He did not stand out as a man of eccentric or extraordinary character, and it seems that his contemporaries sensed a deep equality with him. He effortlessly entered the sphere of their interests and activities. He was in that sense infinitely good-natured. The apparent ordinariness of extraordinary men and women is one of the last great taboos of biographical writing. It would not do to admit that nineteen-twentieths of a life, however great or enchanted, is plain and unexciting and not to be distinguished from the life of anyone else. But there should be a further admission. The behaviour and conversation of even the most powerful writer, or statesman, or philosopher, will in large part be no more than average or predictable. There is not much to differentiate the mass of humankind, except for some individual action or production. Shakespeare seems to embody the truth of this.
That is why his contemporaries came away from Shakespeare’s company with no overwhelming sense of his personality. Would he have recounted his sexual conquests or commented upon other writers? Would he have become drunk, in an effort to douse his furious energy? Ben Jonson remarked upon his “open, and free nature,” echoing Iago’s description of Othello. Open may mean accessible and transparent; but it can also mean receptive, like an open mouth. His amiability may not have been so apparent in his professional capacity. It has often been pointed out that he did not become engaged in the more pugnacious writers’ quarrels of the period, and seems in general to have steered clear of public conflict and controversy. They were a waste of time and energy. But he parodied his contemporaries’ styles in his plays, and caricatured their persons in figures such as Moth. It is easy to exaggerate Shakespeare’s poise and detachment; he may not have been argumentative in public, hating controversy of every kind, but he may have been sharp and acerbic in private.
Much speculation has been devoted to his “feminine” characteristics and, in particular, to his extraordinary compassion and sensitivity. Yet many men have been known for their yielding sympathy and consideration; as attributes, these are not sexually exclusive. It was not because he had some “soft” aspect of his character that he chose not to enter into fights and disagreements, but because he could see every side of every argument. It was once said of Henry James that he had a mind so fine that no idea could violate it; we might say of Shakespeare that he had a sympathy so fine that no belief could injure it.
But, when he left the company of others, what then? In remarkable people there is always an inward power propelling them forward. Shakespeare was very determined. He was very energetic. You do not write thirty-six plays in less than twenty-five years without being driven. So, on his first arrival in London, his contemporaries would have encountered a highly ambitious young man. He was ready to compete with his more educated contemporaries, from Marlowe and Chapman to Greene and Lyly. In certain respects he resembles the adventurers in other fields of Elizabethan endeavour, and he would come to master the contemporary drama in all of its forms. To succeed in Elizabethan society, too, it was necessary to be quick, shrewd and exceedingly determined. We may assume that he was not sentimental. The young men in his early plays are remarkable for their humour and their energy, amounting almost to self-assertion; they are not troubled by inward doubt. Shakespeare himself had a sure sense of his own worth. One of the themes of his sonnets, for example, lies in the full expectation that his verse would be read in succeeding ages. It is hard to believe, however, that he was free from interior conflict. His plays are established upon it. He was a man who had left behind his wife and children, and whose plays are filled with images of loss, exile and self-division. He had a desire to act, even at the cost of his reputation as a poet, and the sonnets are in any autobiographical reading touched by melancholy brooding and even self-disgust.
Yet he was also exceedingly practical. He could not otherwise have written, acted in, and helped to “direct” dramas that appealed to all of the people. It is a matter of common observation that a “genius” in one field is likely to be supremely able in other spheres of life. Turner was a sterling businessman. Thomas More was an expert lawyer. Chaucer was an excellent diplomat. Shakespeare was skilful, not to say hard-headed, in money matters. He acquired a reputation among his fellow countrymen as a money-lender. He bought up properties and tithes. He speculated on corn and malt at times of dearth. His will is an eminently pragmatic and unsentimental document. And, by the time of his death, he had become a very rich man.
CHAPTER 24
I Will Not Be Slack to Play
My Part in Fortunes Pageant
There were innumerable inns where he could have lodged, on his first arrival in London. The Bell Inn, in Carter Lane by St. Paul’s Cathedral, was the inn used by such Stratfordians as William Greenaway, but it is just as likely that he stayed with a fellow countryman who had been approached in advance. The Quineys or the Sadlers may even have written for him letters of introduction to friends or relatives in the city; Bartholomew Quiney, for example, was a rich cloth-maker who had settled in the capital. It is even possible that he stayed with his friend Richard Field; but Field was still an apprentice, and may not have been able to offer suitable accommodation.
His first employment was in the theatre, but it is not clear in what capacity. His earliest biographer states that “he made his first Acquaintance in the Play-house … in a very mean Rank.”1 This has been variously construed as meaning that he became a prompter, a call-boy, a porter or a patcher-up of other men’s plays. It could also imply that he began as a young actor or “hired man.” The tradition in Stratford itself was of the same import. A visitor to the town in 1693 records that “the clerke who shew’d me this church is above eighty years old” and that this old man recalled how the young Shakespeare had gone to London “and there was received into the play-house as a serviture.”2
A lineal descendant of Joan Shakespeare, the poet’s sister, stated “that Shakespeare owed his rise in life, and his introduction to the theatre, to his accidentally holding the horse of a gentleman at the door of the theatre on his first arriving in London; his appearance led to enquiry and subsequent patronage.”3 This sounds too good to be true. But flesh was added to these bones in the eighteenth century by Samuel Johnson, who repeated the story that the young Shakespeare earned his living by holding the horses of theatrical patrons. In The Plays of William Shakespeare, published in 1765, he added the information that many such patrons “came on horseback to the play” and when Shakespeare arrived in London “his first expedient was to wait at the door of the play-house, and hold the horses of those who had no servants, that they might be ready again after the performance. In this office he became so conspicuous for his care and readiness, that in a short time every man as he alighted called for Will Shakespear.”4 It is true that two of the earliest theatres, the Theatre and the Curtain, were best reached on horseback. But the only real evidence for this claim lies in the fact that Shakespeare did indeed know a great deal about horses and could distinguish a Neapolitan from a Spaniard; he even knew the slang of the horse-yard. Since horses were the primary means of transport, however, that knowledge was widely shared. There are other reasons for Shakespeare’s interest in horsemanship; it was considered to be an intrinsic part of gentlemanly and especially noble conduct.
The authority of Samuel Johnson was not, in any event, sufficient to sway other commentators. The Shakespearian scholar and editor Edmond Malone stated that “there is a stage tradition that his first office in the theatre was that of Call-boy or prompter’s attendant; whose employment it is to give the performers notice to be ready to enter.”5