Shakespeare

There are many other specific references, rushing headlong over one another in Nashe’s cryptic and densely allusive prose. “To be or not to be” is ascribed to Cicero’s “id am esse am non esse.” The author is accused of copying Kyd and of trying to “outbrave” Greene and Marlowe with his own brand “of a bragging blank verse.” Can we see also in a reference to “kilcowconceipt” a nod to Shakespeare’s alleged origins in a butcher’s shop? The conclusion must be that these allusions are all pointing in the same direction, to the unnamed author who by 1589 had written early versions of Turn Andronicus, The Taming of a Shrew, King John and Hamlet. Who else might it have been? It was a relatively small world with a limited number of occupants, and there are very few other candidates as the targets for the combined scorn of Greene and of Nashe.

In 1590 Robert Greene returned to the attack. In Never Too Late he abuses an actor whom he names Roscius, after the famous Roman player. “Why Roscius, art thou proud with Esops crow, being pranct with the glorie of others feathers? Of thyself thou canst say nothing …”⁴ He repeats this attack two years later, when he refers to his opponent as “Shake-scene.” But common sense would suggest that this was a long-running campaign inaugurated by a “university wit” who believed himself to be unfairly criticised or neglected in favour of an “unlearned” and imitative “countrey-Author”-who, it seems, never once responded to the attacks upon him.

If the intended target is indeed Shakespeare, then we have evidence that he had a distinctive presence in the London theatrical world by the late 1580s.This means that he had begun writing for the stage very soon after his first arrival in London. The fact that he is also named as “Roscius” suggests that he had already won some acclaim for his skills as an actor. Scholars and critics disagree about any and every piece of evidence; but there is an old saying that, when doctors disagree, the patient must walk away. The figure walking away from us may be the young Shakespeare.

CHAPTER 29 Why Should I Not Now Have the Like Successes?

So we can create a plausible chronology of this earliest period. In 1587, when part of the Queen’s Men, Shakespeare wrote an early version of Hamlet. This juvenile Hamlet has disappeared – except that from Nashe’s account of 1589 we know it contained the words “to be or not to be,” as well as a ghost crying out “Revenge!” There is a long tradition of anecdotal evidence that Shakespeare played that ghost, which would also make sense of Nashe’s otherwise incomprehensible aside on the unnamed writer-“if you entreat him faire in a frostie morning.”

Was King Leir, also written in 1587, an earlier version of Shakespeare’s tragedy? It begins with the famous division of the kingdom, but then diverges from the later version; there are more elements of conventional romance, derived from the popular stories of the period. In particular King Leir has a happy ending in which Leir and his good daughter are reunited. King Leir was performed by the Queen’s Men at a time when it is conjectured that Shakespeare was part of that company, and it is in many respects an accomplished and inventive piece of work. But it is so utterly unlike anything written even by the young Shakespeare that his authorship must be seriously in question. Another possible form of transmission suggests itself. If Shakespeare did indeed act in it, the plot and characters of the original may have lodged in his imagination. In the other early dramas related to Shakespeare, there is a notable consonance between lines and scenes. There is no such resemblance between Leir and Lear, except for the basic premise of the plot. So it seems likely that, on this occasion, Shakespeare was reviving an old story without much reference to the original play. King Leir is utterly unlike King Lear.