Did John Shakespeare, husband of another Mary Arden and putative kindred of the martyred Ardens, come under suspicion? Did his son? It was a time of terror for anyone even peripherally concerned or related. The key-cold stone of the Tower, torture and a horrible death, were genuine possibilities. It may well have been at this juncture that John Shakespeare concealed his Catholic testament in the rafters of Henley Street. We know only that when the Shakespeares submitted their coat of arms to the College of Heralds, some sixteen years after the events here related, the device of “ermine fess cheeky”3 used by the Ardens of Park Hall had been removed. There is one other stray fact. In Henry VI, Part Three, Shakespeare invents a native of Warwickshire and gives him the name of John Somerville.
If ever there was a time when William Shakespeare might have appreciated the relative anonymity of the capital, then this was it. But he chose to remain with his family in Stratford for the duration. In February 1585 his twins, Hamnet and Judith Shakespeare, were baptised in the parish church. They were named after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, friends and neighbours who owned a baker’s business at the corner of High Street and Sheep Street. When the Sadlers had a son, they named him William. The young Shakespeare, despite his immortal longings, was still very much part of the local community. The name of the boy, so fraught with association, could have been pronounced and spelled Hamblet (chimney was pronounced as chimbley) or of course Hamlet. The mystery of twinship, unique and indissoluble, also provokes Shakespeare to dramatic speculation; in two of his plays, The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, a twin is confronted by his or her lost counterpart in some dream-like landscape.
The birth of the twins in the early spring of 1585 suggests that, despite Aubrey’s “guesse,” Shakespeare was still with his wife in the spring of 1584. But no children were conceived by the Shakespeares after that date. In this he did not follow the pattern of his parents, who produced eight children over twenty-two years. He did not even follow the pattern of the time, in which large families were common. At the birth of her twins Anne Shakespeare was only thirty years old, and well within the age of child-bearing. It may have been that the birth of Hamnet and Judith was in some way injurious.
In the conditions of Henley Street, however, it would have been inevitable that Anne and her husband slept in the same bed; in this period, too, there were no properly effective means of birth control. They may have abstained by mutual consent from sexual intercourse. All the evidence suggests, however, that Shakespeare was of a highly sexual nature; it is unlikely that, in his early twenties, he could have abstained without very good reason. The better explanation is also the more obvious one. He was not there. So where was he?
CHAPTER 19
This Way for Me
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.