Shakespeare

by Shakespeare

  We Band of Brothers

  This extraordinary group of players, known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, became Shakespeare’s good companions for the rest of his life. He wrote for, and acted with, them only. They were his colleagues but, on the evidence of wills and other documents, they were also his intimate friends. They were also the most enduring company in English theatrical history, maintaining a recognisable identity from 1594 until 1642, a period of almost fifty years in which they performed the greatest plays in the history of world theatre.

  We know the identity of some of them. Apart from Richard Burbage there were Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, George Bryan, John Heminges, John Sincler, William Sly, Richard Cowley, John Duke and the comedian Will Kempe. Heminges seems to have had a reputation for his business acumen as well as his acting; he became the financial manager of the company, and was named frequently as the overseer or trustee in his fellows’ wills. He died a wealthy and respectable citizen, given the title of “Gent.” in the confirmation of his arms by the College of Heraldry; he was also a “sidesman” or official in the parish of St. Mary Aldermanbury, an indication that the status of the acting profession had risen considerably during Shakespeare’s lifetime. Heminges may well have played older character parts, such as Polonius and Capulet.

  Augustine Phillips was another actor who, like Heminges and Shakespeare, was granted a coat of arms. He also died a wealthy man, with a country estate at Mortlake. He was a leading member of the company, and it was he who was once called in front of the Privy Council to represent his fellows. He seems to have been primarily a “straight” player, acting as “second” to Richard Burbage in parts such as Cassius and Claudio; but he could also entertain the audiences with farcical comedy. There is a notation in the Stationers’ Register of spring 1595 for “Phillips his gigg of the slyppers”-a “gig” or “jig” being an interlude of music, dancing and comic repartee. An Elizabethan actor had to be versatile. He had to be able to dance, to sing, to play an instrument, and if necessary to fight a convincing duel upon the stage. Thomas Pope, for example, was an excellent acrobat and clown as well as a player; he, too, took out a coat of arms. John Sincler, known as “Sinklo,” was a man of extraordinary thinness and as a result of his uncommon appearance played a number of comic roles including Pinch in The Comedy of Errors and Justice Shallow in the second part of Henry IV. He is also likely to have played such parts as the apothecary in Romeo and Juliet. It is clear, in fact, that Shakespeare created several roles with Sincler in mind.

  Yet the most versatile comic actor in the company was undoubtedly William Kempe. The most famous clown in the country, he was small and stout, especially with padding or “bombasting,” but quick and nimble on his feet. He was well known, in particular, for his gigs and his morris-dancing. There are many references and allusions to his dances. When not dressing up as a female street-seller he wore the costume of a country clown; he had shaggy and unruly hair; his humour was farcical and often obscene; he had a great gift for extempore repartee, or “gagging,” with the audience. He could “make a scurvy face” and “draw his mouth awry,”1 indicating that comic routines have not necessarily changed very much over the centuries. The humour of the Elizabethan stage, and indeed the humour of the medieval mysteries and interludes, survives still in farce and in pantomime. It is one of the unchanging features of the English imagination.

  Kempe would often perform his own “routines” during the course of the play, and thus temporarily bring the action to a halt. Hamlet complains of the habit in his directions to the players, when he instructs them to “let those that play your clownes speake no more then is set downe for them, for there be of them that wil themselues laugh, to set on some quantitie of barraine spectators to laugh to”(1767-9). This was a direct hit against Kempe, who had just left the Lord Chamberlain’s Men after some disagreement with his fellows. The quarrel may have been over just such a matter of comic performance. It is possible that in an earlier version of Hamlet Kempe “gagged” too often in his role as the clown and gravedigger; there would be a certain poetical justice in reprimanding him in a later version of the same play.

  At an earlier date, however, other playwrights welcomed his dances and improvisations. It saved them the labour of invention. There are even indications that they would mark Kempe’s entry in the playbooks, and then leave the rest to him. In one version of Hamlet (in this play, as in so many others, there is evidence of continual revision) Shakespeare even quotes some of Kempe’s catchphrases-” cannot you stay till I eat my porridge?” as well as “My coat wants a cullisen [scutcheon]” and “Your beer is sour,” the last line no doubt delivered with the mouth famously “awry.” There is no doubt, too, that when they first worked together Shakespeare fashioned parts specifically for Kempe. In a similar spirit of professionalism Mozart wrote operatic roles for specific singers, and often would not write an aria until he had heard the voice of the singer who would take the part. So when Grumio saws cheese with a dagger, or when Cade dances a morris or laps up drink from the earth, Shakespeare had Kempe’s drolleries very much in mind. Kempe played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. He played Falstaff in the two parts of Henry IV. In the second play there is a stage direction, “Enter Will,” a few lines before Falstaff begins singing a ballad “When Arthur first in court …” So Kempe was cued to enter, no doubt to the delight of the audience, a minute or two before breaking into song. At the end of the play Kempe appeared upon the stage, still dressed as Falstaff, and asks the audience: “If my tongue cannot intreate you to acquite mee, will you commaund me to vse my legges?” This is the cue for a jig, in which the rest of the players are likely to have joined. Shakespeare would have danced with him, too, and in that “merry moment”-to use an Elizabethan expression – we gain an authentic glimpse of the Elizabethan theatre.

  In this same epilogue Shakespeare promises a further episode in the story “with Sir Iohn in it.” But in the succeeding play, Henry V, Falstaff mysteriously disappears and his death off-stage is merely described. There have been many critical and artistic interpretations for this absence, but the true reason may be more prosaic. In the interval between Henry IV, Part Two and Henry V, Will Kempe had left the company. Without the star comic player, there was no point in bringing back Falstaff. There was no one to play him. It is best to remember that the plays of Shakespeare are dependent upon theatrical circumstance. It may go against the current grain of interpretation to see Falstaff as a wholly comic character, complete with dances and extemporal quips; but, again, it is part of the more strident nature of the Elizabethan theatre. Falstaff’s wooden stick, red face and great belly would have immediately reminded the audience of the stock figure of the clown; anachronistically, Falstaff has more than a trace of Punch about him. But the clown was also a theatrical version of the Lord of Misrule, and what better description could there be of Falstaff himself?

  When Kempe left the Lord Chamberlain’s Men he performed a “wonder” by dancing all the way from London to Norwich, and described himself in a pamphlet as “Caualiero Kempe, head-master of Morrice-dauncers, high Head-borough of heighs, and onely tricker of your Trill-lilles and best bel-shangles betweene Sion and mount Surrey”2-a sentence suggesting that some elements of English humour have been lost for ever. If he had indeed left after a disagreement with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men it gives added resonance to his address to “My notable Shakerags” in the same pamphlet, by which name he subsumes all of his enemies or “witles beetles-heads” and “block-headships” who had been spreading rumours and slanders about him. In the same place he refers to “a penny Poet whose first making was the miserable stolne story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat: for I am sure a Mac it was.” It is generally assumed that he is not referring to Shakespeare’s Macbeth but, rather, to a ballad on the same subject. Nevertheless it is an interesting allusion.

  In the company of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men there were some sixteen
actors, including five or six boys who played the female parts. Although there was no guild of actors in sixteenth-century London these boys served an unofficial “apprenticeship”; their training was not fixed at the seven years required in other trades, and its length seems to have varied from three years to twelve years. The boys had a “master” in one of the older actors, with whom they lodged and by whom they were instructed. One contract reveals that the boy, or in fact the boy’s parents, paid a specified sum of £8 so that he could be taken into service; the master then promised to pay his charge 4 pence a day and to teach him “in playinge of interludes and plaies.” The ambition of these stripling players was to rise into the profession by degrees, and if possible become an integral part of the company with whom they were trained. As the wills and estates of Shakespeare’s fellow actors prove, it was about to become a very lucrative employment indeed. The boys were generally treated as part of the master actor’s family, and were often held in great affection by their theatrical parents. Edward Alleyn’s wife wrote to her husband, when he was on tour, asking if “Nicke and Jeames be well amp; commend them.” Shakespeare could not have had an apprentice because, unlike some of his colleagues, he belonged to no guild.

  It is generally believed that only boys played the female roles on the Elizabethan stage, but there is some cause to doubt that assumption. Young adult males possibly took on the mature role of Cleopatra, for example, where the resources of even the most skilful boy might prove ineffectual. That there were very accomplished child actors is not in doubt. In Shakespeare’s company we know that there was a tall fair one and a short dark-haired one, simply because there are references in the texts to that effect. There is a remarkable sequence of comedies in which two girls vie for theatrical attention – Helena and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Portia and Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It, Olivia and Viola in Twelfth Night. It seems likely that the same gifted pair of boys played all of these parts, providing further evidence of the extent to which Shakespeare’s art was defined by the potential of his company.

  There are other influences. The members of the company may have suggested to Shakespeare stories that were suitable for dramatisation; they may have lent him books and the texts of old plays. In rehearsal, too, there would undoubtedly have been suggestions from the actors on the revision of a scene or dialogue. His was not a case of single-handed or single-minded invention. There can be no doubt at all that the Lord Chamberlain’s Men helped to create Shakespeare as an “author”.

  As well as the actors and apprentices in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men there was a book-keeper who also acted as prompter with perhaps an assistant stage-keeper, a wardrobe-keeper or “fireman,” stage musicians, a carpenter or two, “gatherers” who collected the money at the doors before each performance, and of course stagehands. There were differences in status and income among them, the most important distinction being that between “sharer” and “hired man.” A “sharer,” as Shakespeare was in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, put up a sum of £50 on joining the company. He was then eligible for a share in its income, once a portion of the receipts for each performance had been paid to the owner of the playhouse and to the rest of the company. It was a theatrical version of the “joint stock company” which played so large a part in the economics of the late sixteenth century. At a later date Shakespeare also became a “house-keeper,” when he was part of the group who owned the Globe playhouse. It was a way of cutting out the “middle men” or theatrical entrepreneurs such as Henslowe; since the house-keepers took half of the proceeds from the gallery, it proved to be highly profitable.

  Each of the nine “sharers” in the company was also one of the principal actors, and it has been estimated that their roles took up some 90 or 95 per cent of the dialogue in each play; the “hired men” were minor actors who played only the smaller roles that could be learned without undue delay or extensive rehearsal. It seems likely that the “sharers” made their decisions, financial or artistic, by means of majority voting. Heminges and Shakespeare were no doubt known for their business acumen, and it is more than likely that the advice of Shakespeare was sought on new plays and new playwrights. He is credited, for example, with bringing the plays of Ben Jonson to his company. According to Nicholas Rowe the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were about to reject Every Man in His Humour “when Shakespear luckily cast his Eye upon it, and found something so well in it as to engage him first to read it through.” The story may be apocryphal but it accurately reflects his task of “reading through” new plays for their dramatic potential. The “sharers” were also required to arrange rehearsals, purchase costumes, put up playbills, plan for future productions and engage in all the general administration which a busy theatre requires. They paid for all those involved in the theatre, of course, from book-keeper to gatherer; they also paid for new plays and new costumes as well as the costs of licensing plays with the Master of Revels. They were also obliged, by Elizabethan custom, to give money to the needy poor of the parish.

  It was a society of friends and colleagues, in other words, with common interests and common obligations. It was an extended family, with the actors living in the same neighbourhood. The actors married into one another’s immediate families, too, uniting with various sisters, daughters and widows. In their wills they left money, and various tokens, to one another. It was a family that played together and stayed together. They were “ffellowes,” to use the word they themselves employed.

  They were also zealous and industrious. Alone among the companies of the period the Lord Chamberlain’s Men avoided serious trouble with the civic authorities and stayed out of prison. When one contemporary satirist exonerated certain actors from his aspersions, calling them “sober, discreet, properly learned honest householders and citizens well thought of among their neighbours at home,”3 it was of just such men as Shakespeare and Heminges that he was writing. In a volume entitled Historia Histrionica they are described as “Men of grave and sober Behaviour.”4 More than any other company of their generation they helped to elevate the status of actor beyond that of the vagabond and the acrobat.

  CHAPTER 39

  Lord How Art Thou Changed

  The actual nature of their acting is still not fully understood. There is some argument, for example, over the rival claims of traditionalism and realism in the Elizabethan theatre. Did the actors rely upon formal techniques of oratory and gesture or were they exploiting a new vein of naturalism in their movement and their delivery? The published reports of Burbage, for example, tend to emphasise his naturalness and fluency. His method was described as “personation,” and was deemed to be the way of projecting an individual character “to the life” or “with lively action.” It was a way of “counterfeiting” passions that avoided what was known as “pantomimick action”.

  Shakespeare often alludes to what was clearly considered to be an old-fashioned style of acting – when actors sawed the air with their arms, stamped upon the stage, interrupted their speeches with sighs, and rolled their eyes to signify fear. The old mode of walking across the stage was strutting. The word “ham,” used as a description of bad acting, comes from the visibility of the ham-string of the leg. Strutting was apparently accompanied by ranting. It is what Thomas Nashe described as “ruff raff roaring, with thwick, thwack, thirlery bouncing.”1

  Burbage’s style could then be described as a drift away from external symbolism towards imitation. In an earlier period the essential purpose of the actor had been to represent passion; it seems likely that Burbage and his colleagues had initiated or exploited a style of acting in which the player tried to feel or express that passion. This new emphasis can be identified with the new role of individualism in social and political life, displacing any sense of symbolic or divinely appointed hierarchy.

  It may well be that some new art of emotive or emotional action, employed by Burbage and his colleagues, would he
lp to explain the impact of Shakespeare’s plays upon his contemporaries. He may have written in a new “inward” style precisely because there were players who could readily create such effects. Shakespeare differs from his predecessors in the amount of self-awareness that his characters possess. This, too, may have been a consequence of a new style of acting. Yet it should also be remembered that the company performed many plays other than those of Shakespeare, plays that were written to accord with more conventional styles of action and gesticulation.

  Of course the definition of what is “natural” changes with every generation. In the sixteenth century there were “Marks, or Rules, to fix the Standards of what is Natural.”2 All that can be said with any precision of Shakespeare, in this respect, is that he understood the technical language of the psychology of his period. It was required of actors, in the words of a contemporary dramatist, to “frame each person” so that “you may his nature rightly know.”3 By “nature” he meant the dominant humour, sanguine or phlegmatic, choleric or melancholic, which in turn would seem to require some traditional representation. The aim of the sixteenth-century actor was to impersonate a specific passion or range of passions as they impinged upon an individual temperament; the majority of characters and situations on the Elizabethan stage, for example, are concerned with the tension between reason and passion in human behaviour with all its potentially comic or tragic consequences. It was also important for the actor to be able to enact “reversals” or “transitions” in which one passion suddenly gave way to another. The actors played a part, and not a character. That was why the art of “doubling” had become so important, and why boy actors were perfectly acceptable in female roles; the spectators were aware of the difference in sex, but they were more concerned with the action and the story. That is why there is very little, if any, “motivation” or “development” in a modern sense. Why is Iago malicious? Why did Lear divide his kingdom? Why is Leontes jealous? These are not questions to be asked. There was no appetite for realism as it is presently understood, which is why Shakespeare was able to set his plays in distant and enchanted places with no loss of power.