Dear Me,

Alrighty-roo, Shakespeare...huzzah!

Cheers

Shakespeare: The Biography

by

Peter Ackroyd

Part Three

Chapter 24: I Will Not Be Slack to Play My Part in Fortunes Pageant

There were innumerable inns where he could have stayed on his first arrival in London.  The Bell Inn, in Carter Lane by St. Paul's Cathedral was the inn used by people visiting from Stratford.   His neighbours from Stratford, the Quineys or the Sadlers, may have written letters of introduction to friends for him.  It is possible that he stayed with his friend Richard Field.  Field, however, was still an apprentice and may not have been able to offer suitable accommodation.

His first job was in the theatre, but it is not clear in what capacity.  He may have been a call-boy or a porter.  He could have begun his career as a young actor or "hired man".  A descendant of Shakespeare's sister said that he owed his rise in life was because he accidentally held the horse of a gentleman at the door of the theatre.  This of course, sounds too good to be true, but flesh was added to the story in the eighteenth century that said that Shakespeare earned his living by holding the horse of theatre patrons.  The only real evidence for this claim lies in that fact that Shakespeare did seem to know a great deal about horses and could tell the different breeds.  Since horses were widely used in London, it wasn't a huge secret to know about horses.

There are no reason to suppose that a "call-boy", if such a post existed, would automatically rise very high in the theatrical profession.  Common sense suggests that he was hired as an actor.  By this time acting was a profession that required an intense and specific training in the arts of deportment and vocal technique as well as swordsmanship, memory and dancing.  There are two principal candidates for first employing him are the Queen's Men and Lord Strange's Men.  Some of the earliest versions of his plays were the property of the Queen's Men and it is likely that he joined them for a limited period.  He may have been looking around for the best opportunities and moved from company to company.  There is evidence that he joined Lord Strange's Men, perhaps as early as 1588.

Lord Strange was one of the wealthiest and most influential of the English nobility.  It is known that he delighted in drama and the he witnessed the last performance of the Chester mystery cycle.  It an indication of Lord Strange's affinity with the old faith suggests that for him drama was more than tumbling.  His own players were occupied in performing at one of the various great houses which is where the young Shakespeare, in service with the Hoghtons or the Heskeths, is likely to have met them.

Lord Strange has also been associated with a group of noblemen and scholars who have become known as "the school of night."  This esoteric group engaged in discussion of philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and navigation.  Shakespeare may  have alluded to them in Love's Labour\s Lost, a play that was written as a kind of "in-house" entertainment.  Although he was not a member of the "school of night" he knew its purposes.

Lord Strange had been a contemporary of the precocious and witty playwright John Lyle. Christopher Marlowe claimed to be "very well known" to him.  Thomas Nash praised Strange "as this renowned Lord, to whom I owe the utmost powers of my love and duty."  Strange was also acquainted with Thomas Kyd, whose the Spanish Tragedy was part of his players' repertoire.
It was perhaps a chance of cultural history that this particular collection of young men arose in the same period and became dedicated to the same new profession.  In the popular imagination Shakespeare stands alone and inviolable among his contemporaries - quiet, gentle, modest and perhaps rather retiring.  But is the popular imagination, altogether in correct?  Instead we will begin to see him as part of a competitive and restless world, where the prize was awarded to the shrewdest, the most energetic and the most persevering.
Strange was also considered to be Catholic or crypto-Catholic, and around him grew a network of suspicion, espionage and intrigue.  In 1593 Richard Hesketh delivered a letter to Strange, by then Earl of Derby, asking him to stand as leader of a plot against the queen.  Strange surrendered to the authorities, but died suddenly the following year.  His unexpected death was popularly ascribed to witchcraft or poisoning.  Is it any wonder that Shakespeare steered clear of contemporary factions and quarrels?