opens the play in an intriguingly melancholy style, but thereafter is never properly developed. The public context of Coriolanus is rapidly succeeded by private communings; the character of Hamlet is transformed in the last two acts of the play. Of course it could be argued that these were long-considered decisions on Shakespeare’s part, but they bear all the hallmarks of improvisation and spontaneous invention.

CHAPTER 48 So shaken as We Are, So Wan with Care

In the summer of 1595 the Lord Chamberlain’s Men went on tour. In June they were at Ipswich and at Cambridge, in each place receiving the not inconsiderable sum of 40 shillings. There had been a time when a university town such as Cambridge had shunned the presence of common players, but their status and prestige had risen. William Shakespeare already had, as we have seen, an eager audience among the educated young; it is not too much to suggest that he might have been a “draw” for the members of the various colleges.

They had left London for the very good reason that the theatres had once again been closed. There had been a number of food riots, over the soaring costs of fish and butter, in the late spring and early summer; there were twelve affrays in June alone. The apprentices had taken over the market in Southwark, and then subsequently the market at Billingsgate, to sell the staples of food at what they considered to be an appropriate rate. Then, on 29 June, a thousand London apprentices marched on Tower Hill to pillage the shops of the gun-makers there, clearly with nefarious intent. The pillories in Cheapside had been torn down, and a makeshift gallows was erected outside the house of the Lord Mayor. There were pamphlets circulated on the “rebellious tumults” and in subsequent legal proceedings the apprentices were charged with attempting to “take the sword of auchtoryte”¹ from the mayor and aldermen of the city. Five of their leaders were hanged, drawn and quartered, thus incurring an unusually severe punishment. So London was placed under the Elizabethan version of martial law, and of course the theatres were out of action.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men had in any case begun their career in London during a generally troubled period. One alderman complained to the Privy Council in 1596 of the “great dearth of victual which hath been continued now these three years, besides three years’ plague before.”² Weavers’ apprentices were part of the summer riots of 1595, and a silk weaver was incarcerated in Bedlam for accusing the mayor of insanity. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream Bottom, the leader of the artisans, is himself a weaver. It has been suggested that Shakespeare was transforming violence into farce and comedy. Certainly this would resemble his practice on other occasions. There are, of course, many other contemporary allusions in his plays that are now irrecoverable. He may also have taken advantage of the interval of closure to travel back to Stratford: there is a local record of “Mr. Shaxpere” purchasing “one book” from “Jone Perat”³ at the end of August. Aubrey reports on unknown authority that he “was wont to goe to his native Country once a yeare.”⁴