Shakespeare

It should not be forgotten that throughout his career he was a regular receiver of court favours and that in the latter part of his life he wore the royal livery as the king’s true servant. There was of course a Renaissance tradition of the courtier as actor and, as John Donne wrote, “Plays were not so like Courts, as Courts are like plays.”⁶ In turn the tone and attitude of Shakespeare’s sonnets prompted the late Victorian critic and biographer, Frank Harris, to describe him as a snob. That is not the correct description for a man of infinite sympathies. A writer who can create Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet is not a snob. But he was possessed, or obsessed, by the inwardness of the ruler rather than the ruled. The role of monarch seems to spring naturally and instinctively from his imagination, and one close student of Shakespeare’s imagery has pointed out “how continually he associates dreaming with kingship.”⁷ Did he enjoy fantasies and day-dreams of power? There is indeed a natural consonance between the player and the king, both dressed in robes of magnificence and both obliged to play a part. It may have been one reason why Shakespeare was attracted to the profession of acting in the first place.

Among his contemporaries he was well known for playing kingly parts upon the stage. In 1610 John Davies wrote a set of verses to “our English Terence, Mr. Will Shake-speare” in which he declared that

Some say (good Will) which I, in sport, do sing,

Had ‘st thou not plaid some Kingly parts in sport,

Thou hadst bin a companion for a King.⁸

The assumption seems to be that his manners would have been gracious and “gentle” enough to enjoy high companionship, had it not been for the fact that he was an actor. In another poem the same author considered that “the stage doth staine pure gentle bloud.” In Measure for Measure there is an implicit comparison between the powers of the playwright and the power of the ruler of Vienna, guiding and moving human affairs from a distance.

Shakespeare did indeed play “kingly parts.” It is surmised that he played Henry VI in the trilogy of that name, and Richard II against Burbage’s Bolingbroke. Long theatrical tradition maintains that he played the ghost of the dead king in Hamlet, and that he might have doubled as the usurping king. The assumption of these parts was no doubt the result of an instinctive grace and authority, deepened by the theatrical assumption of gravitas, but it may also be evidence of some natural predilection. He had a noble bearing and a graceful manner. Yet, somewhere within him, there is always the voice of Bardolph mocking the king.

He is unlikely to have played the king in Henry V. That role was reserved for Burbage. Shakespeare is much more likely to have taken on the part of the Chorus, addressing the playgoers as “Gentles all” and referring to “this Woodden O” of the Globe in which the action of the play is about to take place. It is an appropriate opening to be spoken by Shakespeare himself; he is, for example, alternately deferential and self-confident. The persona of this Chorus has often been compared with the persona of the sonnets, and there is indeed some resemblance in that powerful combination of enormous pride in creative achievement and personal self-abnegation. And so he paces upon the stage with sovereign words:

A Kingdome for a Stage, Princes to Act

And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene.

If we accept the pattern of Julius Caesar, followed by Henry V, we may note in their composition the harbinger of Shakespeare’s great tragedies.

CHAPTER 67 Well Bandied Both, a Set of Wit Well Played

Of the two comedies written at this time, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It, the evidence suggests that Much Ado About Nothing was written first. It may indeed have been performed at the Curtain, with Will Kempe in the immortal role of Dogberry, before the Lord Chamberlain’s Men removed to the Globe. Shakespeare’s plays were being launched and performed even as the Globe was being constructed. Much Ado About Nothing remains one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, largely because of the wit combats of Beatrice and Benedick. “Let but Beatrice and Benedicke be seen,” one versifier wrote in 1640, “the Cockpit, Galleries, Boxes are all full.” ¹ Theirs is a wit of high order, anticipating Congreve and Wilde, subtly shadowed by the farcical humour of Dogberry and his cohorts.