Shakespeare

The building work on the new theatre, however, did not proceed as quickly as had been anticipated. So the Burbages spread the financial responsibility. They created five “sharers” who between them would put up half the costs, and who would in return become “house-keepers” or part owners of the new theatre. One of those sharers was William Shakespeare, who now had the advantage of owning one-tenth of the theatre in which he acted and for which he wrote. It was the most complete association possible between playwright and playhouse. His other sharers were the principal actors of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Will Kempe and Thomas Pope, John Heminges and Augustine Phillips. They had all grown moderately wealthy out of their new-found profession.

Peter Streete contracted to finish the construction of the Globe within twenty-eight weeks, although that may be an example of perennial builders’ optimism. Strong foundations had to be laid, since the Globe was erected on watery soil; wooden piles were driven into the Southwark earth, and a ditch had to be bridged to allow public access. This operation would have taken some sixteen weeks. By May 1599 a legal document refers to a “domus” with an attached garden in the parish of St. Saviour’s, Southwark, “in occupatione Willielmi Shakespeare et aliorum” – in the occupation of Shakespeare and others, the prominence given to the dramatist’s name suggesting that he was considered to be the first mover in this enterprise. Intriguingly enough “domus” may be interpreted to mean either the theatre itself or a house adjoining that structure. A picture of Shakespeare living in a house beside the playhouse proper is not inconceivable.

CHAPTER 60 Thou Knowest My Lodging, Get Me Inke and Paper

There is no doubt that Shakespeare lived south of the river, but his exact location is not known. The immediate vicinity of the Globe Playhouse was described by John Stow’s editors in the eighteenth century as a “long straggling Place, with Ditches on each side, the Passage to the Houses being over little Bridges, with little Garden Plotts before them.”¹ It was no more salubrious in the period when Shakespeare himself moved to Southwark. Nevertheless it was important for him to be close to the centre of all his activities. Here he joined his colleagues from the Globe, Thomas Pope and Augustine Phillips; Phillips lived with his large family close to the river. Southwark was in fact something of an actors’ district. Shakespeare also had, as neighbours, Edward Alleyn and Philip Henslowe, who already possessed extensive interests in the vicinity. Henslowe’s address was “on the bank sid right over against the clink,”² the “clink” itself being the small underground bishop’s prison by the river.

Shakespeare himself could have taken up temporary residence at one of the three hundred inns of the neighbourhood. The Elephant was on the corner of Horseshoe Alley, for example, just a few yards from the Globe. In Twelfth Night, written a year or two after his removal to that district, Antonio remarks (1467-8):

In the South Suburbes at the Elephant

Is best to lodge …

But this may be no more than a local joke. If he had lived in the liberty of the Clink, as the records of non-payment of property tax imply, then he would have inhabited the long street which runs beside the Thames just north of Winchester Palace Park. This was the street in which Henslowe also dwelled. In a memorandum, quoted by the eighteenth-century scholar Edmond Malone but no longer extant, Alleyn records that Shakespeare lived close to the Bear-Garden, and in fact the distance is only a few hundred yards. Edmond Malone further claims that Shakespeare lived in this neighbourhood until 1608, a residence of some ten years. For a peripatetic dramatist, that is a long sojourn indeed. He might almost have been described as a gentleman of Southwark rather than as a gentleman of Stratford.