Shakespeare

On that day, Saturday 7 February 1601, some of Essex’s supporters – among them Lord Monteagle, Sir Christopher Blount and Sir Charles Percy-dined at Gunter’s eating house by the Temple. Lord Monteagle was a staunch Roman Catholic, but he was a loyalist who would later be instrumental in uncovering the “gunpowder plot”; Sir Christopher Blount had formerly been the Earl of Leicester’s Master of Horse and was Essex’s stepfather; Sir Charles Percy was the scion of a famous Catholic family from the North of England. After dinner they took a wherry across the Thames and walked into the Globe Theatre before the start of that afternoon’s play. It was an especially commissioned performance. On the day before some of their number had visited the same theatre, “tellyng them [the players] that the play wold be of Harry the Fourth,”² the monarch who had deposed Richard II. In a later account of Essex’s treason, written by Francis Bacon, the play is described as “the play of deposing King Richard the second”;³ in other words it contained the scenes of Richard’s forced abdication that had not appeared in the printed version of the drama. The intention of Essex’s supporters was clear enough. The power of the theatre could be used to justify their removal of Elizabeth. It could be used, too, to strengthen their resolve. Whatever the excuses and tergiversations of the Earl of Essex later, it was a clear case of “imagining” the sovereign’s death.

One of the players, Augustine Phillips, later deposed that he “and hys fellows were determyned to have played some other play, holdyng that play of Kyng Richard to be so old amp; so long out of vse as that they shold have small or no Company at yt.” ⁴ This was simply an excuse, born out of fear. Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Comedy of Errors, plays written before Richard II, were both performed at much later dates. At which point it seems that one of Essex’s allies, Sir Gilly Meyrick, offered to pay 40 shillings for this uniquely commissioned production. The players acquiesced, and accepted the offer. In hindsight this was not a wise decision, since they could have been implicated in the charge of treason. They may have had no advance notice of Essex’s plans and could have claimed that they innocently took part in the production; yet in the highly charged atmosphere of the time, when rumour and counter-rumour were flying about the city, this was highly unlikely. They were afraid. They could hardly have done it simply for the additional payment of 40 shillings. It is much more likely that they were bullied and cajoled, perhaps even threatened, by these grandees. Note that the lords were reported “telling,” not asking, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to perform that play. It is an indication of the ready professionalism of the players, however, that they were able to reproduce the play from memory after a long period in abeyance. Richard II had been written and played six years before and, although it had no doubt been revived in the interim, its reconstruction at such short notice is still a very remarkable achievement.

In the event Essex’s uprising failed disastrously. The people did not rise to his banner, as he had hoped, and the earl (together with Southampton and other followers) was besieged in his house along the Strand. He surrendered, was tried and eventually executed. Southampton would have followed him to the block, but for the pleas of his mother to the queen. Instead the young nobleman was indefinitely incarcerated in the Tower. Such was the fate of Elizabeth’s enemies and false friends.

Of course the production of the play had not gone unnoticed by the authorities. Augustine Phillips, who seems to have been equivalent to the business manager of the company, was ordered to appear before an examining committee of three chief justices. There he explained the circumstances, and the payment of 40 shillings. It should be remembered that, four years before, the actors and writers of The Isle of Dogs had been summarily imprisoned and perhaps even tortured for performing a “seditious” play. On this hypothetically more dangerous occasion, however, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were relieved of any fine or penalty. They were effectively “let off” with perhaps a reprimand.