James could not have been wholly displeased by his players since, a week later, they performed before him Measure for Measure. In this play a ruler, Duke Vincentio, disliking crowds and noise of “applause, and Aues vehement,” pretends to absent himself from his land in order better to survey it. In his absence a rigidly puritanical deputy, Angelo, proves himself unworthy of his superior’s trust. There are enough contemporary allusions here to have occasioned volumes of commentary, not least the resemblance between the Duke and King James himself. The king was known to dislike crowds and “Aues” to the same degree as the imaginary ruler. The unflattering portrayal of the Puritan, Angelo, must be seen in reference to the current controversies involving those sectarians in the new kingdom. That, at least, is how contemporary playgoers would have viewed it. Earlier that year, for example, the king had been presented by the country’s foremost Puritans with a “Millenary Petition,” containing proposals on dogma and ritual that the king rebuffed. The conclusion of the play, in which the Duke redeems those who have been judged guilty, can also be said to reflect current controversies over the privileges of the king. James believed that Parliament depended upon royal grace, and the ending of Measure for Measure can be construed as maintaining the divine right of kings. The title of the play itself may be taken from a sentence from James’s own treatise on divine right, Basilikon Down, in which he writes: “And, above all, let the measure of your love to everyone be according to the measure of his virtue.” The King’s Men were precisely that, the sovereign’s servants, and part of their role was to advertise the virtues of their patron. Since the play is also set in Catholic Vienna, with a Catholic nun as the principal female and the Duke disguising himself as a Catholic friar, Shakespeare seems to be reflecting the increased level of tolerance for those who professed the old faith. It is pertinent, perhaps, that in this play as in Romeo and Juliet and in Much Ado About Nothing, the friar counsels deceit or concealment for the sake of a greater good. Shakespeare seems always to have been preternaturally alert to the prevailing atmosphere of his time. He was such a sensitive instrument in the world that he could not help but reflect everything.
Shakespeare derived some of the story of Measure for Measure from the same source as Othello. This suggests that he had riffled through Cinthio’s Hecatommithi in search of likely plots. An anthology of stories, such as this one, was a mine of gold. When he found this particular plot to be of interest, he looked up an earlier dramatisation of it — George Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra, written in 1578—to see if there were any extra scenes or characters he might borrow. There were more immediate models to hand, also, since the theme of the ruler in disguise was a popular one in the London playhouses. It is important to grasp the immediacy of Shakespeare’s inspiration. If there were two or three plays using a plot or character that had proved popular, the chances are that he would use them. Even though Measure for Measure is ostensibly set in Vienna, its real setting is early seventeenth-century London with its stews and suburbs, bawds and pandars. It is the world of Southwark and the Globe. Measure for Measure is in part a sketch for King Lear and The Tempest; here the Duke abandons the governance of his dukedom, but the space from this play to King Lear is measured in the shift from comedy to tragedy. It is also worth noticing that the first scenes of the play are also the most inventive. That is frequently the case in Shakespeare’s dramaturgy, where he is often most spirited and emboldened at the beginning of each enterprise.
At court, the day after the performance of Measure for Measure, the Earl of Pembroke helped to assemble and present a masque with music entitled Juno and Hymenaeus. The text has not survived, but Pembroke may have obtained some assistance from the king’s leading dramatist. Then, on the next day, The Comedy of Errors was performed. This was followed on 7 January with Henry V. It was something of a Shakespeare festival, marked a day later by a special production of Love’s Labour’s Lost at the London house of the Earl of Southampton. This was the play that seems to bear references to the Southampton coterie or “circle” which in previous years had included some of the king’s most fervent supporters. Sir Walter Cope, the Chamberlain of the Exchequer, wrote to Robert Cecil earlier in the month that
I have sent and bene all thys morning huntyng for players Juglers & Such kinde of Creaturs, but fynde them harde to finde, wherfore Leavinge notes for them to seeke me, Burbage ys come, & Sayes ther ys no new playe that the queen hath not seene, but they have Revyved an olde one, Cawled Loves Labore Lost, which for wytte & mirthe he sayes will please her exceedingly. And Thys ys appointed to be playd to Morowe night at my Lord of Sowthamptons … Burbage ys my messenger Ready attending your pleasure.5
“Burbage” here is likely to be Cuthbert rather than Richard. It is highly unlikely that the leading tragedian of the day would be employed as a “messenger” between two servants of the state, although the association of players with “Juglers & Such kinde of Creaturs” shows little respect for the social standing of the theatrical profession.
The epistle is interesting for the fact that it also marks a definite occasion when Shakespeare’s “old” plays can be enumerated. We can calculate that in the last two years he had written Othello and Measure for Measure, and that in the succeeding nine years he would write twelve more plays. It is sometimes assumed that this represents a general or gentle decline in his production of new drama as a result of age or debility but, on the assumption that he began his playwriting career in 1586 or 1587, then the rate of composition remains approximately the same throughout his life. The fact that the plays to be written include King Lear, Macbeth and The Tempest is clear enough proof that there was no loss of power.
The performance of Love’s Labour’s Lost in the second week of January was noted by Dudley Carleton when he remarked that “It seems we shall have Christmas all the yeare and therefore I shall never be owt of matter. The last nights revels were kept at my Lord of Cranbornes … and the like two nights before at my Lord of Southamptons.”6 Then, in the following month, there were two performances of The Merchant of Venice. No contemporary dramatist had ever been so honoured by the ruling family. In this year, too, the fourth quarto of Richard III was published; the play was still successful almost fifteen years after its first performance.
Another play, of curious construction and tone, seems to date from this period. All’s Well That Ends Well is generally considered to be a comedy, but it is one dressed in sombre hues. The plot of the infatuated orphan, Helena, pursuing the fatuous and disdainful Count Bertram is not the most edifying; it might almost be a sourly dramatic version of the relationship between the lover and the beloved proposed in the sonnets, with the “lascivious” Bertram as an image of the “Lasciuious grace” of the poems’ recipient. When Helena writes a letter, it takes the form of a sonnet. But the play does have a redeeming character in the portrayal of the elderly Countess of Rossillion, described by George Bernard Shaw as “the most beautiful old woman’s part ever written.” A certain unevenness of tone in the writing prompted Coleridge to speculate that the play “was written at two different, and rather distinct periods of the poet’s life,”7 and it used to be believed that it was a rewriting of the early play Loue labours wonne attributed to Shakespeare. Yet it is best to accept the play as a complete and coherent achievement.