Shakespeare

There was one unwanted and unwarranted publication, however, in this year. The printer William Jaggard brought out a third edition of The Passionate Pilgrim in which five of Shakespeare’s poems, purloined for the occasion, were added to much inferior stuff and the whole advertised as “by W. Shakespeare.” One of the authors whose work had been pirated for this collection, Thomas Heywood, then complained of the “manifest injury” done to him. He went on to claim that “the Author,” or Shakespeare himself, was “I know much offended with M. Jaggard (that altogether unknowne to him) presumed to make so bold with his name.”¹ Shakespeare’s remonstrances must have had some effect, because a second title-page was added without any attribution to him. It is a trivial incident that displays the extent of Shakespeare’s literary fame.

In his preface to The White Devil, published this year, John Webster adverts to “the right happy and copious industry of M. Shake-speare, M. Decker amp; M. Heywood.”² It may seem odd at this late date to include Shakespeare with such manifestly inferior writers, but the disparity would not have occurred to anyone at the time. Contemporaries lack the subtle discrimination of posterity. In this case the emphasis is being placed upon the three dramatists’ fluency and speed of production. Ben Jonson had said as much in the same year, with his address to the reader in The Alchemist in which he disparaged those dramatists who “to gain the opinion of copy”³ or facility, will not check or polish their invention. Jonson’s disguised complaint was that Shakespeare had written too much. It is not likely to have been a criticism upheld by the audiences of the period.

From Christmas 1612 through to 20 May 1613, the King’s Men played continually at court as well as Blackfriars and the Globe. Among the royal performances were those of Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Othello and Cardenio. For the betrothal and marriage of King James’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, the King’s Men played on no fewer than fourteen occasions. For these performances they received the large sum of £153 6s 8d.

Despite the evident fact that Shakespeare was writing less there is no indication that he was losing his interest in, or enthusiasm for, the theatre itself. In March 1613, for example, he completed negotiations to buy the gatehouse of Blackfriars. It was described as a “dwelling house or Tenement” partly built over “a great gate.” It was against the building known as the King’s Wardrobe on the west side, and on the east bordered a street that led down to Puddle Dock; the price also included a plot of ground and a wall. Part of it had once been a haberdasher’s shop. He was now very close to the Blackfriars playhouse and, by means of a wherry from Puddle Dock, in easy reach of the Globe on the other side of the river. Shakespeare paid £140 for the property, of which £80 was in cash and the other £60 tied up with a kind of mortgage.

The purchase may have been purely an investment on Shakespeare’s part, but then why break the habit of a lifetime and invest in London rather than in Stratford property? It may have been the propinquity to the playhouses that steered his decision. Did he still think of himself as a man of the theatre? He was now collaborating with Fletcher, and could hardly have done so from Stratford. He may simply have grown tired of living in lodgings, and wanted some permanent home in the capital. He was still only in his forties and, despite the deaths of two of his brothers, he may have had little reason to doubt his longevity.