The number of Shakespeare’s plays published through 1599 and 1600 also suggests that the printed versions were becoming a staple part of the city’s literary currency, akin to pamphlets and to sermons. For a previous generation they had been catchpenny curiosities. Now they were regularly to be found on the bookstalls. Shakespeare was in the air. The Countess of Southampton was making playful allusions to Falstaff in the same year as verses were being written by admirers “Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare” in which he is praised as “honie-tongued.” 5
It was not an easy time, however, for the companies. In June 1600, the Privy Council limited playing time to two performances a week. The order did not preclude royal performances, of course, and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men played twice before the queen during the Christmas season. They were, however, about to encounter royal disapproval.
CHAPTER 69
I Must Become a Borrower of the Night
The official documents of the case tell their own story. “The Erle of Essex is charged with high Treason, namely, That he plotted and practised with the Pope and king of Spaine for the disposing and settling to himself Aswell the Crowne of England, as of the kingdome of Ireland.” In one count of the indictment he was charged with “permitting of that most treasonous booke of Henry the fourth to be printed and published … also the Erle himself being so often present at the playing thereof, and with great applause giving countenance and lyking to the same.” 1 The treasonous book was John Hayward’s account of the abdication and murder of Richard II. The drama that the Earl of Essex greeted with great applause was Shakespeare’s play of the same name. It would seem, therefore, that Shakespeare was somehow implicated in treason and conspiracy. Essex had planned an uprising on the streets of London that would be a prelude to the invasion of the court, ostensibly to protect the monarch from her advisers. Yet the main purpose of the rebellion was to protect Essex himself who, after his failure in Ireland, had been placed under house arrest and was fearful of even more serious consequences.
It is well enough known that Shakespeare was connected with the Essex “circle.” His past and present associations with Southampton, with Lord Strange, with the Countess of Pembroke, with Samuel Daniel, with Sir John Harington, and with others, make this clear. But the events of early 1601 might have placed him in real jeopardy. The Earl of Essex believed himself to be the victim of manifold court plots organised by Sir Robert Cecil, and decided to strike first lest he be struck. So, together with such followers and supporters as the Earl of Southampton, he determined to seize the court itself. He would then free the queen of her advisers, and eventually secure the succession of James I. He had ill-advisedly believed that the populace of London would rise up and take sides with him when he declared his intentions. One way of alerting the populace was to stage a play at the Globe on the day before the insurrection.
On that day, Saturday 7 February 1601, some of Essex’s supporters — among them Lord Monteagle, Sir Christopher Blount and Sir Charles Percy-dined at Gunter’s eating house by the Temple. Lord Monteagle was a staunch Roman Catholic, but he was a loyalist who would later be instrumental in uncovering the “gunpowder plot”; Sir Christopher Blount had formerly been the Earl of Leicester’s Master of Horse and was Essex’s stepfather; Sir Charles Percy was the scion of a famous Catholic family from the North of England. After dinner they took a wherry across the Thames and walked into the Globe Theatre before the start of that afternoon’s play. It was an especially commissioned performance. On the day before some of their number had visited the same theatre, “tellyng them [the players] that the play wold be of Harry the Fourth,”2 the monarch who had deposed Richard II. In a later account of Essex’s treason, written by Francis Bacon, the play is described as “the play of deposing King Richard the second”;3 in other words it contained the scenes of Richard’s forced abdication that had not appeared in the printed version of the drama. The intention of Essex’s supporters was clear enough. The power of the theatre could be used to justify their removal of Elizabeth. It could be used, too, to strengthen their resolve. Whatever the excuses and tergiversations of the Earl of Essex later, it was a clear case of “imagining” the sovereign’s death.
One of the players, Augustine Phillips, later deposed that he “and hys fellows were determyned to have played some other play, holdyng that play of Kyng Richard to be so old & so long out of vse as that they shold have small or no Company at yt.” 4 This was simply an excuse, born out of fear. Love’s Labour’s Lost and The Comedy of Errors, plays written before Richard II, were both performed at much later dates. At which point it seems that one of Essex’s allies, Sir Gilly Meyrick, offered to pay 40 shillings for this uniquely commissioned production. The players acquiesced, and accepted the offer. In hindsight this was not a wise decision, since they could have been implicated in the charge of treason. They may have had no advance notice of Essex’s plans and could have claimed that they innocently took part in the production; yet in the highly charged atmosphere of the time, when rumour and counter-rumour were flying about the city, this was highly unlikely. They were afraid. They could hardly have done it simply for the additional payment of 40 shillings. It is much more likely that they were bullied and cajoled, perhaps even threatened, by these grandees. Note that the lords were reported “telling,” not asking, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to perform that play. It is an indication of the ready professionalism of the players, however, that they were able to reproduce the play from memory after a long period in abeyance. Richard II had been written and played six years before and, although it had no doubt been revived in the interim, its reconstruction at such short notice is still a very remarkable achievement.
In the event Essex’s uprising failed disastrously. The people did not rise to his banner, as he had hoped, and the earl (together with Southampton and other followers) was besieged in his house along the Strand. He surrendered, was tried and eventually executed. Southampton would have followed him to the block, but for the pleas of his mother to the queen. Instead the young nobleman was indefinitely incarcerated in the Tower. Such was the fate of Elizabeth’s enemies and false friends.