Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd Chapter 59

A Pretty Plot.  Well Chosen to Build Upon

In the summer of 1598, there were still demands from the civic authorities and indeed from the members of the Privy Council that the theatres should be taken down as a result of “lewd matters that are handled on the stages.”  This had become something of an occupational hazard, and the playhouses simply ignored the injunctions.  Given the undoubted popularity of the plays and playhouses, there was also going to be competition, official or not, to challenge the two established companies.  The Earl of Pembroke’s Men had put on The Isle Dogs at the Swan before being disbanded.

New theatres were about to be erected in the city and northern suburbs, also, among them the Fortune and the newly refurbished Boar’s Head.  In addition, the boys’ companies were soon to be in operation again.  The following year an indoor playhouse was opened in the precincts of St. Paul’s grammar school, where the children of the school performed two plays by a new writer, John Marston.  The competition demonstrated the vitality of theatrical life in London.  Nevertheless, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were still at the Curtain and the Admiral’s Men across the river at the Rose.  There is no record of the players touring in this year so it can be assumed that Shakespeare and the rest of the company were playing in the capital.  We know they were performing Ben Jonson’s new play, Every Man in His Humour, in the autumn of 1598.  So Shakespeare performed in a drama written by someone declared to be his “rival”.  Reports of such rivalry are often greatly exaggerated by various partisans.  There is testimony that Shakespeare became godfather to one of Jonson’s children.

They wayward and bad-tempered character of Ben Jonson is well known.  But is often forgotten that he was a supreme literary artist who wrote for the play-going public on his own terms.  Unlike Shakespeare, he was not born to please.  He had genuine faith and pride in his achievements and ensured his dramas were properly collected and published.  Jonson recognised Shakespeare’s genius but considered it prone to extravagance and surrealism.

Shortly after the production of Every Man in His Humour Jonson became involved in an argument with an actor and colleague from the Admiral’s Men, Gabriel Spencer.  The quarrel may have arisen from Jonson’s defection to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, or it may have been personal.  Whatever the cause, it ended with Jonson’s sword going through Spencer, killing him.  Jonson was able to save himself from the gallows by pleading that he was a member of the clergy and proving he could read and wright.  His thumb was branded with a T for Tyburn so that he would not escape a second conviction.

During this period Burbage and Shakespeare, together with their colleagues, had arrived to an important decision.  After negotiations with their landlord fell through, they decided to go through their contract again very carefully.  The landlord owned the land the theatre stood on but not the building itself so they decided to literally move it.  Three days after Christmas 1598, the Burnage brothers, their mother and twelve workmen, a surveyor and carpenter arrived in front of the Theatre in Shoreditch.  The horrified landlord left a detailed description of what followed.

The Burbages and their cohorts “ryotouslye assemble themselves” armed with “swords daggers billes axes and such like,” whereupon they “attempted to pull downe the sayd Theatre”  In the course of the operation they were responsible for “the great disturbance and terrifying” of the local inhabitancies of Shoreditch.

The “disturbance” lasted for some four days.  Within that time, the Burbages and their employees took down the playhouse’s old timbers and loaded them onto wagons, the beams and galleries were transported across the river by ferries or across London Bridge.  Much had to be discarded as a result of the speed of the operation.  The components of the playhouse were deposited south of the river on land the Burbages had leased for thirty-one years.  It would have been filled with tidal water, ooze and trash.  At the time of its redevelopment, it comprised of seven gardens, a house and a row of tenements that had held fifteen people.

In these watery and insalubrious surrounding the Globe would rise.  The landlord of the plot where the Globe was erected, Nicholas Brend, was, in fact, brother-in-law of the Queen's Treasurer of the Chamber. 

The building work on the new theatre, however, did not proceed as quickly as had been anticipated.  So the Burbages spread the financial responsibility.  They created five “sharers” who between them would put up half the costs, and who would in return become part owners of the new theatre.  One of those sharers was William Shakespeare.  It was the most complete association possible between the playwright and the playhouse.  His other sharers were the principal actors of the Lord Chamberlain’s men, Will Kempe, Thomas Pope, John Heminges and Augustine Phillips.  They had all grown moderately wealthy out of their new-found profession.

Peter Streete contracted to finish the construction of the Globe within twenty-eight weeks.  Strong foundations had to be laid since the Globe was being erected on watery soil.  This operation would have taken some sixteen weeks.  By May 1599 a legal document refers to a “domus” with an attached garden in the parish of t. Saviour’s, Southwark.  Intriguingly enough, “domus” may be interpreted to mean either the theatre itself or a house adjoining that structure.  A picture of Shakespeare living in a house beside the playhouse is not inconceivable.