For years after, Will Shakespeare would tell the story of how his career nearly ended before it had begun with a humorous anecdote involving a pompous bureaucrat and an incontinent dog. Embroidered with many asides and delivered with a disarming half-smile, the yarn always reduced his listeners to helpless laughter. But the true story, the one he could not tell, had a much darker side and was not, at the time, funny at all.
The day on which disaster struck had begun normally enough, one morning in late November 1589, as the early rays of a wintry sun crept across the rooftops of the city of London, first glinting on the flinty grey walls of the Tower and then marching steadily westwards to banish night’s shadows from the narrow streets and take the chill out of the air. It warmed the shoulders of labourers as they emerged from their hovels to begin another day’s toil on the building sites that dotted a city that always seemed to be in a state of being torn down or rebuilt, and it cheered the shopkeepers setting up their stalls along the market street of Cheapside, the bakers resting after taking their first batches of bread from the ovens, and the goodwives who gathered by the Great Conduit loaded with washing and bursting with gossip.
That welcome morning sun also fell on the yard of the Bel Savage Inn, where Will was waiting for his colleagues, the actors of Lord Strange’s Men. Dick Cowley and Augustine Phillips arrived first, just as the city’s churches were pealing out their morning’s call to the faithful to come to prayer, and then the other members of the troupe turned up singly or in twos, yawning and rubbing the sleep from their eyes, or else chattering with unwonted good cheer, according to their various natures. Last to arrive was George Bryan, as usual. By then, everyone else was warmed up and ready to start the company’s main business for the day, a rehearsal of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare’s new play.
Well, it was not entirely new, for it had been given its first outing a month ago. Even so, Will was nervous as the players gathered on the makeshift stage just below the southern gallery of the yard to receive their individual parts, all carefully and laboriously copied out from the play’s master script in his neatest hand. He was quite proud of this, the first play he had written entirely by himself, though he had composed it in a rush. The company had desperately needed a new offering to open their season, so he had worked day and night to finish it in just three weeks. Still, it had been well received by its first audience, which was gratifying, as was the immediate decision by the rest of the company to put it into their regular repertoire.
There were the inevitable mix-ups and complaints as the parts were shuffled around from player to player—‘I’m playing Proteus, not Eglamour’; ‘God, Will, this page is all smudged!’; ‘Gus, I think you’ve got the last page of my part stuck on the back of yours…’—but they eventually settled down and launched into the play’s first act. At first, their only audience was an idle stable hand who, abandoning his morning task of clearing away the piles of horse dung dotted about the yard, leaned on his shovel and watched the players deliver their lines. But after a while, they also attracted the attention of the inn’s guests, and before long a dozen faces were peering down from the upper gallery to enjoy for free a performance that would cost them a penny apiece in the afternoon.
Lord Strange’s Men—who derived their name from their patron, the heir to the earldom of Derby—had been in existence for almost a year now, and they were steadily building a following in the London theatre world. Their lustre had been given an extra polish when one of England’s leading comic actors, William Kempe, had been induced to join them upon his return from an extended tour entertaining the King of Denmark in his chilly castle at Elsinore. Yellow-bearded and laughing-eyed, he made his first appearance in the play near the beginning of the second act with an amusing monologue in which his character berates a dog (Kempe’s own rather villainous-looking canine, which went by the name of Crab) for its apparent indifference to his family’s distress upon being given the news that he must leave them.
He was only halfway through this speech when the big doors at the far end of the yard were thrust open with a force that sent them crashing against the walls, and a scruffy-looking troop of men armed with halberds stamped through the tunnel connecting the yard to the busy thoroughfare beyond. At their head was a short, exuberantly bewhiskered man whose rotund form was clad head to foot in black—a black cape, black doublet trimmed with gold, black breeches and hose, even a black feather in his hat. The only relief from all this sartorial darkness was a snowy-white ruff, upon which the jowls of his face rested, making his head resemble a fat chicken being served up on a platter.
The troop came to a shambling halt, and, at an impatient gesture, a small, mousy-looking fellow was summoned from among the ranks of the halberdiers. Extracting a scroll from somewhere in his doublet, he noisily cleared his throat and then began to read in a loud, harsh voice.
‘By order of his worship Sir John Harte, Lord Mayor of London, it is commanded that the company of actors who wear the livery of Lord Strange, shall immediately desist from all performances of any plays in progress or planned within the limits of the city. It is further commanded that the said company of actors shall be banned from giving any performances of any kind until such time as it pleases the council and his worship the mayor to decide otherwise. Any person or persons failing to heed this instruction shall be liable for imprisonment or such other punishment as may be deemed necessary.’
There was a bewildered silence as the man rolled up his scroll and stared defiantly at the actors. Then Richard Cowley gave a little shake of his head as though recovering his wits and walked to the front of the stage, jumped down and made an obsequious bow toward the black-clad gentleman. Straightening, he turned to the other official, held out his hand, and gestured for the scroll, which he proceeded to examine with the greatest care as if he might find some explanation for this astounding development hidden in its brief contents. Handing the paper back to the official, he turned again towards the man in black.
‘Sir Edmund, your presence here suggests to me that this command from the Lord Mayor has been issued with your approval.’ Cowley’s tone was respectful enough, but it still managed to convey a slight edge of annoyance. ‘Perhaps you might favour us with some explanation?’
Up on the stage, Will and his fellows exchanged looks of astonishment. That the Queen’s Master of the Revels, Sir Edmund Tilney, should have taken the trouble to deliver this interdict personally was almost unprecedented. For any company that played within London’s walls, there was always the possibility that the Puritan-dominated city council would seize on some pretext to close them down. On the other hand, plays and theatre-going were popular with the gentry, not to mention the queen, and so the city fathers had to tread carefully. Tilney’s presence must mean that the scales of this balance had been tipped in some way that could not bode well for their company.
‘You put on a play called The Tyrant of Athens, did you not? This past week?’
‘We did.’
An unpleasant little smile appeared beneath Tilney’s extravagant moustache. ‘Then, Master Cowley, you performed an unlicensed play.’
‘That cannot be so, Sir Edmund,’ Cowley was firm. He turned towards the other actors. ‘Will?’
Will, making his way down from the stage, felt his stomach clench in alarm, for it was his job to ensure that the office of the Master of the Revels licensed the master script of every play that they performed. What could have gone wrong? Certainly, he had no recollection of a problem with this particular play.
‘This is our bookholder, Mister William Shakespeare. I am sure he can confirm that everything is in order…’
Will swallowed, trying and failing to hide his nervousness as he thought furiously. The Tyrant of Athens was a new play that they had commissioned from George Peele; they had needed it for the opening of their season last week, but Peele’s promise to get it to them in plenty of time was hollow, and the manuscript had arrived just a few days before they were to perform it. Every play had to be sent to the Master’s office in the Palace of Whitehall, where one or another of the clerks would enter it into a register. The script would then be added to the pile for the Master’s attention; it might be several weeks before it came back, with annotations if the Master had taken exception to some aspect of the play, or else with a simple seal if it was approved as it had been submitted.
It was also usual to pay a small bribe to the clerks in order to speed up the whole process. Ever since the office of the Master of the Revels had been given responsibility for the licensing of plays, this had become a lucrative source of income for the clerks—if you refused to pay, your manuscript might languish at the bottom of the pile for months, and of course, the more you paid, the more speedily you would get your script in front of the Master. Since they needed The Tyrant of Athens urgently, Will had paid over a substantial sum. After just a few days, it had come back with the word ‘approved’ scrawled across one corner.
‘I, er, I…yes of course, Dick, everything was done correctly,’ he stammered after making a brief bow towards the Master. ‘I took the script down to Whitehall myself and left it with Master Clerk Pawley; it came back approved with no notations.’
‘What form did this supposed approval take?’ There was something about the way that Tilney asked the question that made Will even more nervous.
‘The word “approved” was written on the front page.’
‘But there was no seal?’
Will frowned. Now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been the usual small wax seal that signified that the script had been registered and approved; at the time he had thought nothing of it, assuming that it was just a procedural step that had been missed in the hurry to get it through.
‘No, Sir Edmund, there was not. I assumed that the written approval was sufficient.’
‘Then you assumed wrong, sirrah! For I never saw the script of this play, let alone approved it.’
Will could think of nothing to say, for he could not fathom what might have gone wrong. Had he not paid a sufficient bribe to the clerk, Pawley? He thought he had. And if Tilney hadn’t seen the script, who had written the approval on the front page? None of it added up.
‘Furthermore, I am informed by a witness who came to see you put this play on that it contains scenes that, had I been given the opportunity, I would most certainly have condemned.’ The Master now looked very much like a cat playing with its mouse; even his whiskers seemed to twitch. ‘Scenes of licentiousness, of depravity.’
Will frowned. Peele’s tale of a mythic Greek tyrant contained, it was true, some violent scenes, including a disembowelling that had taken a fair bit of ingenuity to stage. And there was a scene in which the tyrant’s soldiers raped one of his rival’s daughters. But in truth, the play as a whole was no more ‘depraved’ than, say, Marlowe’s Tamburlaine plays or even Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy, both of which had been licensed without any difficulty at all.
Richard Cowley must have been thinking the same thoughts. ‘Sir Edmund, surely you jest? The city has seen far worse!’
‘No, sir, I do not jest. I am not a jesting man.’ Tilney flipped his wrist in a gesture of dismissal. ‘Enough. You and your company, Mister Cowley, have breached the rules, and you must pay the price. You are banned from performing within the boundaries of the city of London until such time as it should please me to say otherwise.’
Kempe’s dog, which had been impassive throughout, now decided to take a dislike to the master. Escaping his owner’s grasp, the woolly-haired beast jumped down from the stage and proceeded to race round and round Tilney’s legs, all the while letting out sharp little barks of disapproval. The master yelped and jumped back, colliding with two startled halberdiers, who nearly dropped their weapons in surprise.
Placing two fingers in his mouth, Kempe produced a piercing whistle that arrested the dog’s cavorting. It stopped, tipped its head on one side, then cocked a leg and let go of a stream of urine onto the leather of the master’s boot. That last protest delivered, the creature jogged happily back to Kempe’s side.
‘Come, Crab, that is no way to treat one of Her Majesty’s servants,’ the actor said, one shaggy eyebrow raised and a sardonic smile on his lips. ‘Forgive him, Sir Edmund: he is a simpleton of a dog and knows not what he does, nor who you are, else I am sure he would have been more decorous.’
The master seemed unable to decide whether or not the comic actor’s mockery required a retort. Staring at Kempe for a long moment, he finally flapped one gloved and bejewelled hand, turned on his heel and pushed between the halberdiers. Forced to part their ranks to allow him passage, they were then left to reorder themselves to follow him in a shuffling procession that lacked any semblance of martial regularity. In a few moments the yard was once again deserted. Glancing up at the galleries, Will saw they were now completely empty; no doubt the spectators had fled at the first sight of authority.
‘Well, I would say that we have just been well and truly buggered,’ Augustine Phillips broke the silence.
Will felt the weight of everyone’s eyes on him. ‘It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have assumed the play was approved without a seal.’
‘No, you shouldn’t.’ Dick Cowley was uncharacteristically brusque. ‘You know well enough that Tilney is a stickler for form.’
‘Don’t be too hard on Shakespeare, Cowley,’ Kempe said, looking up from where he was busy securing Crab to one of the posts that held up the gallery. ‘Tilney is devoted to procedure, yes, but it seems to me that there is more to this little display of petty authority. After all, he could have simply rapped our knuckles and let it go as a minor infraction of the rules, instead of getting the city to impose a ban, which must have taken some effort on his part.’
‘Has he been bought, d’ye think?’ queried George Bryan.
‘It’s possible, I suppose. Though everyone says that Tilney is incorruptible—old Burbage got into terrible trouble last year, remember? When he tried to bribe the Master to drop his objections to one of Lodge’s plays?’
‘It hardly matters, does it?’ Gus Phillips said impatiently. ‘We have just been told we can’t perform within the city limits. So what do we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kempe said. ‘But I do know that I need a drink. Come on, we’ll all be able to think better with some ale in our stomachs.’
And so they abandoned the stage and trooped off to the taproom, where they settled down to drink and argue through the alternatives that faced them. Which really amounted to just two: find a theatre outside the city walls that would host them or go on tour until the ban was lifted. The difficulty was that all of the theatres beyond the remit of the council—the Curtain, Burbage’s Theatre, and the Rose over in Southbank—were occupied by other companies, who would hardly be likely to surrender any of their rights to help out a rival.
Going on a tour of the country had some appeal, but after much discussion, they had to admit that it was impossible. Mounting a country tour was something that needed a great deal of advance planning. Town councils had to be approached for permission to put on plays, suitable venues had to be found, transport arranged, accommodation organised, and so on. As a former member of the country’s leading touring company, The Queen’s Men, Will knew better than any of his colleagues just how much work went into such a venture.
Which left only one other option.
‘I fear we must disband the company, at least until the ban is lifted.’ Cowley’s face was bleak as he made this pronouncement.
‘And what if it is never lifted?’ George Bryan asked gloomily.
‘Surely it will be. But perhaps it would be prudent to ask our patron to intervene on our behalf.’
Though he joined the others in nodding enthusiastically at this suggestion, Will wondered whether in fact Lord Strange would be much disposed to do anything for them. After all, Sir Edmund Tilney was a powerful courtier, and though Lord Strange was the heir to the Earl of Derby, one of the greatest magnates in the kingdom, he might not feel that it would be politic to cross swords with Tilney over such a matter. The actors might wear his livery, but the truth was that his patronage of their company was a kind of polite fiction that enabled them to perform without running foul of various laws—against vagrancy, for example—that would otherwise land them in gaol.
‘Where is his lordship at present?’ Gus Phillips asked.
‘In the north, I believe. Is that right, Will?’
‘Yes, so David Barnes told me.’ Barnes was the steward of the Derby household in London. ‘He is expected back in London in the new year.’
Cowley nodded. ‘Then I will apply to him for help on our behalf when he arrives. It’s not all bad: the Christmas season is upon us, and we would have been winding down anyway. Perhaps Tilney will see sense in the new year; in the meantime, friends, we will all have to shift for ourselves.’
The finality of that pronouncement plunged the rest of them into gloom as they each contemplated their future. Then Kempe startled them all by jumping to his feet and banging his fist on the table with a loud crack.
‘I, for one, will not let this injustice go without a protest,’ he said. ‘Let us give one last performance of The Tyrant of Athens, and be damned to both mayor and master before we disband entirely.’
Kempe’s air of defiance seemed to puncture the cloud of despondency that had hung over them, and in a babble of voices the other actors shouted their agreement with his plan. Even Will, usually circumspect, was caught up in the general enthusiasm as they talked through what they would need to do to bring their plan to fruition. They would have to have at least one rehearsal, of course, and they would have to move quickly to tell their usual audience of the change of plan when they arrived the following day expecting to see Will’s play. And there was also the problem of where to stage it, for Tilney had left a couple of guards at the entrance to the yard of the Bel Savage to ensure that they complied with his ban.
‘Smedley, at the Cross Keys,’ Cowley said. ‘Jonas owes me a favour or two, and I know for certain that there are no plays planned there for the next week. He will be happy for the extra revenue.’
And so, three days later, they put on their final performance of George Peele’s The Tyrant of Athens at the Cross Keys Inn over on the other side of the city. Under the confused eyes of the two halberdiers standing outside the Bel Savage, the actors had greeted the playgoers as they turned up expecting to see The Two Gentlemen of Verona and informed them of their predicament and of their plan, which was greeted with hoots of laughter. Nothing so animated a Londoner as the chance to poke authority in the eye. The performance was a sold-out triumph, and at the end, Cowley announced the company’s temporary dissolution in a masterful speech that nigh-on incited a riot. Their act of defiance complete, they fled the venue in some haste, lest the Lord Mayor send his bailiffs after them.
The next day the euphoria had dissolved and it was a glum group of actors who gathered at the Falcon Inn, a tavern in Southwark that was safely across the river and beyond the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor. After a round of toasts that fervently wished a pox upon the Mayor, the Master, and all their minions, the talk turned to the future. The ban could not last long, most thought, half a year at most, and then they would soon be treading the stage once more. For the sharers in the company—Cowley, Phillips, Bryan and the absent Tom Pope—the situation was bad enough, since they would lose their shares of the profit from the company’s operations. But they were all seasoned and well-respected actors and would have little difficulty finding temporary engagements with one or another of the London companies.
For Will, though, the company’s disbandment was disastrous. He was a hired man, earning a mere six shillings a week—but only when the company was performing. The five pounds that he had been paid for The Two Gentlemen of Verona was long gone, some sent off to Stratford to feed and clothe his ever-needy family, and the rest paid to his landlord for his lodgings. He was not quite destitute, but he faced a crimped future unless he could find work elsewhere.
At least his stock with his colleagues seemed undimmed. He felt sick in the stomach at the thought of the disaster he had brought down upon their heads and said so. But they refused to accept his repeated apologies, toasting him instead, and they seemed set to part with the greatest of goodwill. In fact, Cowley insisted on a display of confidence in him. When he had arrived at the inn, he had been carrying a box, which he now proceeded to hand over to Will with mock ceremony.
‘You know what this is, Will,’ he said with a smile. ‘Keep it safe for us until we can gather again and make good use of its contents.’
There was nothing remarkable about the box; it was really more of a small chest, about a foot and a half long and seven or eight inches deep, with a curved lid and a solid iron handle to carry it. Made of plain, dark wood, it had no decoration other than the scuffs and scratch marks of long use. Plain it may have been, but Will knew that it contained a treasure: the company’s store of plays, twenty or more of the original manuscripts from which the players’ parts could be copied, each bundled up and tied with a blue ribbon.
Will was being entrusted with the company’s most valuable possession, other than the costumes and props that had been deposited in a storeroom of the Bell Savage Inn. As he made his way home, the box carefully sheltered beneath his cloak to protect it from the elements, he comforted himself with the hope that it would not be long before they would need its contents again.
