Shakespeare

In both versions of the drama he also reveals a highly theatrical sensibility. The play is set within a play; the themes of disguise, of changing costume, are central to his genius; his characters are very good fantasists who change identity with great ease. They are all, in a word, performers. The whole essence of the wooing between Kate and Petruchio is performance. There is here a plethora of words. The young Shakespeare loved word-play of every kind, as if he could not curb his exuberance. He loved quoting bits of Italian, introducing Latin tags, making classical allusions. For all these reasons the play celebrates itself. It celebrates its being in the world, far beyond any possible “meanings” that have been attached to it over the centuries.

The Taming of a Shrew was in turn satirised by Nashe and Greene in Menaphon, published in 1589, and in a play entitled A Knack to Know a Knave, reputed to be the fruit of their collaboration. We must imagine an atmosphere of rivalry and slanging which, depending on local circumstances, was variously good-humoured or bitter. Each young dramatist quoted from the others’ works, and generally added to the highly coloured and even frenetic atmosphere of London’s early drama. Only Shakespeare, however, seems to have quoted so extensively from his rival Marlowe; the evidence of A Shrew in fact suggests that there was some reason for his being accused, by Greene, of decking himself in borrowed plumes. It is all very high-spirited stuff, and A Shrew is nothing if not swift and vivacious, but the egregious theft of Marlowe’s lines suggests that he did not intend the play to be taken very seriously. It was simply an entertainment of the hour. Yet, like many English farces, it proved to be a popular success.

If he could already triumph in comedy, there was no reason why he should not have tried his hand at history. Two of the other plays emerging in 1588, plausibly attributed to the young dramatist, are Edmund Ironside and The Troublesome Raigne of King John. Edmund Ironside has been the subject of much scholarly dispute,¹ the controversy further inflamed by the fact that a manuscript version of the play can be located in the Manuscript Division of the British Library. It is written in a neat legal hand, on partly lined paper also used for legal documents, and displays several of Shakespeare’s characteristic quirks of spelling and orthography. The eager student may call up the document, and gaze with wild surmise on the ink possibly drawn from Shakespeare’s quill. Like the mask of Agamemnon and the Shroud of Turin, however, the relics of the great dead are the cause only of bitter rivalries and contradictory opinions. Palaeography is not necessarily an exact science.

The play itself concerns Edmund II, best known for his spirited defence of England against Canute in the early eleventh century. Canute and Edmund are seen in conflict, military and rhetorical, but their high intentions are often thwarted by the machinations of the evil Edricus. When the play ends in concord Edricus, in uncanny anticipation of Malvolio, stalks off the stage with the words “By heaven I’ll be revenged on both of you.” The part of Edmund may have been meant for Edward Alleyn, fresh from his success as Tamburlaine and Faustus. The drama is in any case fluent and powerful, with a steady attention both to rhetorical effect and to ingenuity of plotting. It still seems fresh upon the page which, by any standard, must be a criterion for its authorship. It was not immediately licensed for performance, however, because the spirited dispute between two archbishops in the play was considered indecorous in a period when the clergy were lampooning each other in the religious squabble known as the “Martin Marprelate Controversy.” It was not in fact performed until the 1630s.

It is in essence a revenge tragedy, on the model of The Spanish Tragedy, complete with the amputation of hands and the mutilation of noses. It also marks, in Edricus, the first appearance of the theatrical Shakespearian villain:

They cannot so dissemble as I can

Cloak, cozen, cog and flatter with the king

Crouch and seem courteous, promise and protest…