Shakespeare

It is not at all clear who was responsible for these adaptations. They might have been put together by a book-keeper or even by Shakespeare himself. It has also been suggested, as we have seen, that they were the product of “memorial reconstruction” by certain of the actors involved in the original production. The nature and purpose of such an activity, however, remain unclear. It has even been proposed that the plays were the product of certain members of the audience who, wishing to pirate them, transcribed them in shorthand or what was then known as brachygraphy. One playwright complains of a pirated edition that was produced “by Stenography … scarce one word trew.”⁸ Given the relatively strict conditions of publication, however, the hypothesis seems untenable.

There is of course no reason to call these six shorter plays “bad” quartos; they are simply different. They do illustrate, however, the somewhat brutal way in which Shakespeare’s texts could be treated. At the time of first rehearsal or first performance whole soliloquies could be taken out, lines reassigned and scenes transposed for the sake of narrative efficiency. If they were indeed performed in that fashion, Shakespeare must have concurred in the changes. His position as an eminently practical and pragmatic man of the theatre once more becomes clear.

CHAPTER 57 No More Words, We Beseech You

By becoming resident playwright of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare had avoided the unhappy fate of those freelance dramatists who lived upon their increasingly frayed wits. There were not many of them, and they were all known to one another. In the manner of such things the now respectable and “gentle” Shakespeare would have been the object of some scorn and derision, as well as implicit envy, in their tavern sessions. The writers were employed either by the actors or by the managers of the theatre; they wrote singly or in groups, according to the exigency of the moment. The diaries of Philip Henslowe at the Swan reveal that, of the eighty-nine plays he supervised, thirty-four were written by a single author and the other fifty-five were the result of collaborative enterprise. Collaboration was the single most important method of providing a play. That is one reason why we never read of “author” or “playwright” concerned with any play before 1598. In an earlier period the actors themselves had written the plays, so little did the text matter compared to the spectacle and action. In Histriomastix the actors arrive in a town and proclaim their play, at which point they are asked: “What’s your playes name? Maisters whose men are ye?” The identity of the author is not a question.

The writer or writers might have proposed the story, or the story might have been suggested to them by the actors or theatre managers; they would then set to work on the “plot” or narrative scheme which, proving successful, they would fashion into the play itself. They tended to write in instalments, being paid for each stage of their delivery. “I haue hard fyue sheets of a playe,” one member of the Admiral’s Men wrote to Henslowe, “ amp; I dow not doute but it wyll be a verye good playe.” But the playwright admitted that they were “not so fayr written all as I could wish.”¹

It is of the greatest importance to note that these men were the first of their kind. There were no rules. There had never existed professional writers before, by which is meant writers who were dependent upon the commercial market for their success or failure. Chettle, Nashe and Shakespeare – whether they knew it or not – were the harbingers of a new literary culture.

The playwrights finished their “sheets” quickly. It was the literary equivalent of factory farming, and Jonson was scorned when he admitted to spending five weeks on a play. They were also called upon to augment or revise existing plays, and to adapt them to different casts and circumstances. New plays were needed all the time but, equally importantly, new kinds of play were constantly in demand. In this recently created world of play-making and play-going there were instant fashions and fancies. For a decade the fashion had been for history plays, revenge tragedies and pastoral comedies; they were then supplanted by comedies of “humours” and city comedies; the city comedies became more and more concerned with sex, and satires also came to the fore. Then there was a fashion for Roman plays. There was a vogue for plays concerned with rulers in disguise. There was a period when romances and plays containing masques became popular. Shakespeare himself was not immune to these changes of direction, and we will see how his own plays were subtly attuned to the demands of the moment.