Category William Shakespeare

            Since there are hardly any documents from the 16th century suggesting the dimension of the theatre, it is difficult to say conclusively what exactly the theatre looked like. However, over the last couple of centuries, there has been extensive research on the shape and size of the theatre and we know something about it today. The Globe was an open-air amphitheatre around 30 metres in diameter in a polygon shape with twenty sides. Around 3,000 spectators could be accommodated in the theatre.

            The theatre had three storeys. Much like our modern movie theatres, the ticket charges differed according to where one preferred to sit. The commoners who could not afford to pay more than a penny had to stand on the ground at the base of the stage. This area was known as the ‘pit’. The people who paid a penny to watch the play were known as ‘groundlings’. Groundling, in fact, is the name of a kind of a small fish with a gaping mouth. All that the actor at the centre of the stage looking down to the ‘pit’ could see was the ocean of faces of men that looked like a swarm of open-mouthed groundlings!

            The theatre had a backstage area or tiring-house, which contained the dressing rooms, the prop room, the musician’s gallery and connecting passage-ways. There were an inner stage, a central balcony stage and a central music gallery within it. The shape and structure of the theatre determined some of the important features of Shakespeare’s plays too.

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           The Lord Chamberlain’s Company was the leading drama company in London during the final years of the 16th century. The company was founded during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1594. As was the custom then, any enterprise of great magnitude such as a theatre needed a powerful patron and this company’s patron was Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain of Royal Court. Lord Chamberlain is the most senior member of the Royal Household of the United Kingdom. Henry Carey was in charge of the court entertainment then. The company changed its name a couple of times; first to the Lord Hunsdon’s Men when Henry Carey succeeded him and then to the king’s Men, when the king James ascended the throne and became the company’ patron.

            In 1599, the company built a theatre called the Globe Theatre. They had already another theatre in place, called ‘the Theatre’. However, due to certain disagreements between the players and the owner of the land on which the theatre stood, the group built the Globe Theatre, on the bank of the Thames River. The Globe Theatre, in fact, was built with the wooden planks of old theatre. It was bigger and better than the one it replaced.

            There is a general disagreement over the inaugural play in the Globe Theatre. Some say it was Shakespeare’s Henry V; some others, Julius Caesar or Ben Jonson’s Every Man out of His Humour. The theatre was destroyed in a fire in 1613 and was rebuilt in the next year.

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            Imagine if Shakespeare did not exist! Then, the age would be known probably by another great dramatist’s name, that of Ben Jonson.

            Jonson was one of the most respected writers of Shakespeare’s time. He was Shakespeare’s closest friend too. In fact, Shakespeare was the god-father of Jonson’s son. They both used to frequent each other’s homes.

            Ben Jonson was eight years younger than Shakespeare. Although we do not conclusively know how both came to meet each other, Jonson is thought to have submitted a play to Shakespeare’s company for performance. Shakespeare even acted in Jonson’s play, ‘Every Man in his Humour’.

             Like Shakespeare, Jonson too did not have university education. Although Ben Jonson was considered a fine person, he was reported to have killed a fellow actor in a duel in 1598. His major plays include Every Man in His Humour, Eastward Ho, The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair.

            Another of Shakespeare’s contemporaries is John Webster. He wrote only a few plays, of which ‘The White Devil’ and ‘The Duchess of Malfi’ are considered classics.

            Francis Bacon Edmund Spencer, Sir Philip Sidney, Thomas Campion, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley and Thomas Dekker are some other writers of the era.

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            During Shakespeare’s time, there were many other popular writers in London. Drama being the most sought-after form of entertainment of the period, many of these writers was playwrights whose plays were regularly performed on stage, while others were pamphleteers.

            Writing pamphlets expressing a social or political argument was a popular literary form in England from the mid-16th century onwards. Unlike Shakespeare, these writers were educated in universities.

            Do you know the story of Doctor Faustus, a man who sold his soul to the devil for all the knowledge in the world? This popular play was written by Christopher Marlowe, a University Wit.

            Other prominent University Wits were Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, John Lyly, Thomas Lodge and George Peele. All these writers were educated in either Oxford or Cambridge Universities. They are credited with introducing to the English audience many heroic themes in a heroic style. While many of the University Wits wrote and performed some academically interesting plays, the humble playwrights who had no scholarly background such as Shakespeare could relate better with people through their more dramatic, stirring and emotional plots. In fact, the strength of Shakespeare and the group of playwrights he represented was that they barely had any theoretical knowledge, taught in universities. Their plays were rich in emotionally appealing events. Characters expressed their happiness, sorrows and anguish in lengthy speeches, which whetted people’s appetite. And that was the secret of Shakespeare’s popular.

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            Shakespeare reappears in London scene around the late 1580s, and the early 1590s. His name is mentioned in 1592 as part of a theatre production in London. This means that Shakespeare had started his career as a dramatist around the latter half of the 1580s. By this time he is no longer the turbulent youth of old. He is changed and is more mature. Shakespeare may have written and directed some of his earliest plays then.

         In addition, he was important enough to be attacked and criticized by some known writers then! Robert Greene, a popular writer of Shakespeare’s time, called him, ‘an upstart crow’, meaning someone who had a sudden and unexpected rise in social class by means of dishonest deeds. Greene went on to add that Shakespeare was unsuccessfully trying to match the writings of the renowned playwrights of his times, known as University Wits.’ These writers were university educated in classic literature and had the requisite knowledge of ‘how to write.’ However, by a strange twist of fate, some of these writers including Robert Greene went into oblivion while Shakespeare out of the greatest writers the world has ever seen! Robert Greene is known today as merely a detractor of Shakespeare and denigrator of his character.

           By 1594, Shakespeare had cemented his place in the theatre industry of London as his plays were enacted before large audiences. He was also known as a talented actor. After 1594, a drama company known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men hired him. The company was owned by a group of actors including Shakespeare. All his later plays were performed by this company. Shakespeare’s most renowned plays such as Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth were all produced by them. Richard Burbage handled the lead roles in all these plays and Shakespeare played some secondary roles.

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            For about seven years, there is no trace of what Shakespeare did. Records start after the birth of his twins. The last official record of Shakespeare’s presence in his village is the event of their baptism. Then there is no news of him. This period is known as ‘Shakespeare’s Lost Years’. In 1592, Shakespeare reappeared on the scene. We see him as an actor and playwright in London. However, we do not have any idea when he left Stratford-upon-Avon, why he went to London, or what he was doing before becoming a professional actor and dramatist in the capital. There is so much speculation as to what our great writer was up to during these years in oblivion.

            What was Shakespeare doing all those mysterious years? Maybe, Shakespeare was living quietly in his village, helping his family business. Some, however, say that Shakespeare had some troubles with a local landowner in Stratford-upon-Avon called Sir Thomas Lucy. He was caught poaching deer from Sir Thomas’ estate and was facing a disgraceful prosecuted. He may have fled to London in order to escape the punishment.

            Another account says that Shakespeare worked as a schoolmaster in his village. Some others say that he was a clerk of a lawyer. There are also stories that he became a soldier and fought in wars. A probable explanation is that he joined one of the drama companies that visited his village in the late 1580s. He became an actor and learned the art of writing plays. It is highly unlikely that Shakespeare became a playwright without some initiation and training in it. Whatever be the truth, it is quite natural to find gaps in the records of the lives of people who lived in the distant past.

            Unlike the present day, people did not find it essential to keep records intact. Many official documents may have been destroyed due to negligence or passage of time as well.  Inquisitive minds, however, have built a cult around Shakespeare’s missing years because the magnitude and diversity of human lives Shakespeare portrayed in his plays is testimony to his knowledge and experience of different walks of life, variety of professions and kinds of people.

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