CHAPTER 19
It has become a commonplace of Shakespearian biography that, from roughly his age of twenty to his age of twenty-eight, we encounter the “lost years.” But no years are ever wholly lost. There may be a gap in the chronology, but the pattern of a life may be discerned obliquely and indirectly. It is known that he became a player. It has been surmised that he joined a company of travelling players, perhaps when they were passing through Stratford. It has been suggested that he journeyed to London in the hope or expectation of joining one of the companies already performing there. His previous association with Sir Thomas Hesketh’s players, and with Lord Strange’s Men, may have facilitated some form of introduction. A clever young actor, and an aspiring dramatist, might have been welcome.
Did he join a company of travelling players when such a group was performing in Stratford? There is no record of this, and it is in any case an unlikely form of recruitment. But, in the seasons from 1583 to 1586, at least eight sets of players performed in the guildhall at Stratford—among them the Earl of Oxford’s Men, Lord Berkeley’s Men, Lord Chandos’s Men, the Earl of Worcester’s Men, and the Earl of Essex’s Men. Among Worcester’s players was Edward Alleyn, sixteen months younger than Shakespeare, who became a formidable presence on the London stage and a direct rival of Shakespeare’s own company. But it has also been argued that Shakespeare joined the Earl of Leicester’s Men, in part because of a remark in a letter from Sir Philip Sidney referring to “William my Lord of Leicester’s jesting player.” Sidney, however, may have been alluding to the celebrated William Kempe.
One other company of players, who came to Stratford in 1587, deserves further notice. The Queen’s Men had been re-established four years before by the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of Revels, partly in order to provide what might now be called dramatic propaganda on behalf of Elizabethan polity. They were a privileged group of players who were formally chosen to play before the monarch at court. They were paid wages as the queen’s servants and granted liveries as “grooms of the chamber”; Shakespeare was to receive a similar honour in later years. The twelve actors had been selected from other companies, and were considered to be at the height of their profession—among them two comic wits, Robert Wilson “quick, delicate, refined” and Richard Tarlton “wondrous plentiful and pleasant.”1
Tarlton epitomises the nature of the theatre which Shakespeare joined. He was the first great English clown, and the most popular comedian of the Elizabethan age. As a fellow actor put it, “There will never come his like, while the earth can corn. O passing fine Tarlton!”2 He was said to have been discovered by the Earl of Leicester while keeping swine for his father, and the earl was so delighted with his “happy unhappy answers” that he enlisted him in his service. His jigs and ballads became famous in the 1570s, and he became attached to Queen Elizabeth’s Men on the formation of the group in 1583. There can be no doubt that Shakespeare witnessed his elaborate and idiosyncratic performances. Tarlton was also a playwright and wrote a comic drama entitled Play of the Seven Deadly Sins. He was a favourite of the queen, and became her unofficial court jester. After his death in Shoreditch in 1588, an anthology entitled Tarlton’s Jests became a popular favourite. In his will he named as his trustee a fellow actor, William Johnson; Johnson also became in turn Shakespeare’s trustee for the purchase of a house in Blackfriars. There is a connection, in other words, and it has often been suggested that Hamlet’s reminiscence of Yorick is a recollection of Tarlton himself.
Tarlton’s costume was a suit of russet and a buttoned cap; he carried a great bag by his side and wielded a large bat; he played on the tabor and pipe; he had a squint eye, a moustache and a flat nose. He was, according to Stow, a “man of wondrous plentifull pleasant extemporal wit”; he was “the wonder of his time.”3 He was material for endless anecdotes and allusions, he was the subject of nursery rhymes, and many alehouses were named after him complete with his portrait. It was said that the sight of his face alone, peeping from behind the stage, was enough to send audiences into hysterics; he played the role of the country innocent in the city, complete with what might be called physical comedy. It meant that the comic actor became more important than any character or role he was performing. Tarlton would break off from his part and indulge in improvised repartee with the audience, for example, and would introduce jigs or comic business in the middle of the dramatic action. He specialised in grotesque faces, and would pull them at inappropriate moments. He can claim to be the first “star” of the English stage.
The stage clown had a long pedigree. He was related to the Lord of Misrule who presided over the festival rituals of medieval England. He was also connected to the fools and jesters of the court but, more importantly, he also derived from the tradition of the Vice on the medieval stage. The Vice is preeminently the character who works with, rather than before, the spectators. Where the actors see only each other, he observes the audience. He is part of its life; he shares asides and jokes with it; he colludes with it. For him the play is a game in which everyone can participate. He is representative of all the vices of humankind and, as such, is both impresario and conspirator. He is the showman of the medieval theatre, who feigns tears or sympathy and who persuades or cajoles the actors into sin. He sings and rhymes and jokes; he often plays a musical instrument such as a gittern. He indulges in physical comedy such as tumbling or dancing. He engages in soliloquies filled with puns and double entendres. Shakespeare often mentions the fact that he carries a wooden dagger, with which he pares his nails. It is obvious that he is the source of much English humour, and the inspirer of much stagecraft. He is a paradigm for the variegated clowns and fools of Shakespearian drama, and the prototype of villains such as Iago and Richard III. He is one of the primal characters of the theatre, with an ancestry buried far back in folk ritual and a heritage stretching forward to the nineteenth-century music hall and the latest television comedy. He is part of Shakespeare’s inheritance.
The Queen’s Men began touring almost as soon as they were formed, in the first months journeying to Bristol, Norwich, Cambridge and Leicester. In the summer they travelled; in the winter they returned to London, where they performed at the Bell and the Bull in the City and at the Curtain or the Theatre in the suburbs. From the end of December to February they played at court. As the sovereign’s own men they were welcomed wherever they went, and were well recompensed for their trouble. They seem to have earned almost double the amount of other companies. They were not just actors in the contemporary sense but acrobats and comics; they hired a Turkish rope-dancer, and there is a reference of payment “to the queens men that were tumblers.” Richard Tarlton had his own “act,” like that of any modern comedian.
It is an indication of the hardness or roughness of the travelling life, however, that at Norwich there was an affray in which several of the actors joined and in which one man bled to death, having been struck by a sword. The testimony of witnesses brings the incident to life before us, with a participant crying out: “Villan wilt thowe murder the quenes man?” 4 It seems that the fight started when one of the crowd demanded to see the play before he would pay for his ticket or token, a reminder of a more primitive era of the English theatre. Five years later one member of the company killed another in a brawl. Despite the patronage of the queen, actors still had an unenviable reputation.
Their name has been associated with that of William Shakespeare because of the remarkable coincidence of the plays that they performed, plays that still have a distinctly familiar ring. They include The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth, King Leir, The Troublesome Reign of King John and The True Tragedy of Richard III. The supposition has been, therefore, that Shakespeare somehow joined himself with the Queen’s Men in 1587, when they came to Stratford, and that these plays are his early versions of ones that he subsequently revised. The theory has the merit of simplicity, although the world of Elizabethan playing companies is not in itself a simple one: it displays a history of splits and amalgamations, quarrels and reconciliations, hiring and firing.
In 1588 the Queen’s Men were divided into two separate groups, with separate repertoires. They were sadly depleted with the death of Richard Tarlton. One group then joined forces with the Earl of Sussex’s Men. It may be that, at this time, Shakespeare also left them for another company. But this is to move too far ahead in this history that now, in 1586 and 1587, must first bring the young William Shakespeare to London.