No one is quite sure when Shakespeare arrived in London.
He was a very practical person so it seems unlikely that he abandon his family. Instead, he left for London with a plan. He may have accepted an invitation from a group of players and if the best means of supporting his family were to found in London, then London he had to go.
As sensible as Shakespeare was, he would have set out in late spring or early summer. It would have taken four days to get to London or two by horse.
As he approached the city, the first thing he would of seen is the pall of smoke. He would have heard a cacophony of humanity and the ringing of bells. A traveller could smell the city twenty-five miles away, from all sides. The young Shakespeare would have found it all deeply exciting.
Someone entering the city for the first time would be profoundly mover or disturbed by the experience. It assaulted the senses, a vortex of energy. There were rows of shops and old women selling nuts. Children were busy at work along side adults. There were alleys that seemed to lead nowhere, sudden flights of stairs and rivulets of filth. It was already an ancient place, but the miracle of sixteenth century London lay in its ability to constantly renew itself. It was a young man's world in which aspiration and ambition might lead anywhere. This was where Shakespeare belonged.
London was unique. It was the only city of its kind in England. It became the home of the pageant in which spectacle and colour were on display. It might in part be a definition of Shakespeare's own art.
The London playhouse was a new kind of building. People watched the actors in order to learn how to behave, how to speak and how to bow. It retained the authority as an instructor and was not simply entertainment in a modern sense. Visitors to London were usually shocked at the level of intimacy between men and women of the city.
The owners of the playhouse were also the owners of the brothels. The theatre and the brothel both offered a release from conventional ethics and social morality. Shakespeare's plays are filled with sexual innuendo.
Of disease there was no end. The playhouses were closed down during the time of plague. In 1593 more than fourteen percent of the population died of the plague. London had become an organism of death and depravity.
The poor and the vagrant have always been part of London. There were the labouring poor who eked out a living with jobs that ranged from porters to water bearers. Shakespeare was acutely aware of this group of dispossessed people.
The young Shakespeare was eager for new experiences in all its forms. His aspiring spirit might find its true calling.
We can see Shakespeare's intense energy. While no remarkable person is not entirely lacking in energy they are stopped by embarrassment. Everyone noted his sweetness and courtesy. He was called civil and most often gentle. he was known for his quick wit.
He did not stand out as a man of eccentric character. he effortlessly entered the sphere of their interests. Much speculation has been devoted to his "feminine" characteristics, in particular to his compassion and sensitivity.
Yet he was also exceedingly practical. Shakespeare was also skillful and hard headed. He bought up property and tithes by the time of his death. There were innumerable inns where he could have stayed on his first arrival in London. The Bell was where he would have most likely have stayed. It was located on Carter Lane by St. Paul's Cathedral and most often used by Strafordians travelling to London. He may have received letters from his neighbours in Stratford to their friends in London.
His first job was in the theatre, though to what capacity is uncertain. He may have been a call-boy or a porter. A descendant of Shakespeare's sister claimed he owed his rise in theatre because he accidentally held the horse of a gentleman, This of course, sounds to good to be true. The only real evidence for this claim is Shakespeare's knowledge of horses, but horses were widely used in London. It wouldn't have been uncommon to k now about horses.
Common sense suggests Shakespeare was hired as an actor. There are two principal candidates to who may have first employed him. The Queen's Men and Lord Strange's Men. Some of the earliest version of Shakespeare's plays belong to the Queen's Men. There is evidence he joined Lord Strange's Men as early as 1588.
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 discussed philosophy, mathematics, chemistry and navigation.
Lord Strange had been a contemporary of playwrights such as Jon Lyle, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, and Thomas Nash.
In the popular imagination Shakespeare stands along among his peers. Instead of thinking of Shakespeare as a quiet and retiring sort and start thinking of him as part of a competitive and restless world where the prize was awarded to the most shrewdest and energetic. Strange was considered to be a Catholic or crypto-Catholic, with a network of suspicion, espionage and intrigue. In 1593 Richard Hesketh delivered a letter to Strange asking him to stand as a leader in a plot against the queen. Strange surrendered the letter to the authorities, but died suddenly the following year. His death attributed to poisoning. Is it any wonder that Shakespeare steered clear of factions?
In 1572 two Acts of Parliament materially affected the status of the players. It was a device by which Elizabeth hoped to curb the power of over powered lords. and it also affected certain troupes of actors cut adrift from their noble patronage.
When Shakespeare arrived in London there were several venues for theatrical performances. Some of the earliest companies worked in the inns. These were places where Shakespeare learned his craft first hand.
On Shakespeare's arrival there were at least four large structures built. The first ever recorded theatre in London was the Red Lion constructed by John Brayne. John began as a player but he had become a noted theatrical entrepreneur and father of the celebrated actor who played many of Shakespeare's most important roles.
As Shakespeare made his way through London a new theatre called the Rose was being built on the south bank of the river. The Rose was being financed by a new breed of entrepreneurs.
The theatre was built on the site of a former brothel. It has been calculated that the |Rose held up to fourteen hundred people and five years later, after a renovation it could hold twenty four hundred people. It has also been argued that Mimius and Histriones of medieval provenance continued their work well into Shakespeare's own period. The Mimius put on an asses head, as did Bottom in A Midsummer's Night Dream. Thus Shakespeare emerged from many years of cultural practice. Life is a process rather than a hurdle race. It is wrong to assume that somehow the English drama began with the emergence of Shakespeare. He entered what was already a swiftly flowing stream.
Shakespeare arrived in the city at the most opportune time. The rise of adult companies who employed young playwrights large bands of actors steadily eclipsed the popularity of the boys plays. By 1590 the children's plays had disappeared only to re-emerge a decade later with another new wave of playwrights.
Shakespeare knew men such as Thomas Nash and Christopher Marlowe. All of them were considered "Spirited, reckless, drunken, promiscuous, wild and dangerous."
So the stage was always ready for new voices./. Shakespeare had entered London at a moment of dramatic revelations. There were new dramas and dramatists coming into the ascent. The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd inaugurated the fashion for revenge tragedy. It inspired a very early version of Hamlet.
It was a small intense world. Young dramatists stole lines and characters from each other. Competition was at its highest. Within a few years Lord Strange`s Men acquired an enviable reputation. Two of Shakespeare`s earliest plays were already part of the repertoire. They sometimes acted jointly with the Admiral`s Men. In 1590 the Lord Admiral`s Men and Lord Strange`s Men had come to some agreement where the Lord Admiral`s Men performed at the Theatre and Lord Strange`s Men at the Curtain.
Among the twenty-seven actors in Lord Strange`s troupe. Shakespeare could count among his colleagues, Augustine Phillips, Will Sily, Thomas Pope, George Brian, Richard Cowley and of course Burbage himself. The remarkable fact is that Shakespeare would work with all these actors for the rest of his life.
There has been some suggestion that it was Lord Strange who commissioned Shakespeare to compose the cycle of history plays as a tribute to Elizabeth and the nation. Shakespeare awarded Lord Stanley`s ancestors with patriotic and benevolent roles in Henry V. What better way to acknowledge a patron?
It is not clear when Shakespeare began writing his histories and comedies. The estimation is that he probably began writing before he came to London. Given the large number of plays ascribed him it would also be fair to assume he began writing drama soon after he joined the theatre as an actor.
Robert Greene was one of the university wits who, like many of his Oxford contemporaries was obliged to earn his living by hack work. His plays were incredibly popular at the Rose theatre and his pamphlets are still unrivaled accounts of sixteenth-century London.
Unfortunately, he was sensitive to slights and very envious of his talented contemporaries.
In 1587 Greene condemned those "scab'd ideas" who among other things :write or publish anie thing...is distl'd out of ballets"/
There has been a centuries old arguments if Titus Andronicus is derived from a ballad.
In 1590, he attacked Shakespeare, when he wrote Never Too Late. He abuses an actor whom he names Roscius. "Why Roscius, art thou proud of Esops Crow, being pranct with the glorie of others feathers? Of thyself canst say nothing..."
If the intended target was Shakespeare, then we have evidence that he had presence in the theatrical world of London by the late 1580s.
This means that he had started writing for the stage very soon after he arrived in London.
It is here that we can create a timeline as to when Shakespeare started writing plays.
In 1587 he write ab early version of Hamlet but in 1588 was when he really started to produce work.
There is evidence that he wrote the Forerunner of The Taming of the Shrew with a play called The Taming of A Shrew. A Shrew takes place in Greece instead of Italy and the names of the characters are different and the play is half the length of the play that we are familiar with. The later version is also definitely deeper and richer than the original.
The most interesting part if A Shrew is that many of his lines were lifted from Kit Marlowe. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Shakespeare was impressed with Marlowe's rhetoric.
Shakespeare loved word play and could not contain himself which made him vulnerable to mockery, especially in Taming of A Shrew.
However, once he triumphed in comedy he tried his hand at history dramas. In the same year he wrote Taming of A Shrew he wrote two other plays. Edmund Ironside which concerned Edmind against the Danish king Canute.
These early plays are not admitted Shakespeare "canon" but we can see the origins of his plays in the ones named. He acted in some of these plays and collaborated with others and helps us see the confusing circumstances from which Shakespeare emerged.
There is not much argument that Shakespeare wrote most of Titus Andronicus. It was written in attempt to peat Kyd and Marlowe at their own game.
Titus Andronicus is fairly violent. It has suggested that Shakespeare was a parody of the worst excesses of the genre. However, it unlikely Elizabethan audiences would have laughed at the sight of a woman getting her hands chopped off. It was still a punishment deployed in public places.
Titus Andronicus was not seen as a failure at the time. It is a curious fact that the early productions of writers. So from a possible early version of Hamlet we have six or seven plays which might have been composed by the young Shakespeare in the first two years after he arrived in London. The wonder is that he did not write more.
In his mid-twenties Shakespeare was already achieving considerable popularity with a range of histories, comedies, and melodramas. He was also earning his living as an actor. he was with Lord Strange's Men by 1588 and touring with them in the early months of 1589. They were back in London by early autumn. There had been some public controversy over certain farces referring to religious disputes of the time, forcing the Lord Mayor of London to summon the Admiral's men and Lord Strange's Men to prohibit them from performing in the city. A letter from the Lord Mayor, dated November 6, 1589 declared that the Admiral's Men had obeyed the request but Lord Strange's Men had not. It is very possible that Shakespeare had been consigned to prison along with his colleagues.
When he was in London town, Shakespeare lived in Shoreditch. He wanted to be "debauch'd" this was the neighbourhood to do it. The presence of the theatres attracted inns and brothels.
When Shakespeare introduced the "low life" in his plays, he knew first hand of what he wrote.
Shakespeare was an apologist for royal power. But there is a curious paradox in which his audience may have observed. The sixteenth-century theatre was a dramatizing force. In the history of Shakespeare's plays, he created iron associations and parallels between the chivalric actions of the nobles and the comic actions of the commoners. It was in essence a populist medium./
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