Shakespeare

So there is an air of unfamiliarity, and perhaps mystery, about his appearance in the grand house at Rutland. It has even been suggested that “Monsieur Le Doux” was a pseudonym for an English secret agent, and perhaps even a pseudonym for a resolutely undead Christopher Marlowe.⁸ On a more prosaic note we may simply record that Jaques Petit said in his letter that “on a aussi joué la tragédie de Titus Andronicus mais la monstre a plus valu que le sujet.”⁹ The “monstre” or spectacle was more interesting than the plot. The same might be said of this particular gathering. The stage of Rutland is suddenly lit, and Shakespeare is glimpsed in the company of people with whom he is not ordinarily associated. If ever there was a “secret Shakespeare,” as a hundred biographies testify, it lies in obscure moments such as these.

CHAPTER 49 Ah, No, No, No, It Is Mine Onely sonne

The immediate problems of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had not been lifted by royal or noble favour. The city authorities still seemed eager to close down the Theatre and the Curtain, and James Burbage had already been making plans to convert part of Blackfriars into a roofed playhouse; since Blackfriars was a “liberty,” an area where the City’s powers of arrest did not run, it was not under official jurisdiction. Burbage had also been involved in difficult negotiations with the landlord of the Theatre, Giles Allen, who wished to profit from the success of the playhouse. He increased the ground rent from £14 to £24 per annum, and Burbage agreed that Allen would eventually be able to take possession of the building after a number of years. But Allen seems to have gone too far in his demand that the Theatre become his property after only five years; Burbage demurred, and began to invest in Blackfriars. Throughout the summer of 1596 he was engaged in tearing down tenements, and converting an old stone building known as the “Frater” or refectory in the precincts of the ancient monastery. It was his insurance policy. He even arranged that his master carpenter, Peter Streete, should move down to the river in order to be close to the site.

On 23 July 1596 Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, at the age of seventy, died at Somerset House. His successor as Lord Chamberlain, Lord Cobham, was much less sympathetic to the theatrical profession; one of his ancestors, Sir John Oldcastle, had been mocked in the first part of King Henry IV. So relations between the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were not necessarily benevolent. The players may even have feared that Cobham would support the Lord Mayor’s request permanently to close down the public playhouses. As Thomas Nashe put it in a letter of this time: “howeuer in there old Lords tyme they thought there state settled, it is now so uncertayne they cannot build upon it.”¹ The players had begun a tour of Kent soon after Hunsdon’s death – they were playing at the market hall of Faversham on 1 August – but once more they found themselves in an insecure profession.

A few days after playing in Faversham, however, Shakespeare suffered a greater blow. His son of eleven years, Hamnet Shakespeare, died. There is every reason to suppose that Shakespeare hastened from Kent to Stratford, for the funeral on 11 August. The death of a young son can have many and various effects. Did Shakespeare feel any sense of guilt, or responsibility, at having left his family in Stratford? And how did he respond to his grieving wife, who had been obliged to care for the children without his presence? The questions cannot be answered, of course. There are some powerful lines in the second part of Henry IV, written shortly after these events, when Northumberland’s wife blames his absence for the death of their son (985-6). The child

Threw many a Northward looke, to see his father

Bring vp his powers, but he did long in vaine.

Many of Shakespeare’s later plays have the pervasive theme of families reunited and love restored. In The Winter’s Tale the son, Mamillius, dies as the result of his father’s conduct; the boy who plays this part doubled as Perdita, the daughter who at the end of the play is restored to her errant father. In her form and figure the dead son is also revived.