z A challenge to fortune

lVhen Shakespeare came to London, the 'gorgeous playingplace erected in the Fields' - James Burbage's Theatre - wasabout ten years old. Reluctantly, the City Fathers concludedthat at least seven others existed, many within the city walls,that thousands went to the play every week. In I5B3 they hadstartedra campaign against the innbvation, which had signallyfailed. As Stow reported in his Annals, the Queen herself hadset up a troupe of players.

For every inhabitant of Stratford, a hundred could be foundin London, a city of maybe I60,000, which dominated thecountry far more effectually than any other capital city inEurope. Its population constantly changed, for it was the centreof international trade as well as the seat of government. Thefirst performances had begun in the inns which accommodatedthose who came up to Court, or to the law courts, or to tradeto import wine and spices, or to export fine cloth. James Bur-bage himself had been interested in The Red Lion in Stepney,and The Boar's Head in Whitechapel had been fitted up byhis brother-in-law John Brayne. The great yard, no longer usedto hold wool-waggons lumbering up from East Anglia, hadbeen fitted with a stage, and the galleries that gave on the pri-vate roorns had been extended. The players could reside there,while the carefree coming and going Proper to an inn allowedall kinds of shows - fencers played their prizes, tumblers andjugglers performed in competition with dancers on the tightropes, and with performing apes, horses, dogs and bears. Hereroo, as the City Fathers alleged, pickpockets flourished, cityheiresses were lured to secret contracts' 'fond and simple per-sons' (especially apprentices) spent their masters' money *besides the allurements to sin offered in the plays themselves.

32 Shakespeare : The Poet in his World

The defenders alleged per contra that it was better for captainswaiting on the Court and gentlemen engaged in the Eliza'bethari sport of litigation to spend their vacant afternoons atthe play iather than at a bawdy house or a gaming-table' Butas late as I5g7 the Lord Mayor wrote to the Privy Council:.They

"r. ti-ri-ordinary places for vagrant persons, masterlessmen, thieves, horse-stealers, whoremongersr cozeners' coney-

""tah.rr, contrivers of treason and other idle and dangerous

persons to meet together.'rThe scene on a holiday must have resembled a fairground;

there was food available, at the ordinary (the table t hbte), anddrink at the taphouse. But The Theatre was devoted openlyand entirely to entertainment' being modelled on the 'gameplace' of country towns' and in form resembling the bull- orLear-baiting rings of Southwark' A circular or polygonalthatched, olen structure of wattle-and-daub, with three levelsof galleries'reached from interior stairs, and a stage backedby"a tiring-house, it gave the players a settled establishmentand there-by at once-conferred a different status on regularperformers.

James Burbage, sworn one of the Earl of Leicester's Men,who in r 575 hai received Lette rs Patent from the Queen auth'orizing t[eir to play anywhere, in r 5-83 had joined. the 9"t:1"o*n ,ioup.; yet the next year, in flatly disobeying the

-CityRecorderis prohibition, he sent word to thht harassed officerlfrut h. *u, -y Lord of Hunsdon's man and that he wouldnot come ut -., but he would in the morning nde to !Y-lord'- presumably with a complaina. 'Yy Lord of Hunsdon', the

QL..t', first cousin, eveniually as Lord-Chamberlain yut ilJntrol of all entertainment within the Court and so of royalplayers. In another ten years he would be Shakesp8are's lord,too.2

Burbage was originally ajoiner, who knew all about buildingwooden lalleries a"nd took-to playing when 'trades served noturns'. Hi borrowed the necessary capital; but his greatest asset

rvut ,o prove his younger son Richard, a spirited lad capableof defending the premises from interlopers with a broomstick'taunting thJm wiih 'scornful and opprobrious words', and play'ing disd"ainfully with rheir noses as he did so. Richard Burbage,*fio *", to create Shakespeare's leading roles, appears in the

A challenge to fiortune 33

tecund generation of a London theatrical lamily, Shakespeare'siunior in years but his senior in the profession.

'l'he players claimed, in medieval style, to be servants of thekrrtl whose badge they wore and whose licence they carried onlour to show to Justices of the Peace. They owed nothing elseto their lord, however, except the duty to come when he sum-nroned them for some special entertainment; but they wererendy to appear anywhere on command. All over the city,gnrdcns, halls and orchards invited private performance ; at onetiltte, players even performed in Cheapside. This had been for-hiddcn and, moreove r, was not profitable..The big new money-lpinner at The Theatre was not the auditorium but the boxullic'e : two narrow entrances could be even more carefully con-ffolled than the gate of an innyard. In fact, the players provedlfluch more efficient at extracting a penny from the apprenticeswho came to stand on the 'ground' than were the citizens atrnntrolling the players.

When on tour in the provinces in r58e, the Earl of Wor-rertrr's Men lost their licence from the Nlaster of the Revels.Forbidden by the Mavor of Leicester to perform, they defiedhinr with'evil and contemptuous words'. Among them was atrov of sixteen, son of a London innkeeper, who was to becomeone o{'the first two actors to reach stardom and to be knownallover England. His name was Edward Alleyn. His elder, Dick't'arlton, son of another innkeeper, was already celebrated: theSt,eat Sir Philip Sidney stood godfather to his son. A singingancl dtrncing clown, whose jokes were decidedly'blue', he worehig rhoes and baggy trousers (or 'slops') like a Tudor Charlie[ihuplin. He extemporized rhymes on themes provided by theaudience and was famous for his jigs and after-pieces; he wasnlqo a master in fencing, and the Queen bade them 'take awaytltr knave' for making her laugh so excessivelv, as he engagedllr a rnock fight with her little dog. His picture was used as aligrr lilr alehouses * and for loos.

'l'arlton, London's idol, lived a merrv but disreputable lileotrrl tlicd of the plague in Armada year. Alleyn became an actortnenirger, made the right sort ofmarriage and ended, in moderntFt'nrltt almost a millionaire. These two represented, as it were,llre older and the newer aspects of playing, though both wereItrII professionals.

g+ Shakespeare: The Poet in his WorldTarlton popped his face out between the acts and concluded

a performance with u lig', a song-and-dance act by four clowns,two dressed as women. The humour was slapstick. This countrygame, adapted for a metropolitan entertainment, carried onthe old carnival irresponsibility by which authority was mockedout of countenance; audience participation was provoked byquestions and gaggings. At The Rose Theatre, at the endof one show, a firework display concluded with a gigantic rosethat opened to shower from its petals comfits, apples, peanand fine white bread on the audience. Apples were also usedin less friendly interchanges between the audience and theclowns. Guns were shot off, on one occasion with fatalitiesamong the spectators.

Alleyn, a tragedian of magnificent presence and voice, wasalso capable of quick-change parts; but 'a tyrant's vein' waswhat the audience looked for from him. There would have beenparts for both stars, written in contiasted styles, in that sturdyold favourite The Lamentable Tragedy of Cambyses, King of Persia,mixedfull of Pleasant Mirth (about r 57o), that loud-mouthed suc-cess that Shakespeare recalled more than once, and perhapsplayed in. Cambyses is shown as a brave soldier and a very badman, ruled by two characters named Murder and Cruelty, andalso seduced by the Vice Ambidexter, who, true to his name,played on both sides, for and against the King. He temptedan unjust judge, who was later flayed on stage 'with a falseskin'. Ambidexter enthusiastically greets in the audience hiscousin Cuthbert Cutpurse (a character from an earlier play,Like will to Like and so known to the audience already); healso fights a battle in comic armour with a gigantic snail andincites two comic countrymen to speak treason on their way tomarket.

Meanwhile, the wicked King has killed his heir and his wifeand also an infant, to prove that even when drunk he was aperfect shot with the bow; to wind up, he enters with a swordthrust through his side, a fatality inflicted on himself as heleaped athletically on to his horse. He announces: 'A just re-ward for my misdeeds my death doth plain declare' - a senti-ment always looked for in deaths of criminals; his lords enterand recapitulate, to enforce the point for edification - and tocarry off the body.

A challenge to fortune 35Behold my lords, it is even so as he to us did tell:His grace is dead upon the ground by dint of sword most fell.

The actors were, by the mid-eighties, selling their wares likeany other tradesmen, forming some thing like a-trade guild. Therepertoire was changed each day; playbills announc.d fr.qu.rrtnew shows, with also perhaps a procession through the town,to drums and.trumpets. The flag would go up at the playing_place by two in the afternoon, the t.rr-pets would ,o,r'a "rrithe 'two hours' traffic of the stage' would begin - its pillarspainted like marble, its stage strewn with rusheJ and hung withcoloured cloth, its penthouse star-painted

Into this Vanity Fair walked the man from Stratford. As hecame in by the west road, through Newgate, he would have,on his right, down towards the river, the superior theatre dis_trict round Ludgate. Here was the Bel Sivage Inn, whichbelonged to the Cutlers' Company and was ,r.J ro-.times bythe Queen's Men. Being near to the Fleet prison, where nobleprisoners were sent (if they did not deseive the Tower), itenjoyed a select but partially captive audience, swelled perhapsby young lawyers who had come up Fleet Street from the Innsof Court.

The Devil was said to have appeared in person on the stageat the Bel Savage Inn, but even a hostile wiiness, Stephen G&-ron, had seen there two or three good comedies ,wheri you shalllind never a word without wit, never a line without piih, nevern letter placed in vain'. Nearby were the choristers of Sr paul's:lld ."lrg of the Chapel Royal, who played in the precincts ofIllackfriars. The Master of St Paul's Boys, Sebastian Westcott,had been a follower of Queen Elizabeth from her days of semi-captivity as princess, which might explain how he kept his postsns subdean, almoner, vicar choral and choir-mastir, in ipiteof being a Papist, who had been excommunicated by the Deanol'St Paul's and sent to the Marshalsea prison. perhaps, to theIturitan nostril, there was a whiff of brimstone here.'fhree other players' inns stood on the arterial road that ledup lrom London Bridge to Bishopsgate, past the church of Stl}rtolph where the disapproving Stephen Gossqtt was rector.Some more were outside iii.Whitechapel. Outside the walls too,in the grounds of the old Priory of Holywell in Finsbury Fields,

36 Shakespeare: The Poet in his World

James Burbage built his theatre , in t577 to be joined by anothelsmall house, The Curtain. This was the neighbourhood where,in the r 5zos, Rastell, brother-in-law ofThomas More , had builta theatre in his garden. Across the river, beyond the Citybounds, near bear- and bull-baiting rings, a playhouse, TheRose, had been opened in r5B7 by a wealthy moneylender,Philip Henslowe ;in a few years his step-daughter would mLryEdward Alleyn, and the two men would go into partnership.

Still further south, a mile beyond, at Newington Butts, layanother little theatre built by Jerome Savage, one of the Earlof Warwick's Men, in a garden. It was also used sometimes bythe Earl of Oxford's players.

Shakespeare began as an actor, and it was by an actor's sharein profits ihat he made his fortune . How he came to it remains,rrri.no*n. The legend, originating with Davenant, that he heldhorses at The Theatre , is an absurdity. London was full of horse-thieves, as of every other kind of thief, and The Theatre - as

the Lord Mayor observed * was a safe meeting-place for them(see note r, above). This was the only city in England that hadan underworld, eagerly described by pamphleteers; theyfeatured freely tricks about horses. The playgoer who wasnot prepared to walk through the fields would bring his ownattendant with him; it was risky enough to stable one's horseeven in an inn, for the habits of ostlers were notorious, but noone would have entrusted him to the Tudor equivalent of acar-park.

Most of the players seem to have been the sons of tradesmen;in London, they had to compete not only with the choristersbut with the occasional seasonal play by the lawyers or by theschoolboys of St Paul's, Westminster, or Merchant Taylors'schools. After the opening of The Theatre, men displaced boysin royal favour.

All would be summoned upstream or downstream to Courtif their reputation stood high enough, where the old playingseason, from All Hallows to Shrovetide, culminated in theTwelve Days of Christmas. However, the troupes were Pre-pared to stay in London as long as they could, acting at theinns in winter and in the fields during the summer.

In Elizabethan England every man was expected to have aregular and settled place of work, where he could be supervised

A challenge tqfortune 97hy his betters, assessed for taxes and checked for church attend-arrce-. The problems. of vagrancy and beggary were beingta.kled for the first time by Acts of parriamenr; vagrant menwere treated as criminals, and without the protectio;of a IorJ,pl'yers fell into this class. Hence the imporiance of the Londonfixed base. To 'brea-k' and go into the country, meant alsothe disbanding and dismembirment of,a full compant. ir;;rummer, however, a tour of the.principal towns was customaryrlbr the law courts closed and the court went on progress too.Regular playing and skill meant that the London uJ,or* oui-rletsed all provincial efforts in a short time.. lihakespeare might have joined such a group. on its wavlhrrugh Stratford. Forexample, in r5B7 the-eueer,'s Men loritheir great tragic actor, wiiliam riett, who-was killed in aquerrcl with another actor at Thame, on the stratford road.

Bhakespeare could not at once have stepped into Knell's shoesat an actor, but the company would bi short of a rnan whenthey came to Stratford. A good musician, a good ,*ordsman,e men of handsome appearance and of good"speech would bie€eep.table, especiallv if he could p.n u1p...h too.

Il'the actors encountered u qr".r.lro-e audience their situa-tl'n c'uld be hazardous. A stilf older tragic actor of fame, Bent-ley (d, ,QB5), was playing with the eu?er,,s Men at Norwichilhen a rioter tried to force his way in, and knocked over theday'r takings. In full:grtuT:, Bentley leaped frorn tt. ,tug.e1{ nut him to flight. Then his r..uu.,t hit Iientley o" tn. n.iJ*ith a stone. Fortunately it was a servant of the Faston familvlftd n't an actor who stabbed and killed the rioter. Br; h;elilher r{'these incidents come to the ears of the city r"ii,.rithev would have made the most of it.=

'l'lT l,rndon guildsmen, like their humbler counterparts arItratlirrcl,-kept paternalistic control, as far as tt,. g.'o*th ;ithe t itv allowed them to do so. For them the new forrn' of socialHttilt 'r.gtresented by the theatre was full of menacing ;;;;:Fllltirr, since this unity was largely created by irrevereice a'd$rdr icsts' So many olthe old foims of festivity had gone thatlheFe wirs a deep need fo.r some secqlar -.un, of cJltivatingil:tlre thcatre evolved to meer widespread desires that had nEEEirri'us lbrmulation. The unity of ihe whole nation, power-fullr' e'inccd in times oldanger - specifically at the ti-J or tn.

38 Shakespeare : The Poet in his World

Armada-found a lighter and more gratifying form in play and

glrr.. g", their paiterns were new' and risky'Disorder wa, ..,,uiliy "ot

greater than that found in modern

football crowds. If ail pliyers were ..classed together in

irrational but nigrtri'tii"idt""t hostility' the powers .ofenforcement were ro'i""'"itty weak' Ferocious orders from the

City Council about tht;;;;g;o*n of "ll playhouses pt:dt::9;';tr*; at all - u,tJ-pt'hup"t were intended only as threats'

Actors were everywltit' -tn'""Sing

their social role to fit the

moment. In true -tJit""f f"shiin'Leicester's Men ha9 l:tl:

A challenge to fortune 39

audience before the great devil with fireworks at his arse couldbe permitted to appear.

'Ihe best London companies contrived to please everyone.ll'Shakespeare had begun in a shop, he would have learnedrleferential modes of persuasion, with a cry at the Market Crossnl''What is't you lack, gentlemen?' If later he had earned hisliving by sweeping it from the posteriors of little boys (as Ben,lonson unkindly characterized the schoolmaster's lot), hewould have had parents and governors to placate.

The proverb is, how many men, so many minds . . .

No play, no party can all alike content.The grave divine calls for divinityThe civil servant for philosophy,The courtier craves some rare sound history,The baser sort for knacks ofpleasantry.

(Prologue, Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, r565)

Mort mixed and volatile were the audiences of the innyards,*hcre the widest appeals would be those denounced by Aschamln Maloryls tales, 'Open manslaughter and bold-bawdry.' The€rrliest yard play of which there is notice, A Sackful of New;,glven at The Boar's Head in I552, was suppressed for scurrility.Frnrn the next thirty years there survive a handful of texts -elarrical tragedies like Appius and Virginia or Damon and Pythiasftir the boys, Tarlton's Famous Victories of Henry Zfor the men.Then suddenly, in the year before the Armada, the poets take€fitlrnrand. The unity of Elizabethan plays was secured by apnwerful and authoritarian voice, the words spoken by Alleyn,the pen wielded by a Cambridge graduate whose style was in-tfenrigent, and his audacity equal to any man's in that auda-cltlur age,

l(ing()ambysas became at once outmoded, its style denouncedE! 'tlrr.jigging vein of rhyming mother wits', and its moralsFnutrrl,

Mnrlowe's Tamburlaine, born a shepherd, rose by war tob€ F;nrpcror of the East - this by thrusting down kings beneathhfr feet and reducing them to the level of slaves: the vanquishedEmper.tr of the Turks was drdwn about in a cage like a wild

oanied him overseat ;*;;i; the Netherlands in I586;^yet'they

XffiJfi;ilil;.'p'i" uu"a on modern :'*l: 3:lt]::::Their enemies,.,-Jiit"* not Comedians but Chameleonsl

and as early as ,578,; ;;;;itti "1 pu"r's Cross l:i::t:11t"ti;;;i*ktilrl' io,.tio"'as amounting in all to dz'ooo ?" \.-,,tt

There were audie"tt' ottttt than those.of the tliyl:::::whose attitudes were more predictable' A schoolmaster p

ing his pupils was 1*u.' i" 3"th9:i:I:.1..'l'*"T:l:[ill"J;[il";;;;;"d admonitoiv to"'' rhe Prodigal s

was a favourit. tn.rn. for school playi' N.ot only t":T"] t::but specific advice .ould bt given in a polite way' without;;;pil;;;;er a nctive *"1"',11 ?t-'lTll'i.:"T: t;"':Sumprrurr, urruLr a rr!!r!v be--- ht toraray a diStit.,,!tt. A humble 'offering' at least mtg;;;;s, v.i'"rv uv t'i"tJ layaya,o !'-A::'p'::' ;".:"^,':itlffi;;i:i's"-";;'*J *.og"i"d tgglrnioue' so' listening to

contest on marrrage t"l "i?si"ity' Elizabeth t"ig t""tl:ilTl

;;;;t;;;;., 'rnls i' att ititttt' against me; lf sufhcie

exasperated, as once uy u ttua""t:',1"1-.p:l:]ilt"i ::::iffi ffiil;;;;;;tJ*eep out' taking ihe torchbearers

ntlo, country people on the.other hand' tht]I lll^:i:tl1.;;:.'il]';: ffili'i;n'a p'otest' 'one thit plaved

;;;, uia - ".rt a gai ns t gentie men' rnT":l*: Ji: tiJ"l;il: ilil ;i';;'fi;,;.*u" "p""'d rrom Suffolk ; in Nor

Kett's Rebellion (,Sig) nud 'tutttl :t i pl"I t."9-llida commune Uur.a o'l'{'oUitt Hooa's-justice' that lasted for

co uple of m o nths. I " il;;;iltf t"t: :!:::f,:: ::n1#:iLUUPTL vr rrrvrr!"v! --- rndwiched btt*"ttt lively and !yb-"ttof moral views was sa

;;;;;;;"..s of the tt-litt', who in Mankind had all the

action and who ,i,u-tit"ly collected extra money from

+o Shakespeare: The Poet in his Worldbeast; four kings with bits in their mouths were harnessed toTamburlaine's chariot while he scourged them on;

Holla, ye pamper'd jades of Asia,What can ye draw but twenty miles a day?

(z Tamburlaine, 4.3.r -z)

for'his honour, that consists in shedding blood' demanded evermore spectacular modes of doing so, ever more prolongedhumiliation of his foes. This combination of intellectual fire andprimitive violence was irresistible when the white heat at whichMarlowe worked welded them into an amalgam.

Because Tamburlaine is almost clear of religious colouring, itspurely warlike spirit could appeal to the whole audience;

I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains,And with my hand turn Fortune's wheel . . .

I Tamburlaine, r.z.r 7 4-5)

introduces a play that is as secular as it is idealistic. This vauntserves as prologue to the 'miracle ' by which 'desire, lift upwardand divine' has become incarnate in a human figure (in manyemblems, it is God who holds Fortune by a chain fromHeaven). In, appare ntly defying Nature, he is actually in tunewith her, since

Nature that fram'd us of four elements . . 'Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds . . .

Q Tamburlaine, gr.t.58-6o) i

and the kings who topple before hirn, one after another, serveonly to mark his progress. The many images of a rival to Godculminate in the challenge to Mahomet. The part could be real-'ized physically by Alleyn, with his great height, his command-ing voice and that audacity which in his youth led him to defythe Mayorof Leicester with'evil aird contemptuous words'. Itmade him as a star.

The Prologue's challenge, 'Then applaud his fortunes as youplease', implies that the audience may well take the play in avariety of ways, and the possibility of discussion, disagreementi

A challenge ro fortune +rthe continuing of the play in debate at the tavern, is of courselhe essence of successful drama, which is to initiate an actionin each spectator. Brecht wasperfectly right to see in Marlowethe originator of his kind of theatre; and in. citv Fathers weretluite right to see in this process an element of danger. Marlowelearned from the universitv, as none of the other plavwrightsdid, the arr of debate. He dexterously shifted the^grounjbysetting his drama in a remote place and taking in-the largerr:tting continuously invoked in the poetry. Iiis within t"hisl'rame of cosmic grandeur that the ibrence of conventionalmoral judgment occasionally gives place to provocative'tttheisms'. The paradox ofthe infidels culling on God to avengethem against the perfidy of christians and intering the batt'ieerying_'Christ !'as their signal, belongs with the outigeous andyouthful aspecr of Marlowe's blasphemy, like the b-urning of'holy books' (supp,osed to_be rhe Koran) or the aside to the iap-tivc Turk,'Pray for us, Bajazet; we are going., Without sucha temperament, the tremendous trajectory of the double playeould hardly have been plotted. The exhilaration of a new tindof iconoclasm opens up new quests.

'l'he 'diviner Muse' of 'Kit' Marlowe led the way for a hostd followers. They were never tired of praying variations onTumburlaine, but as no one could match fri-, tti results are forlhe most part wretched rant. To take Fortune captive becamea commonplace.s

'['his challenge to cosmic authority was a rallving cry; it sum_murized the 'gorgeous' qualities of Marlowe, *hi.f, *..e so wellnnnlched to the'gorgeous playing place in the fields', and Alleynnamed his second playhouse The Fortune.. shakespeare characteristically was to take his closest borrow-lng not from the vaunts but from the minor mode of this play- itn love poetry. In The Merchant of Venice, the praise of portiagllered by the Moorish Prince of Morocco udapts Tambur-leine's lament for the death of zenocrate to a dancing rhvthm,th'ugh his choice of caskets presents him with the -ru*. .r,iBr 'l'amburlaine - an image of death.r

Another scene of shakespeare's adapts Barabas' counsel toIthernore to the death rp.".i, ofAaron the Moor (Titus Androni-FH,t,5,1). The effect of this, coming after a vivid four acts, is arltualized heightening of all that has been seen, strengthened

+2 Shakespeare: The Poet in his Worldby the recall ol Marlowe's play; Shakespeare is harnessingthe dynamic drive for an unrepentant stand at an emotionalclimax.

Even now I curse the dav - and vet, I think,Few come within the compass of mv curse *Wherein I did not some nororious ill . . .

Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,And set them upright at their dear friends' door,Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,And on their skins, as on the bark oftrees,Have with mv knife carved in Roman letters'Let not vour sorrow die, though I am dead.'

(5.r.r25ff)

Malignancy as a principle of living is more ingenious in Aaronthan Barabas': 'Sometimes I go about and poison wells . . .' (TheJew of Malta,2.3.r82). While the spectacular end of Barabasis to be precipitated into a burning cauldron (the traditionalfate of the usurer in hell), Aaron ends with a vigorous cursethat calls hell's pains upon himself, if that will bring rhem onhis captors. Aaron is an altogether more barbaric monster thanBarabas. He belongs to the woods where he plans to hide hischild; Barabas to rhe city.

The ritual violence of Titus Andronicus, which is nearer toTamburlaine, is combined with the grotesque vitality of The Jewof Malta and those qualities which were summed up by T. S.Eliot as 'savage farce '; this relates it sufficiently to the blackhumour of the modern stage to make it viable in performanceonce more. Shakespeare could have absorbed The Jew of Maltaonly in performance, for it was not printed till r634; but hecould have bought for a few pence the carefully printed textof Tamburlaina. This appeared in r59o, pruned of some of thestage action deemed unsuitable for the dignity of print. WhileShakespeare derived theatrical material from The Jew of Maltaand in some ways reacted against Tamburlaine, his sensitive earpicked up rhythms from big speeches in both. In his own moremature work, he shows upon the stage itself the effect of Tambur-laine upon groundlings: they heard without understanding butnone the less enjoyed themselves.

A challenge ro fortune qg

Pistol talks in Marlovian vaunts:

Shall packhorsesAnd hollow pamper'd jades of AsiaWhich cannor go but thirty miles a dayCompare with Caesars, and with Cannibals,And Troiant Greeks? Nay, rather damn them with

. King Cerberus; and let the welkin roar.(z Henry IV,2.4.t54-)

Yet in the same audience sat intelligent young men like Donne,who was described as a 'great frequenter of plays' and who,ln a verse letter written much later, during th; Isiands voyageo-f r597, recalled'Bajazet encag'd, the shepherd's scoff (?"7aeah, gg), from the second part of Tamburlaine

Shakespeare and Donne, in the course of the nineties, trans-formed and animated poetic forms, in which vivid observationend witty fancy we re blended. For the creation of such complexpoetry, the prerequisite was a single image in dynamic motion.Tamburlaine supplied that image. Medieval poetry had heldthe mirror up to nature, but the shapes in the mirror were angelsor devils, Everyman or Lusty Juventus; even The Mirror forMagistrates subordinated the tragic occasion to a moral. To viewTamburlaine was to see a man in his native nobility, himselfthe architect, who imposed himself upon the entire human andRatural sphere of things. This once achieved, the stage coulddevelop complexity and conflict which were then reflected inthe lyric.

Shakespeare built on Marlowe, by variation and often byrounter-challenge. Their temperaments made this inevitable.Marlowe, proud and violent, 'intemperate and ofa cruel heart',eccording to one witness, was both a scholar and a criminal.sllhakespeare had naturally the courtesy of a gentleman ('gentlelihakespeare'); others called him 'friendly Shakespearet, andhe held something of a record in never getting himselfjailed.Marlowe amazed and delighted; Shakespeate ihar*ed. Whenhe took to the theatre we cannot be sure, but, if Tamburlaineir placed in r 587, Shakespeare's first works could scarcely havebeen more than three years later. In five yg?rs, at all events,Ite was sufficiently well known to stand among the other play-wrights who were serving the gorgeous playing places,-now

+4 Shakespeare: The Poet in his Worldmultiplying their wooden rings in a greater planetary circleround the City from east to west and from the northern fieldsto the southern suburbs.

A dozen years later, Hamlet was to praise the actors for aMarlovian speech about the remorseless Pyrrhus sacking Troy,at the same time as he warned them that,

If you mouth it, as manv of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand,thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as Imay say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget atemperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soulto hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,to very rags, to split the ears ofthe groundlings . . . I would have sucha fellow whipp'd for o'erdoing Termagant; it out_&:;T,?.#,nl

It is the actors, rather than the poet of the earlier days, whoare the cause of offence ; Hamlet may himself tear a passionto tatters from time to time, but he does not fail to reject hisown performance. What Marlowe had rejected - the 'jiggingvein of rhyming mother wits'- he had also taken up and trans.formed; so with Shakespeare . Once the art of acting was estab.lished, it developed more in ten years than in the previous twohundred.

The Tragedy of Hamlet itself is the re-working of an old play,which belonged to the era of Tamburlaine. Thomas Kyd, who,in The Spanish Tragedy, created the pattern of Revenge Tragedy,also wrote alost Hamlet. Shakespeare's first works in all prob.ability included his early revenge play, Titus Andronicus, and,his classical venture, The Comedy of Errors. Both these plays arcnotable for firmness ofstructure, the powe r of redoubling effectrthat had been proved successful.

In Titus Andrlnicus, one ofthe great successes ofthe early stagC(and which, in r955, with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh,triumphantly resumed performance), the ritual of violence itderived from Ovid's story of Philomel, from his Metamorphosct,Extremity of feeling will obliterate the human form; thetion produced is one of wonder in the audience. 'Tiger' is anepithet applied to Tamora: tige rs, unlike lions, the kingbeasts, were devoid of the possibility of noble pity.

A challenge to fortune 45As for that ravenous tiger, Tamora,No funeral rite, nor man in mourning weed,No mournful bell shall ring her burial;But throw her forth to beasts and birds to prey.

(s.s.rss-€)

Lavinia, ravished and mutilated, becomes an emblem of allthe natural world and its natural beauties destroyed andderpoiled. Hence the strange artificial description of hir by heruncle l

What stern ungentle handsHath lopp'd and hew'd and made thy body bareOf her two branches - those sweet ornamentsWhose circling shadows kings have sought to sleep in? . . .

Alas, a crimson fountain ofwarm blood . . .

Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,Coming and going with thy honey breath.

(2.4. r6-25)

Thit is a metamorphosis in itself. The play shows men and?omen 'astonished', 'turned to stones' like Niobe or trans-brmed to predators. Titus finally appears dressed as a cook torcrve up to Tamora the cannibal banquet of her dead sons.

ln.The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare rnort ingeniously dupli-€lted a Roman plot to produce a serviceable farce which 'has

dro proved-adaptable io the modern stage. It is among thethoriest of his plays, but it combines the farcical and theF€Ftantic, as the story of Egeon, the merchant condemned toCerth, opens out into a rom*p of two sets of twins. Shakespearehlr eombined the ingredients of a medieval romance, like thatgf Et Dustace, with a classical play of Plau tus, Menaechmi, whichfe_ma.V have read at school. The tragic ,frame' for this playF further supplemented by material from Supposes, Arioito;spmedy, which had already been translated forliting at Gray'slnn,' The Comedy of Errors was to be associated with-that sameleelety '- to which Southampton had been admitted in r5BB.li wat the most play-loving of the four Inns of Oourt, ,rid uplry of Errors, 'like to Plautus his Menaechmus, was performedihere by the common players on zB December r59i.

46 Shakespeare: The Poet in his World

Already Shakespeare shows his unequalled skill in fittingparts together so that they reinforce each other and in the con-irol of all the detail.? The main concern' as in classical comedl'is with'errors', tricks, disguises, which he briskly duplicates andpi\es up.The common impression derived fiom Titus Andronicrsand The Comedy of Errors is of a supremely competent organizerof theatrical situations, confident and in command of hismaterial. What is lacking is the characteristic Shakespeareanwarmth and sympathy with human relationships, the feelingsthat first appear, however faintly, in Two Gentlemen of Verou-

g 'His MajestY's Poor PlaYers'

'She was born on a Lady Eve and died on a LadvE-ve''.Queengrr"[.in, who died o"',t . eve of Lady Day, z4_ March 16o3,

had been born on tf,. l"t of the Nativity of the Virgin' Z^ S"p:

tember 1533. The *otJttuifta account of her last days is found

in the memoirs of ttt.:iota Chamberlain's youngest brother'-n.-U"t,

Carey, who on coming down from his border post was

sreeted by the qt.t; with tfre sad words' 'No' Robin' I am

Li Jr:'c^i.vl*no had been on missions to Scotland' wrote

at once to the Scottish King James, Eli"abeth's cousin and pre-

sumed heir, telling htt"; to leave Edinburgh' 'fo1 if of that

sickness she should ai., i *t"fa be the first man to bring him

news of it'. The pori.t'*ut ttiUta to let Carey in if called; his

,irt., *uit.a orrih. Queen in her last hours' But' as soon as

Elizabeth was dead, ft *tt '"i"d by t* Lords of the Council'

who tried to pr.v.,,iii' atp"t'"tJ' Tlt Lord Chamberlainmancuvred t i* ttt.""grt ihJ gutt' and he got away [t- L:i-don between nine and ien in the morning' reaching ?:lt::l:'that night. The next night he-had James Droclalmeo ?r ivror-

oeth and Alnwick or -,-#

loraer, and in ,iite of a fall from his

il::l#:?;ilJ ilt"b,;h u.v tn; third nightrau' whe.re.he

;;;;i;;.t ro. u tot""iu ff," 'ing fryT u fairladv' - probablv

a prearrang.a ,igrrJit* nit ti'tJt' Robert Carey had won the

race' ns and the familY net-

The importance of personal connectrowork was demonstrattd, fot the Careys now had to exert everv

nerve to keep the a.st.t tfi"timacy with the throne which they

had enjoyed U.fo,.Bv fti"tnif' fnf"gh but a younger:ol 1ndwith little fortune, *'itt" "J'ta what"reward he would desire'

Carey requested ""i';;t;;Jmitted as Gentleman of the Bed-

chamber, in the ;ffi; personal attendance on the King'

r7o Shakespeare: The Poet in his WorldShortly afterwards, however, by the mancuvring of othrough nominal promotion Carey lost the position; astruggle was needed to regain it, and to secure a like posiin the new Queen's household for his wife. Carey lookedsadly to the reign of Elizabeth when he set down these

A peaceable succession, flawlessly arranged by Burghson, the quiet hunchback Robert Cecil, whom the King'my little beagle', brought in James, whose early historyas lurid as Elizabeth's; its effects upon him were disastFrom his father, Henry Darnley, he inherited a miserablesique, not improved by his father's assassination of his motItalian secretary in her presence, while she was stillJames in her womb. Before he was a year old, his fatherbeen murdered - as it was generally believed, with hisactive assistance. She was deposed; so James began hischildhood at the risk of being kidnapped by rivalnobles, the Certainty ofbeing educated in the sternest pof the Kirk, of being well beaten by his schoolBuchanan, and with only a distant chance of succeeding torich prospects that lay along the highroad to the south.made it, however; he and his raw-boned Danish wife, hisyear-old heir, Prince Henry, and the rest of the family.ever, as he moved south, the signs of the plague drove him afrom the capital, where the throngs gathered to welcomeincreased the danger ofinfection - but not before he had ia warrant for Letters Patent under the Great Seal creatingkespeare and eight of his fellows 'the King's Men'. Theis r7,May r6o3, and the warrant passed under the Greaton r9 May. A royal honeymoon of bounty had begun.with their associates, were permittedfreely to use and. exercise the art and faculty of Playing ComTragedies, Histories, Interludes, Morals, Pastorals, Stage Playssuch others like . . . to show and exercise publically to their best com-modity ... as well within their usua.l house called The Globe withhour county of Surrey as also within any town halls or Moote hrlbor other convenient places within the liberties and freedom of an|other City, University Town or Borough....r

They were also to be allowed 'such former courtesies as hathbeen given to men of their place and quality' and any furth€!

'His Majesty's poor players' 17 |

favour'we shall take kindly at your hands'. The times wereboth foul and fair for players. Southampton, who had been set{'ree and gone up the Great North Road as flar as Huntingdonto meet the King, was rewarded with suitable honours - includ-ing the Garter and the collection of tax on sweet wines thatlbrmerly had given Essex his fortune. For James, however,Bomeone younger and more glamorous was really needed, andhis first English favourite was the nineteen-year-old Philip Her-ltert, nephew of Philip Sidney, whom he created Earl of Mont-gomery. Philip knew nothing except the ways of horses anddogs, but the King's devotion to hunting made this acceptableto him and especially to Cecil, who did not need to fear anyinterference from this lout. One of James's ways of rewardinghis favourites was to find a good match, and next year, withroyal support, the Earl of Montgomery married Lady SusanVere, the younger sister of that Elizabeth Vere designed byBurghley for Southampton. The masquings were magnificent;the King got up early next morning and went into the bride-ehamber in his nightshirt, with a great deal of merriment ensu-ing'either upon the bed, or in the bed, choose you where', aeourtier reported.

The King spent early December at Wilton, home of the Her-berts, and the King's Men went down to give some plays. Aletter, now lost, from Lady Pembroke, mentioned that the manShakespeare was there; and the play was As You Like It. Fromr 3 July r 6o3, when the plague orders went out (and there wereeleven hundred deaths a week), the King's players had beenIouring (Bath, Shrewsbury, Coventry, Mortlake), but atChristmas they appeared seven times at Hampton Court. InFebruary the King gave them a grant of dgo, as times werertill hard.

l-or their Christmas performances, they had received thelrandsome sum of dr% - Mrs Alleyn notes that most of theother companies had returned to the neighbourhood by the endol'October, looking for private employment.

Dekker took to pamphleteering, and Shakespeare perhaps tolrreparing Hamlet for press. During the epidemic, which at itsheight in September cost three thousand lives every week, theIuw courts moved to Winchester; The Globe Theatre was closedlirr eleven months. It had been'dark'from tg March I6o3'when

!h. Qr...r" illness became grave, except for a couple of weehincarly May, and the playeri did not come back to ih.i, th.;;;;fl]Easler Monday, g April, when all three Londo" .o-pwere glven warrants to act ,except there shall happen wto die of the plague above the number of thirty wiihin theof London and the Liberties thereof. at wniin time we rit fit they shall cease and forbear any further publically tountil the Sickness be decreased again to the same numb...' ,,i

The other London companies f,ad secur_ed ,oyut putrorr"giiAlleyn's com-pany became prince Henry's tvt"rr, urra' tn. gat The Boar's Head, who -had acquired u, ,.rid.rrt po.iactor.Thomas Heywood, became eueen Anne's Men. Silicensing was now confined to roya-lty; playing *u, irrriitionalized. As for'the lit_tle eyasses,, it was noiloig before tlunflattering portraits ofJames and his scottish foli-owers cauthat infuriated monarch to say that they should be turnedto beg their bread. He forbade his choirboys to act, and furin the abrupt application of clerical ,ta.rdurds,'.o*-uthat none of the said choristers or Children of the bhape I sl'be used or employed as Comedians or stage players o, ,o a,

:lse o.r act any stage plays interludes comediis or tragedies,that it is not fit or decent that such as sing the praiie of (Almighty should be trained up or employ.a i., such lascivior vain exercises'. Some of them continued, ho*errer, as u sate_group. The institutionalizing, as ever, was less than pe

IfJames was prepared to welcome players, Anne was j.uoiilto the art. She was a plain.woman,'nearly six f..t tutt,,t,aii

r72 Shakespeare: The poet in his World 'His Majesty's poor players' r7ghh fellows went on duty at Somerset House in their scarletllveries to wait on the ionstable of castile, for which servicethey were paid twenty pounds. Since the bonstable broughiI train of over three hundred attendants, their function iaspresumably to act as couriers or guides to the city.

That winter the Tower saw a new prisone, ,.rd.. sentenceef death for treason -.Sir Walter Ralegh. His enemies, playing€n James's fears, made use of the po*it shift; with Lora CoU]ham, he was arrested in July; at a spectaculai trial, ni, g"itu"tdefence convinced even his judg.r. Hir poems rang ouito theworld, defying death as magnificently as ever he hai defied theEpanish ships: he who entered into competition with Marlowe'steome live with me and be my love,'was now writing inHamlet's mood:

What is our life? a play of passion,Our mirth the music of division,Our mothers' wombs the tiring houses beWhere we are drest for this short comedy,Heaven thejudicious sharp spectator isThat sits and marks still who doth act amiss.

Our graves that hide us from the setting sunAre like drawn curtains when the play is done,Thus march we playing to our latest rest,Only we die in earnest, that's no jest.

The foreigners who now came trooping into London wereto bring with them new ideas about staging; with themf.turned from Elsinore a young Londoner *ho, -"it.. spendinghin time in rtaly studying painting and archite.tu.., naa tateitervice with the King of Den-r.k. An exact contemporary ofBcn Jonson, Inigo Jones was to introduce many featuies olthetttodern_stage, including perspective scenery, a drop curtain,rliding flats, revolves, elaboraie stage lighting und tra'sformaltirn scenes. Anything the Medici-.ouId dJ, Jones could doItetter. Queen Anne loosed the royal purse-strings., His Banqueting House in Whitehall is the only"theatre of the

lime to survive, except of course the halls of the Inns of courtend the royal palaces. Partnership with Ben Jonson was to

of .to,gue and-deeply mortified by James;s insistence ,'h;; hfichildren should be brought.up away from Court, Uy fosiiimothers. She acce_pted James's homose"uulity, and'h. il.p;;;a fiction that his favourites had been pr.r..ri.d to him dt liii9.:1. Their separate households dtubled tn. .nur,.J foiofficial positions at Court; their love of display was iustified br,,theexaggerated sense ofpower that the uniiing of Gieat g.iiuiriunder one king presented to the rest of Eurofe. Fo, u y.u, ortwo James was courted by France and Spain. H. ,tu.t.a ioreceive^ambassadors, and in March 16o4 his Men, as Groomiof the Chamber, were sent to wait on the Spanish a-UurruJoilthe first who had been seen in Engrand sinci the Armada. p.uciwas signed at las;. From 9 to z7 Augurt r6o4 Shakespeare anJ'

In r 6o4 the city was preparing its postponed grand entry I

James, with triumphal arches, pageants and speeches for whia new mythology was required. The Tudor roses wouldno longer. New coins were inscribed: 'Henry united the-Jameslhe kingdoms.' The favoured myth was that of TRestored or New Troy. The ancient kingdom, founded bygrandson of Aeneas, was reborn, and the evils of a dividedieplaced by a united Great Britain. Two late enemies, Jtuttd D.kk.r, shared the honours; Dekker used the Trojlegend in his first arch; the Four Kingdoms (including Fra*Et. o.t the last. The green and flourishing commonwealthrepresented as a happy garden, and the triumph of virtues ovviies were dramatic motifs that were to be seen on the stal

Shakespeare remained absolutely silent. He did not mcElizabeth; he did not join the pageantry to greet James.presumably walked in the procession, with the other royal st

unts, .rndei the seven arches. What with the speeches (Allon an arch representing the Genius of the City, a boy chofrom St Paul's, hordes ol gods, goddesses, virtues, Fame,tune, ancient kings and priests) ' it took from eleven o'clockfive to get from the Tower to Westminster on that March

'

of r6o4, a twelve-month after the old Queen's death.Shaiespeare was just on forty. Ten years earlier, he

thought ii old age'When fortv winters shall besiege thy

17+ Shakespeare: The Poet in his World

produce the new drama-form which Stood at the ap-ex of alliacobean entertainment - the Court Masque: in the MasquGlthe King's Men would have a part to play, and its sumptuoud,r.rr rroirld open new worlds of art - music, poetry' spectacll

'His Majesty's poor players' r75had briefly put it on - and found themselves hissed offthe stageof The Globe ! They ! The King's players ! Their poet wascharged with blasphemy and popery too. Jonson had lookedlbr the writing of the masque at Christmas in which QueenAnne was to appear, but it had gone to the Herberts' nominee

of course, Samuel Daniel, brother-in-law of Florio, 'a goodhonest man but no poet' as Ben Jonson said bitterly, was incharge of the Children of the Queen's Revels too, a little later.

I n December r 6o4 in Gowry , the King's Men staged the storyo[ two young men alleged to have tried to kidnap King Jamesund who had met a speedy end by the sword. The Privy Councilngain objected to shows of living royalty ; Gowry was withdrawn.

Clearly this kind of history was not going to fit the times;Shakespeare, who was expected to write plavs about love,rtruggled with the remaking of old forms. He drew a youngIxrbleman, orphaned, handsome, courageous, winning, an in-veterate Iiar, and gave him as companion an even shabbier liarar follower, named Parolles. The debased versions of Hal andFtlstaffwere placed in a comedy ironically titled All's Wetl thatEnds Well. In a much more powerful treatment of love mis-placed, adapted from a twenty-five-vear-old play for Courr per-frrrmance in December 16o4, the superior godlike discernmentof'a just prince ostensibly provides strict Measurefor Measure;but in spite of the reassuring justice of the title, the re are manydisturbingquestionsin the clash between the Judge and the Nun(a crucial opposition, according to one critic).2 One speechrtruggles to accept death, countered by anothe r, which violentlyrrjccts it.

Reason thus with life.If I do lose thee, I do lose a thingThat none but fools would keep.

( M easure for M easur e, 3. r .6-7 )

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where,To lie in cold obstruction and to rot:This sensible warm motion to becomeA kneaded clod. . . . (3.r.rrg-zz)

in combination.

. . .' (Sonnet z). At the turn of the century he had twice tlback to the ancient world, in the popular Julius Caesar, ansuccess at The Globe, and in Troilus and Cressida, caviarcthe general, where he had ironically refashionedtenderest love story. He was experimenting.

In r6o3 along had come Ben Jonson with a Roman trafon which he hid sweated blood * a learned work, takenofTacitus, sharp and ruthless in its dissection of a corruptThis was something worthy the King's players, he told- no absurdities like 'Caesar did never wrong but with *t,easurefor Measure is the last of Shakespeare's comedies. (The

Elhristian reference in the title3 did not prevent the whole piay'scause.'The company, hoping indeed to show their new

- Fy th" obstinate vitality of the prisoner who refuses tothe ribald jester who refuses to be silenced, the appallingandimouse tactics that are practised on all sides.a

176 Shakespeare: The Poet in his Worldbeing neatly cut out of the Folio by a Jesuit censor, for themasquerade as a friar must have seemed to him unpardonaWe may infer from Sonne t r oB that Shakespeare saidprayers, and the one clause that reappears again and againhis plays is, 'Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive thosetrespass against us.' The whole of this drama is set in athat especially needs such generosity, and there is no hacountry beyond the moated grange - where, however, theesque solution is worked out that permits a 'happy' ending.scheme of morality in this play is at every point contradi

'His Majesty's poor players' r77

rejected monarchy - the Republic of Venice. To frame theirtale, Shakespeare too had taken all the old stage conventionsand turned them upside down. It was an infallible rule of theItage that any character who was black was bound to belongto'the left hand side'. If not the devil, he or she would be thedevil's near relation. Folk plays with black men in them wereknown in the countryside. Atrocity plays with black men inthem had provided a stereotvpe upon which Shakespeare haddrawn for Aaron in Titus Andronicus ('Seeing your face, wethought of hell'). This plav opens with the yell of Iago,

Look to vour house, vour daughter and vour bags...Even now, now, very now, an old black ramIs tupping your white ewe . . .

The devil will make a grandsire o, ,oui , . r .B r -gz )

Iago is the only mystery in this play, and Othello's finalquestion goes unanswered :

Will you, I pray, demand that demi-devilWhv he hath thus ensnar'd mv soul and body?

(s'z.go+-s)

for to Iago have been transferred all the qualities normallyassociated with black men on the English stage. His artistic joyin destruction for its own sake makes him equate the night ofplotting which ruins Cassio with Othello's nuptials. 'Pleasureand action make the hours seem short,' he says.

The characters of Iago and Othello are so opposed, yet soinextricably bound together by the action, that they have beenreen as the two halves of a single being. 'I am your own forrver,' says Iago, as they swear vengeance and Othello blowshis fond love towards heaven. After Falstaff and Hamlet, theyirre the most discussed personages of Shakespeare's stage. Bur-bage played Othello; later leading men have sometimes pre-l'erred Iago. W. H. Auden found him the more interesting,pointing out that everything he set out to accomplish, henchieved, including his own self-destruction. Iago is the com-pletely free man - 'our bodies are our gardens, to the which

And then, suddenly, to Shakespeare balance returned.was the imagery of disease and corruption, of the gravethe lazar house. Gone was the uncertain judgment. Perhapshad gone back to the Apologyfor Poetry: 'Nature never setthe earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done ...world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden .. .' for atstart of the Christmas season, Hallowmas, 16o4, his playerson for the King 'Hallamas Day, being the first of Novema Play in the Banqueting House at White Hall called Theof Venice.'

Golden it is - like the flawless jewel to which Othcompared Desdemona:

...anotherworldOf one entire and perfect chrysolite.

$.2.t46-7)

The play is complete, rounded, simple; no subplots, no mephysical questions. Some critics have since thought the lessit for that - Bradley missed 'that element in Shakespeare whichunites him with the mystic poets and the great philosopherurlbut Shakespeare had reached a point of mastery where hilpower excluded the obvious. Meditations on heaven and hellwere now so fully expected in any tragedy - and in everfmasque - that it was a feat of strength to keep them out; h€found himself presenting a story which was tragedv not of statQbut of two individuals in the only great power of Europe that

r78 Shakespeare: The Poet in his Worldour wills are gardeners,' he says, and it is the business ofiwill to curb love - or lust, which arqounts to the sameThis cold permission is contradicted by Othello becausgfunction olreason itself is destroved when he loses laith indemona. In the scene where he pretends to be visiting ahe claims not to know her:

I crv vou mercv, then.I took vou for that cunning whore o[VeniceThat married with Othello.

(4.2.89 gr )

In his imagination her image is turned black (3.3.39r ), yetsense aches at the'weed who art so lovelv fair' (4.2.67-9).ello's desperation is such that at the end he in turnalmost unrecognizable, to the Venetians, to himself. 'That's'which was Othello,' he says. It is a new concept of charHere, the relationships which create identity have beenchosen. Othello has elected to serve ; he and Desdemonaelected to marry in defiance of custom, so that they hbecome utterly dependent on each other. Thev live inenclosed 'universe of two', and the price of their free choicdvulnerability.

AII this was lelt very largely to Burbage to depict. Jeahad hitherto been a feeling to be laughed at; the comic jman, whose'chattel' showed an unexpected independence,a socialjest. Shakespeare had depicted one such in The MWiaes of Windsor. Burbage as 'the grieved Moor' would bemost prominent figure on the stage; his make-upenhance every movement, and the painful scenes of his fibecome the more painful because at any moment the right qtion, the right answer, might restore what is destroyed.brothel scene comes very near to the truth; but Desdemonanot press her challenge, 'To whom, my lord ? With whom ?

am I false ?' (+.2.+o). Her last'lie', that she had killedimplicitly affirms that they are still one flesh, something Otcannot bear to hear:

She's like a liar gone to burning hell:Twas I that kill'd her.

(5.2.r321)

'His Majesty's poor players' t79His retraction when he learns the truth is'complete and total;he acts as his own executioner and by this gains the right to kisshis wife in death. Otherwise nothing is left of their 'downrightviolence and storm of Fortune'.

Shakespeare had always been acknowledged as the poet oflove; here, after ten years, the sex nausea of the sonnets to thedark wanton is heard in Iago's voice, and the pangs of betrayalin Othello's:

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.(Sonnet 94, r4)

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

(Sonnet r47, r3-r4)

Of course the situation is turned inside out; the triurrgle of loveand friendship is changed, but in this play, in its ease and itsrheer power to penetrate, 'expert beyond experience', Shake-:peare had transmuted material that he had been carryingabout within himself and had once before shaped into poetry-- under another form.

He had anticipated with his Noble Moor an astonishingtransformation which the Court was to see on Twelfth Night.The Queen had invited Ben Jonson to write the words of amasque in which she wished to appear with eleve n of her ladies,all to be disguised as blackamoors. Anne took this fancy toappear before her husband, her brother, the Duke of Holstein,und the Spanish and Venetian Ambassadors. It cost over[3,ooo, and was modelled by Inigo Jones upon a masque ofthe Medici. Each of the ladies wore jewels worth thousands ofpounds. But that a queen of England should cover herself withblack paint was considered very indecorous and shocking. AnneIrad, the previous year, appeared as a goddess, Pallas Athene,wearing the spoils of Elizabeth's wardrobe. On this secondoccasion, she and her ladies sat in a huge sea-shell, which wasclrawn forward by fishes, on which two speakers rode to presentthem. The theme was that twelve'Daughters of the Niger' hadfloated hither in search of a clime that would bleach their skins;and the magic isle of Britannia was, of course, their destination.

r Bo Shakespeare: The Poet in his WorldThe riden on the fishes could have been Shakespeare andBurbage.

The Court masque was a ritual of magnificance, intendedto assert the glory of the monarch, the happiness of his kingdom,the harmony of his rule within the course of the heavenlyspheres;when the masquersjoined the audience for the Revell(all-night dancing), they should all be 'rapt' out of this world,''amazed', transported. Elizabethan masques had often dramattized conflict and presented divided selves - the Queen alWoman and as Majesty. James, who had published his firstpoems at eighteen, was himself the author of a wedding masquetwritten in Scotland for the Marquis of Huntley. Now, entirely,godlike, he sat to receive homage - and to foot the bill. Oncc,in order to impress the ambassadors, he was given a jewel o1

great value which he had actually purchased himself!Blackness was praised as the most perfect beauty -

the hue never alters, even in death:

. . how near divinity they beThat stand from passion or decay so free.

The Q;reen appeared as Euphoris or Abundance (sherather ,advanced in pregnancy), but she selected forfirst dance the Spanish Ambassador, who gallantly kissedblack-painted hand.

All would have needed rehearsing, producing, togetherthree speaking parts - Niger, Oceanus and the Moon *which duties the King's Men were available. The nextthey themselves put on Henry Z by 'Shaxberd'; while Benson, annotating his masque with all the classical fiootnoteithought it deserved, was hinting at a sequel for next Chri

This festival turned out to need a wedding masque, andson made use ofthe image ofthe King's marriage to his kito enlarge the myth of Hymen beyond a personal applicIn his notes he dilated pedantically on Roman,marriagetoms. Thenceforward; Jonson and Inigo Jones regularlytheir Christmas offering, with the royal musicians and'King's Men also taking part, the musicians to sing and theto recite, for the royal and noble participants wereto appearing in costumes whose splendour beggared

'His Majesty's poor players' r B !tion, and to dance, This ritual, of course, was witnessed onlyby the most favoured, but the players gave their humble con.ltribution to the display of satin and gold lace, the ropes of'choice and -orient pearl'. The notiorr of complete haimonyin a new and ideal world was turned to stage use; in his imag-ination. Shakespeare produced 'the one intire and perfeitchrysolite'.

He was never asked to write a Court masque, either by Jamesor bv anyone else. He was one of the King,s servants, und Jorrro'was not; but his place was in the public theatre. The omissionmay not have been intended as a slight; yet undoubtedly Jon_son, among his friends, gloried in the riclame; but then he com_mitted the indiscretion of speaking with his other voice .- thesatiric one. At Court he was silken, bland; in the theatre, hemercilessly satirized upstart courtiers. The climax .u-. *h.r,a Scots voice was heard in a play declaring of the most con_te mptible of these, 'Ah ke n the man weel; he;s ane of ma thirty-pund knights.'For Eastward ffol (produced early in r6o5) Jon-son went to jail and wrore his shamefaced confession tliat thiswas about 'aplay' (see above, p. rgg). He was free by Octoberand in less than a month called on to assist the governmentin the investigations following the discovery of the bunpowderPlot of 5 November that year.

Today, when terrorist violence is familiar and a threat togovernment, it is possible to feel what the country felt on learn-ing that the entire government was to have been assassinatedat the opening of Parliament, a puppet state under the childPrincess Elizab_eth p-roclaimed, and-i Catholic r6gime set up,with the 'bye-plotr ofan invading force from the toi' countiies.In this last part, the Spanish Embassy was clearly implicated.

The small 'cell' that contrived the main plot was tonfinedto S)rakespeare's Catholic neighbours, Warwickshire gentry ledby _Robert Catesby, whose father had held land in Stratford,in Shottery, Bishopton and Old Stratford. Like most of theo.thers, Catesby had been involved in the Essex Rising. His cou-sins, the Treshams, Winters, Throckmortons, all caml from theneighbourhood; John Grant, another of the inner,cell', heldland in Snitterfield where Shakespeare,s cousin still farmed onhis grandfather's acres. Princess Elizabeth had lived near.

They hired Clopton Hall as their headquarters, under

In London the conspirators met at Catesby's lodgr-ng in th6'Strand, but also at th; Mermaid Tavern' Early in October'a,,upp".-purty there included Catesby, Lord Mordant' a Perc$ryo'"'"g.t brother of the Earl of.Nolirymberland, Francis Tres':ir"-,hno-as Winter, John Ashfield - and Ben Jonson, who.'

*u, ..t.U.uting his ,.l.ur. from jail' Catesby, Tresham andWinter were among the inner g.or''p' Anyone connected with;the Court could have given them valuable news -about .T9ul'-.n,* (though Ben Jonson was never suspected of complicity)'How Fiancii Tresham betrayed the 'cell' by a warning lettotjto his brother-in-law to stay away from Parliament; how thtconspiracy fled to the country Shakespeare knew.Pt:t: Yh:n!at Hllbeach in Worcestershire, Catesby and Percy died fightin$

- is all a familiar tale. winter and Tresham and Percy's fol"lower, Guy Fawkes * who had been found in the cellar of thiHouse of Lords - were duly given traitors' deaths. It was foundtnui tnirty-six barrels of explosive had been laid in the cellarunder piles of wood, for it irad been hired'to store fuel'' ,-

t}z Shakespeare : The Poet in his World

pretence of hunting-parties. (Shakespeare's New Place had, ofi.o.rrr", been Clopton's property once')

'His MajestY's Poor PlaYers' t83

power to create beings not of this earth - his fairies, his witches'itr. .ou,,rt.s of Proslero's island - startled and enchanted theaudience. This ability to make such characters convincing and

forv.rt"f contrasts with the flat Presentation qf go.d9, goddesses'

i"rr,ur,i.t, in the masque. Their powerful identities are real-ized with an exact' particular embodiment, yet they-remainrny*t.riou., evocativi, hypnotically attractive or horrifying'

'Macbethis an intensely concentrated play, the shortest olltt,r"g"Ji.t; like Othello, it has no subplots or side issues' TheooJtru is densely woven with powerful images; the two leadingfu;;; rta.d o.rt from the toii.ty that.they dominate and de-

siroy. There used to be a theory that it is a cut-down versionoiu io"g.t play; but a deep, tt"tio* shaft seems here to be sunkinto toLl darkness; and tlrror requires brevity, which carriesenormous Powers of suggestion:

Light thickens, and the crowMakes wing to the rookY wood ' ' '

(3.2.5o-5t )

He1ismurky.... (S.r.g6)

Darkness and blood in clammy folds fasten themselves' not tobe shaken off.

Now does he feelHis secret murders sticking on his hands'

(5.z.I6)

The old tragedy of blood had shown the horrors of hell as theend of a life's journeYing:

A darksome place and dangerous to Pass ' ' 'Within a hugy dale of lasting night'That kindled with the world's iniquitiesDoth cast up filthy ar'rd detested fumes'

(The SPanish TragedY,3' r I '64 ff;

But here there is deep uncertainty and a darkness of the mind'

- R .o'.rna-up of Catholics followed' The shock of this to th6

one membe, of th. King's Men who was also a warwickshilGman must have been thJ most severe , the impact of these locdl:.rl"a, far stronger than the local memories attached to Bosg

worth Field.s He might well have known the conspiratofl j

(including some whJ escaped the net)' He certainly kner{itmanv of lhe intended victims - among whom, of course, walSouthamPton. ,,.--S;;k;;;.are

had just been walking in,the coronation Ptoc:si'sion as o.,e of the lding's Men. He hid just acquired, with tll6church tithes of StratfJrd, the right to be buried, like a gentlerman, in the chancel of the parish church' He was possibly hop'ing thut his daughters would marry into the local squirearchyfrJm which the conspirators were drawn'6-Rguin

the fair day and the foul day rushed together -in hilmind to make a new world of darkness' The world he found,Shakespeare once more translormed' The result was Macbeth'

Ir, -any ways, the ingredients ar. not unfamiliar, but in ontrespect ih.y ur. quite new. The Witches are quite unlike any'thi'ng that had been seen on the stage before. Shakespeare't

r 84 Shakespeare: The poet in his WorldThe. journey lies withit. T.h. Witches, who open the play,establish a kind of certainty in uncertainty:

Fair ls foul, and foul ls fair,Hover through the fog and filthy air.

(r.r.ro-rr)

and seeThe great doom's image.

(z.s.ls4)

Macbeth. h.as imagined-already, ,pity, like a naked new bornbabe, striding the blast', or

is to be echoed at once by Macbeth, ,So fair and foul a davI have. not seen . . .' (,.g.gtj). The hags, ,iJariis;r.pr...r* ,fiiand slither about in Maibeth', ,p".I"h. But hE i";;;"\r. illihave judgment here', and the imate-of the mosr "";;;Judgment of all comes when Ua"cauf, ilr;;;#",;;murdered King, calls the sleepers of the house to rise

'His Majesty's poor players' r 85

Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once,And He that might the vantage best have tookFound out the remedv. How would vou beIf He, which is the top ofjudgment, shouldButjudge you as vou are?

( M easure for M easur e, 2.2,7 3-7 )

Macbethjudges himself. The condemnation comes from within- not in the enemies' disposal of 'this dead butcher' but in

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,Creeps in this pettv pace from dav to dayTo the last syllable of recorded time,And all our vesterdays have lighted foolsThe way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle !

(Macbeth,5.5.r g-23)

'lhe slow rhythms of melancholia leave the paralysed mindclear: 'myself am hell',

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor plaver,That struts and frets his hour upon the stageAnd then is heard no more . . .

(s.s.z+-6)

'fhe role has come home to the speaker indeed: 'His Majesty'sPoor Players' was the form of petition for justice; a 'shadow,was a minor actor, or an actor who visibly personified someoneelse (as the deposed Lear was to be termed'Lear's shadow').Identification with the actors ends in meaningless noise, ,signi-lying nothing'. Macbeth had been obsessed by his futuri of'sovereign sway'and lifted himself out of Time by his act. Leftin a meaningless tedium, a lifeless progression, he now hasneither a vital past nor a hopeful future, only a journey to noend. 'We still have judgment here,' he had known before themurder, but he did not know the internal form that judgmentwould take. 'What's done is done,' says Lady Macbeth butlater -'What's done cannot be undone.'It is 'Pity like a naked new-born babe' that accompaniesheaven's cherubim horsed upon the sightless couriers ofthe air.

Heaven,s cherubim, hors'dUpon the sightless couriers of the air. . . .

(r .7.22_g)

proclaiming his crime. The image of the last Judgment, whichlr.1 .b.:l painted over the chaicel arch of the 6uitd 'Cn"".ibeside shakespeare's stratford home, naa aeficteJ-irrr, ,..iiiand angels with their uplifted trumpets summon the dead torise. By his treacheroLrs murder of his king and guest, fufu.Urihhas put himself outside the circre of huian tiitr, ""ai.Jty;his coronation b11119et is attended by one vassal whom f,. hjdbound.to come ('Fail not our feast,'he says to Banquo) buiyhop he did not ex_pect to see.? Judgment is not defivlr;i ;;;rnvoked. lt comes liom within. playwrights were very readvto-givejudgment; in the one play whl.e h"e did,", Sh;i.;r;;;;igtre^c.tivel1 debars the merely legal aspects: ,your Urott .', is aforfeit of the law', is the Judge's"reply'ro the Nu.r, -t. q"iJficounters,

Ig

I 86 Shakespeare: The Poet in his WorldThis is the figure of Christ as He entered time to ,find theremedy', and as He was depicted in the great vision olthe mar.tyred Jesuit Southwell, continuallv returning to Judgment. Itis typical of the fusions olthe plav, and of the power requiredto make them, that Tlte Burning Babd should be reflect.d .uenin the inverted imagery of the Witches (who have the same kindof symbiosis with Macbeth rhat Iago has with Othello). South.well's family was connected bv marriage with the Earl of South.ampton, and a distant blood relationship between Southwelland.-Shakespeare himself has been established through thefamily of Belknap. They could have been considered co=usins,eSouthwell embodies that pity which for Macbeth becomes theAccuser.

As I in hoarv winter's night stood shivering in the snow,Surprised I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow,And lifting up a fearful eve to view what sight was near,A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear . . .

'The fuel Justice laveth on, and Mercv blows the coals,The Metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.'

But after Duncan's murder we have learned through thedrunken porter where we are; the castle of Macbeth has becomeHell's Castle. And here we find him letting in that orher flamousJesuit, Father Garnet, 'an equivocator that could swear in boththe scales against either scale; who committed treason enoughfor God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven, (2.3.g-rr)- hanged for his complicity in the Gunpowder PIot.

Finally the Porter sees something that chills and sobers him- we do not know what it is. 'What are you?' he asks the air,'This place is too cold for hell.' Hell's Castle had been one ofthe most familiar properties of the old stage; Shakespeare isreviving these lolk memories, with the old imagery of death andjudgment, though not to make any doctrinal points, for James,an expert theologian, would not have tolerated it.

The King considered the discovery to have miraculous ele.ments, not the least being his own interpretation of the letterof warning, which - a little improving the occasion - he con-sidered the sole means ofrevealing what had actually been doneby the plotters, in that cellar under rhe House of Lords which

'His Majesty's poor players' I87

had so readily been hired out to one of them'for storing fuel'.Besides, being himselfa writer, James had soon published a Dis'clurse 0n the Powder-Treason, and had his speech from the thronealso printed.

The play was clearly directed to the King. Apart from glori-fying his ancestors Banquo and Fleance - both imaginary - andshowing the procession of Scottish kings, the demonologv wasbound to interest James, who had written a treatise on the sub-ject. Though himself reputedly the victim in his youth of theplottings of the Witches of Berwick, he became increasingll'sceptical. The holy and healing gifts of Edward the Confessorwere his by descent. The canny testing of Macduffby Malcolm(4.3) fits in with James's stratagems and secret tests of his friends(a quality also shown in the Duke of Measure for Measure).

Macbeth registers a shock, for it uncovers the deepest centresof Shakespeare's art. This is not a political plav - Shakespearewas now leaving that to Jonson and Chapman * but a dramaof heaven and hell meeting on earth. 'The crisis . . . is in a sensethe onlv interior crisis worth talking about. It is that in whichevery nerve of the body, everv consciousness of the mind, shrieksthat something cannot be. Only it is. ...'r0 'My fellow-countrymen cannot have planned to murder my king, mypatron and my friends. But they have.' The Witches were themost spectactilar part of the play and were later given someadditional scenes, which included, possibly, some flving effects,inverting the familiar pattern that Hell is under the stage'

There were attempts to borrow the Witches,u but no onecould really approach Macbeth, and, unlike Hamlet, it fatheredno progeny.

A

Io The kingdom of fools

ln Macbeth the deep and narrow torrent of action carried re-sponses swiftly along; for one critic, the key lines speak of'outrunning the pauser, reason'. King Lear,vast and, in its com-plex double-action of Lear's three daughters and Gloucesterwith his two sons, eddying, is blocked with uncertainty. Thesequence of these two tragedies seems to me a matter of psycho-logical fitness. In Macbeth rhe 'night's predominan..; i.uns-mutes deep shock into art, which grows more diffused, thoughnot less powerful, in King Lear. Both are plavs that belong tothe playhouse, but also to the reader in his lonely tower, as yiatsrecorded:

We think of King Learless as the history of one man than as thehistory of a whole evil time. Lear's shadow is Gloucester ... and themind goes on imagining other shadows, shadon, beyond shadow, tillit has pictured a whole world [as] a shadow upon the wall, upon one'sbodv in the firelight.

('Emotion of Multitude,, Essays and Introduction, p. zt5)

The double image of plot and subplot came parrly from anold comedy melodrama which had been reprinted in May 16o5.King Leir and his three daughters belong to the world of tlieballads, where Cinderella and the Ugly Sisters follow out a pat-tern set during the opening scene; after which, true love in dis-guise, murderer and victim, faithful and f,alse servant, move toa conclusion where virtue rriumphs, all the good live happily,all the bad melt away. To this, Shakespeare joins Gloucester'sstory taken from that elegant repository of noble artifice, Sid-ney's Arcadia:the eye that picked them out was a keen one.To turn fairytale into lvric tragedy, he added the Fool and

The kingdom of fools rBg

Edgar the Bedlam, so forming what is, above all others, thetragedy for our time. There is no doubt that, as Hamlet domi-nates the nineteenth century, King Lear dominates the presentage.r In theme, in identification, it speaks to our condition. Asone critic has said, it is in part about the end of the world, andwe know an image of that horror. Shakespeare simply takes allstandards of order and justice and removes them. The turmoilis like the 'last days' of &.euelations. We meet again an imageof Doomsday, as it has been met in Macbeth, but there is nosuch certitude that Justice will bring the guilty to punishment.Awe predominates.

rE,Nr Is this the promis'd end?EDcAR Or image of that horror?ALBANY Fall and cease!

(s.g.z6g-s)

'The gods reward your kindness,'says Kent to Gloucester, andalthough we do not know that he is to be blinded by his guests,we know that something horrible awaits him in the hell-castleof his home. 'The gdds defend her!' is the cue for Lear to enterwith Cordelia dead in his arms. And death is final.

All things come alike to all: and the same condition is to the just andto the wicked, to the good and to the pure, and to the polluted. . . .

There is evil among all that is done under the sun, . . . there is onecondition to all, and also the heart of the sons of men is full of evil,and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that, theygo to the dead. . . . The living know that they shall die, but the deadknow nothing at all; neither have they any more a reward; for theirremembrance is forgotten

( Eccresiastesg.2-5)

King Lear offers a vision of extreme dereliction, of man at thevery extremity of his being; the dereliction is complete, butjudgment remains remarkably clear. No one has ever disputedthat it is better to be Lear in his madness, or Gloucester, orKent or Edgar or Cordelia, than be Goneril or Regan or Corn-wall or Edmund. Not /iaf they die, but how they die, matters.The characters can be divided almost wholly into the good and

Igo Shakespeare: The poet in his World

To this great stage of fools.

the bad. It is not a olay that even needs to say ,Choosel. Ineither does it affori "ny .orrrotuii.". -" ,,

The iron rations of.this co-untry, where ,Virtue,s steely bollook bleak in the cold wind,, ur. p.ouia.d by the ,toi.'ut t-Jof Ecclesiastes or Job. Macbith i, u Ct.irtian plav: Kinsis set in pagal times - ,what time J;;;i;J #]'"il1"_Shakespeare has totally "brt.u.tlJ ii. Cr,rirtiun hope. thourhe has left the Christian ethic. Every d;;t;;i'.;ili;;#icontradicted. Yet this is a most religio", ptuy, in the ,.rrr. tiit deals with ultimate suffering u"a"nni,lo urrr*., to the mtery of evil. But the solutionio the problem of justice isin the vanishing of this problem. r - - --'

Justice reasons the need;justice deals in the superficiepr,llhgr. .There. was, of

"o,r.r.", u" u"l.pruUle answer to Jaobeans: the stoic doctrine of .niu*"".. Tt i, is heard fromto time:

Men muit endureThqir going hence, even as their coming hither:Ripeness is all.

(5.2.9-r r ) r,l

an echo from Edgar of what Lear tells blind Gloucester: ':

Thou must be patient; we came crying hither. . . ,t,

When we are born, we cry that we ura *_a 14

The kingdom of fools IgImonplace that Shakespeare had used from Richard // onwards.It is specially prominentin Macbeth). In the timeless kingdomwhere madman and king and fool rule, the magic surroundingfools, and the devil's voice on the madman's lips, reinforcethe curses of the old King. These three divide sovereignty be-tween them, sit in judgment together, acting out of mysticparticipation rather than any consciousness of each other as

Persons.The relation of Hamlet with his Ghost, of Macbeth with the

Witches, leads up to the relation of Lear with the fool and thebedlam beggar. The hero is in each case symbiotically attractedto figures that are partly human/but partly belong to anotherworld. The king and his fool had been traditionally joined fromearly times; ancient kings had a fool beside them to keep downtheir pride, avert ill-luck, by mockery ofgreatness, by providinga 'double'.2 In Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, the foolRalph Simnel accompanies the Prince of Wales, changingclothes and roles, to act the Prince's part while he goes wooing.Chapman has a character speak of sitting 'like a king in an oldfashioned play; having his wife, his counsel, his children andhis fool about him' (l Humourous Day's Mirth,I599, I .i). Hamletis his own fool, for Yorick is dead.

The fool is a magic, even a sinister figure; the medieval Shipof Fools, which was part of carnival at Christmas, came frombeyond the known world. Marston, who also made his princesdisguise as fools, says:

Note but a fool's beatitude,He is not capable of passion,Blow east, blow west, he steers his course alike. . . .

Being outside the ordinary social order, the joker in the pack,the fool is invulnerable; therefore he is permitted licence to saywhat he will; and, as one who has known the worst, he gainsinsights peculiar to a broken and separated mind. 'He's resolutewho can no lower sink,' says Marston's disguised Malevole,anticipating Edgar (King Lear,4.I .I -g). Lear's Fool belongs tothe older world of Folly, while Edgar, in his 'sullen and assumedhumour of Tom of Bedlam' (as the Quarto terms it), is nearerto Marston and also to those false 'possessed' madmen'of whom,

(4.6.r79-8a) rii'The great stageoffools' where the 'poor player' struts and fret&rs snown us ln the central scenes upon the heath, where timAistandsstill, actionis suspended, and we pass with ttre urr.ro*naJand dispossessed Lear io "...* ti"Sao;, not of this *ortJ,-t iikingdom of fools and bedlam U.gg;r.

-' ,,

For there is in Shakespeare a fie?e energy of living that canrnot accommodate to the passive stoicism'of ,o_."J".ob.";IlgJ: l.T:r - Chapman's, for instance. This ;;;;;y ilffi;rn tne scenes on the heath where ordinary action ,Iopr; in thJ'fable', as distinct from the 'story', ttr. p."tu.uations of naturcand the madness of Lear are in'dlshar-or,y together (a com,

r92 Shakespeare: The Poet in his Worldas we shall see, Shakespeare had recently been made mogtpainfully conscious.

At the height of the sottie, or congregation of fools' wisdom,Lear, when asked by his fool if a madman be a gentleman ora yeoman, had replied, 'A king, a king!' (3.6.r r).

As the king's double or shadow, the fool is kept near himonly because he is potentially so dangerous; for, says Willeford,'with one word, one laugh, pitched to the exact pitch, he coulddestroy the kingdom as a singer will destroy a wineglass'.

In the 'trial', when Lear appears as both judge and witnessfor the prosecution ('I here take my oath before this honourableassembly, she kicked the poor king, her father'), the fool'sobscenity marks the height ol mock ritual: 'Cry you mercy, Itook you for a joint stool' (3.6.46-S r ) - a folk jest meaning 'kissmy arse'.

Gloucester's desperate leap from Dover Cliff is in one waylike a clown's trick (they are always trying to kill themselves,like Papage noin The Magic Flute or Beckett's clowns in Waiting

Jor Godot), after which he too becomes a courtier at the Courtof Lear as the mad King of Summer, crowned with weeds; ina wild mixture of the sacred power to absolve sin, and totallicence of midsummer revelry, he pardons Gloucester's adultery(4.6.rIo-I6). In this scene Lear becomes by turn a soldier, ajudge and a violent sexual cynic in language that recalls, aswe shall see, the language of the church.

Although the exorcism of his madness is accomplished byCordelia and by the power of music, Lear never really returnsto the world of time and space. When he recovers, Cordeliabecomes his whole world; he lives in a kingdom that she byher presence creates. The play itself moves from the archaicland of the opening scenes through the timeless centre to amedieval world of knights in armour; but after Cordelia hasperished on the prison straw, Lear can no longer say words toanyone. It is idle to ask what is 'this' he points to at the end,on the Threshold.

Do you see this? Look on her. Look, her lips.Look there, look there.

(5.3.3ro*r r)

He is in death's dream kingdom, talking to himself or to her.

The kingdom of fools I93

The end of the action, a ritual trial by combat, with formalspeeches of challenge, reply, verdict, award, matches the open-ing scene of Lear's love-challenge, reply, comment and award'

The Kingdom of Fools is a kingdom of misrule, an alternativestate, where in the songs of the fool Lear is presented as a beatenchild, his daughters his mothers. Playing bo-peep, he retainsonly the royal title of fool -'that thou wast born with'' Gonerilendorses the fool's wit, 'Old fools are babes again,' even beforethe fool has appeared. The centre of the play maintains andexamines this paradox, as at the end another famous paradox,'That it is more healthful and profitable to be in prison thanat liberty', is part of Lear's new-found world' ln The Defenceof Contraries (I5g3), where this is found, there is also a paradoxsustained bottrby Edmund and by the mad King, 'that the Bas-tard is more to be esteemed, than the lawfully begotten or legiti-mate',

Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester's bastard sonWas kinder to his father than my daughtersGot'tween the lawful sheets'

(4.6.r r4-t6)

In Shakespeare's tragedy, where the depth of feeling escaPesfrom words, what can be discerned is never more than the tipof the iceberg: paradoxes become inevitable. 'Is it then an acci-dent that Lear's incoherence should convey his insight andKent's rudeness his nobility, Cordelia's chilly plainness herdevotion, Gloucester's courtliness his dereliction?'3 Hidden atthe centre of the play, an unseen multitude of obscene and evilthings contribute to its wild chaos. In his 'codpiece' song, thefool claims that every beggar carries with him an army of lice('Beggars marry many'); the madman is possessed by legionsof devils: 'Five fiends have been in poor Tom at once: of lustas Obidicut ; Hobbididence prince of dumbness; Mahu, of steal-ing;Modo, of murder; Flibbertigibbet, of mopping and mow-ing, who since possesses chambermaids and waiting-women'(+.r.SS tr). It is well known to scholars that these names comefrom a treatise by Samuel Harsnett' chaplain to the Bishop ofLondon and future Archbishop of York: A Declaration of Egre-gious Popish Impostures .. . practised by Edmunds alias Weston, a

to Pipists with insults to players, and that being first issuedrr6o3 and immediately- reissued to anticiPate- th^e..dri

"guittrt priests in general and Jesuits in particular that fol

the Gunpowder Plot, it was calculated to hit Shakespearecularly hard at a particularly sensitive moment. I tliink the igins of ,(fng Lear ire to be found in.a collision between-the sn

iieties "rrd.*tgg.tated poeticjustice of th-e old play (King .Lei"^and the vindiciive gaml whiih Samuel Harsnett plays i,n I

mocking pamphlet. The 'popish impostures' were cases of.plltended lott.tiiott by deviis ind of iheir exorcism, which lirilwith the whole character of Edgar and the scene at Dover Cliin particular, where the 'devil' is exorcized. itr

As chaplain to the Bishop of London and therefore in-char1of licensing books for the press on the Bishop's behalf, Halwould be

-known to the players.s From all accounts a vithough an able man, he had once been accused himselfpop.iy. He had been born a baker's son at Colchester, h

eniered King's College, Cambridge' as a poor student (

'sizar'), and rose in time to succeed Lancelot Andrewes

cized a group of young people who appeared to be possessdd

uf Je"ili. A-ong the Jrrirtut tt was a iiminary priesq Rober'i

rgq Shakespeare: The Poet in his World

Jesuit.a What has not been observed is that the brutal jeerssavage obscenities of this most unchristian work combine in

The kingdom of fools I95

rehearsed 'lines' taught to the 'victims" and he claims to have

t"-t." tft. details frJ- u Latin book put out Uy tlt Jesuits"'--il"rri.t Harsnett had exposed a Puiitan' John Darre]l' *h:

t";;;t-iJ claimed to exorcize a boy i-n Nottingham' Da.rrell

nruiiit.a from Queens' College, Cambridge'.a seat 9t w-i5cft-

ffi;;t ;;J *-ii.t'-ro.. ; Shakeipeare's son-in-law' John Hall'*u, "fro

a graduate oi'q"ttttt', and as a physician might be

exnected to-take some inierest in diseases of the mind'"^i;;;*tt! iutr. rituals, false vestments' false relics' Harsnettor.r.r,,i a paiadoxical double-image: true and false devils' Forii;;;;;;; ",h. ;.;ii is not p""it and. phvsica.llv ,spea\in-gin..tgh in. mouths of tnt youtls and giris; yet in.the evilof;ffi;; ,,r.r, not.ia rites he is in fact it work in the exorcist

;;ilGkt with iis',roi"., as well as in tlie words he has trainedhis victim-assistants to say' The devil may claim q"t"1i Eliza-[.rn "t-ftit 'darling' and, when asked of the Q19to of Heaven'

,";';6ttttunoin* Quee1" thus as a,(catholic) devil spea.k-

ini ltrot.rtunt; treaJn' But he will also witness to the

Immaculate Conception ('I had never a bit in her') and deny

if,ut tft. Catholic tttuttytt need to pass through Purgatory-'

The attentiu. r.uJ., may find a third diabolical level in Har-,n.1ii, own gloatingtaunts; his jeers not only at simulation butat the relics of rn.r, lik. campion. He is seduced by his own

'.,Attte', and his deviousness u"d uioltttte give a mirror image

""f .ii;:;;;;;;;J; for a mind capable of divided svmpathies'

the issue would be an agonized queition of the basis of Christen-

dom itself' as in Donne's Holy Sonnet"

Show me, dear Christ, thy spouse' so bright and clear ' ' 'Is she selftruth, and errs?

(It is worth adding that in 1 f:y Y"utt King Lear.was.b.eing

oriuu,"fv played ii the Catholic 'household of Sir Richard

bholmondeleY in Yorkshire')Harsnett describes how the priests' troupes' acjing in secret

oi.ourr.,'removed bag and baggage as your wandering players

,rr.a io do' (often to "i-'pty hoiles-rented by.servants), (p' r I)'

Lii. irt.pr.vers, they rtdpta to collectan audience and money'

," in. 'holy Trugedians'btut 'e sort of Christmas game' but so

absurdlv that a .r,itJ '*itt dari to take the devil bv the vizardffiil;; *iirtirtatr""l's nose and cry awav with the priest and

9.u?^ J 2

Master of Pembroke College. ,'In his book Harsnett tells of an incident nearly twenty yeafi

old, when Edmunds (or Weston), Superior of the Jesuits, exof|

dtbdJ;; *rto nu'a been Shakespeare's schoolfeilow at StratfordGrammar school. By obtaining converts they hoped to raigt,funds for the Babington Plot against the Queen' One. of .thQpossessed *t. ,.rrrtrit to Anthony Babington, the ringleaderiIthe.s were young servant girls and a youth of good family whohad been backsfting. The confessions in court of four of thC

possessed, and one a-ssistant priest, if accepted, constituted alhurp .*porure of an uttt..rrprlous game. The three girls-(agedfifteen to sixteen) were given nuuieo.rs potions, censed withfumigations whiih in thJ words of the youth were 'enough tomakJ a horse mad', tied in a chair and tortured' They wereProtestants by birttr, put out to service in catholic households,

Harsnett describeithe rites under the metaphor of a play,with the priests as tragedians, combining conjuring with

and penner olthe play', played three parts in one; sometimelthe priest, sometimes the devil, sometimes the devil's promptcf:or Interlocutor (as the puppets have always a mimic prolocutolto tell what they mean; the young actors need prompting ,fo1many things falling better extempore, to grace the play withalfthan that which was meditated and set down') (p. roa). ;

The girls were lavourite subjects for the display of exorcisntland much of it was obscene. A great deal of groping in the girl'i:'Park', the tying of a priest's stocking round her leg, the touchy

I96 Shakespeare : The Poet in his Worldthe devil, thev have marred a good play'. Edmunds, ,a

ing of menstrues with holy relics. Of course the constardassumption is that the girls were sexually exploited. Theirparents, who tried to get them away, were driven off. , il

One of the girls, Sara, had a vision of the devil 'with a druntand seven motley vizards' (i.e. disguised followers). The priestriaccording to Harsnett, 'play ar bo peep with almighty God'gbut when they departed, theirjuggling was known. They would'hunt'thedevil through various parts of the woman's body, inthe language of the chase, usually confining him to the lowerp_arts.? This seems to link up with the sexual nausea of Lear;'But to the girdle do the gods inherit; Beneath is all the fiends, i

@.6.t26-7). For the girdle of Edmund Campion allegedly warused to confine the chief fiend to the lower part of the womantlbody, her'hell'.

The departure of the devil ensures that he is seen in hilown shape for the first time, but only by the possessed, who de.scribes him to the rest. Some 'manifestations' mav accompanyhis departure, which Harsnett considers the work of othefaccomplices.

Shakespeare took the names of Edgar's devils from the pass.age describing the final act of dispossession:

The first devil that was disseized was Smolkin . . . in the form of amouse [he went out from Twyford's right ear]. Hilcho... likea flame of fire; the third was Habbididance, Sara's dancing devil whoappeared to the patient like a whirlwind . . . turning round in a flameoffire. Captain Filpot went his wav in the likeness ola smoke, turninground, and so took his wav up into the chimne,v. Lustv Dick (as itseems) did slip a button in one of his turns above ground, for he wentout in a foul unsavory stench.s (Chapter 22, pp. r4o-r.)

The kingdom of fools IgT

Sara had in her bodv a whole legion of devils, of whom Maho,the chiet was the last to leave her, bv the vagina. Modu leftone of the young men; these are the two that Edgar linkstogether.

The devil may appear 'with ugly horns on his head, fire inhis mouth, a cow's tail at his breech, eves like a bason, fangslike a dog, claws like a bear, a skin like a negar and a voiceroaring like a lion', for'it is good decorum in a comedy to tellus of strange monsters rvithin, where there be none'. Poets, tostrike terror, present '6he three Eumenides sisters, the Furiesor tormentors of hell, with black ugly visages, grislv with smoke,with whips of blood and fire in their hands, their arms goredwith blood and a huge bunch of a thousand snakes crawlingdown their hair' but the exorcist 'will laugh the Eumenidesoffthe stage' (p.g+).A remembrance of one of Shakespeare'splavs seems to come when he mentions Julius Caesar, the Ghostproclaiming'I am thine evil angel' (and he is'a foul, uglv, mon-strous shaped ghost'), with Brutus answering 'resolutely', 'I willmeet thee at the fields of Philippi' (Julius Caesar,4.3.27g-S4).Pla,vers' morals are insulted to castigate the wandering priests:'It is the fashion of vagabond plavers, that coast from town totown with a truss and a cast of fiddles, to carry in their consortbroken queans and Ganimedes as well for their night's plea-sance as their day's pastime' (p. r+g).

We have already seen one indirect reaction towards outrage,in the figure of Shylock. The insults, of course, were old andfamiliar, but their use in this particular context, and with thereflections of all the divided sympathies of 'foul' and 'fair'alreadv explored in Macbeth, must have been particularlyagonizing to any actor: by mocking these devilish rites as mereacting, acting itself became tainted with devilry.

The exorcist heard another voice on human lips ('I am afraidit is not William who speaks to me', the Puritan Darrellobserves), and Albany similarly has his doubts of Goneril:

Howe'er thou art a fiend,A woman's shape doth shield thee

(4.zrli6*7)

while the voice that replies, 'Marry, your manhood - mew!'

rgB Shakespeare: The Poet in his Worldis almost bevond speech, like the devil in Dante who croaktmeaninglesslv or Edgar when he cries and crows like a cocki

Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill,Alow, alow, loo, loo!

(s.+.zs-6)

Ifthis is obscene in a childish wav, so were manv of the witches'charms.e

Harsnett was exploiting every device to humiliate hiropponents, for ends which were basically political. His allega.tions of bawdvness mixed with sacramental rites, and the uscol actors and priests to blacken one another, all in the namcof religion, provided raw material for the central scenes of KingLear, more especially when juxtaposed with the docile pietierof the old play on King Leir which was reprinted in 16o5. Itwas the coming together of these incompatible works in the be.wilderment of the divided mind that the writing of Macbethevinced, which gave Shakespeare the extremes of 'the wholeevil time' in King Lear, its union of opposites. It is these twopolarized emotional starting-points rather than the coh.ventional ones usually mentioned that I would think illumina.tive of the play. They do not give us the story but they givethe power drive, which injected the madness of possession intoa history that was a model of reassuring providential acts,Traces of Harsnett linger as late as Pericles (4.6.rr8) and ThcTempest (2.2.5-rz).

The old play is most perversely treated by Shakespeare. Hctook from it the opening ritual and the basis for the reconcilia.tion of Lear and Cordelia, but elsewhere he takes so much out,puts so much in, and alters what is left so drastically that heexplodes the strong, conventional, predictable melodrama.

It is a well-made old play. Leir has buried his wife and wantsto betake himself to a life of prayer: the mood is very pious,the name of God being frequently invoked. Cordelia is muchless brusque, even uses endearment to her father; having beendisinherited, by a plot of her two sisters, she betakes herself tothe life of a sempstress. Lear, a pattern of patience, instead ofcursing Goneril with sterility, excuses her strong lahguage tohim:

The kingdom of fools IggAlas, poor soul, she breeds voung bones,And that it is makes her so techv, sure . . .

onlv to have this taken as an insult by the newlv-weddedDuchess:

What, breeds voung bones already? You will makeAn honest woman of me then belike !

O vile old wretch, who ever heard the like?That seeketh his own daughter to defame.

The King of France, who has crossed to England in the disguiseof a pilgrim, woos Cordelia, accompanied by a merry andslightly bawdy lord; Lear is saved from death at the hands ofRegan's messenger by the intervention of heavenly thunder,crosses to France and is reunited with Cordelia, the King andthe merry lord, who are having a picnic (in disguise) on thecoast of Normandy. All, of course, ends happily, with somecomic English watchmen failing to see the French invasionbecause they are too drunk.

This exercise eschews madness or mystery; never a man'sthought kept the highwav better than the author's. Thestructure is efficient at its own level and far too neat to beGreene's or Peele's - Leir is a sort of male Patient Griselda.

The very triviality of King Leir offers a vehicle for the moltenfeelings of bewilderment, confusion and rage that it carried forShakespeare - the curses and obscenities that belong to thestorm, the bound figure tortured in a chair, and, underlyingall, echoes of The Book of Job t

,,

Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that the abundance ofwaters may cover thee? Canst thou send the lightnings that they maywalk, and say, lo here we are?

(g8.g+-s)

Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, whichwill no more be admonished.

(Eccles. 4.rg)

is more in the spirit of moralizing that informs the old play.

,J

Brg

##€s"s

1.ji

I-t

2oo Shakespeare: The Poet in his WorldWhen Cordelia offers her pledge to her lather in Shake'

speare's ope ning scene, she uses the words of the marriage ser'vice;she will'love, honour and obev'- but the men betweenwhom she is to choose are waiting. and indirectly the wordsconvey a pledge to one of them, with a rebuke to Lear. Goneriland Regan's 'court holy water' of ftattery is no more excessivethan language that was frequentl.v addressed to King James;but Shakespeare had notjoined in the chorus ofpublic adula. t

tion on James's accession.' The deep distrust ofwords, which remains after their utmosteloquence is explored, leads to the bare cries that come whenlanguage has been pushed to its limits (it sometimes goesbeyond, to wordless howls). It matches the scepticism of theKingdom of Fools. If Lear's fiool is a preacher without laurels,he is obscuring and blunting home-truths to escape the blowsthat are the traditional reward of plain speaking.

The logic of his defenceless lovaltv is that the deeper he seesinto the heart ofthe matter, the more he must disguise it. Edgarhas the last word:

The weight of this sad time we must obev,Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.The oldest hath borne most; we that are voungShall never see so much nor live so long.

(s.g.gzs-6)

lVhat he 'ought to say' is some praise of the dead, customaryat the end of a tragedy, but he has learned Cordelia's virtue oftrue counsel, to'speak what we feel, not what we ought to say'.The emptiness and exhaustion at the end of this play matchthe emptiness of the stage. There is no new figure such as l/am'/e/'s Fortinbras. Albany asks Kent and Edgar to serve as hiscounsellors (he is not, surely, after what has happened, propos'ing a division of the crown). There has never been any senseof ordinary daily life in this play, such as can be felt in Hamletor Othello. There is not even a feeling of political life as in Mac-belh,for the whole play is too archaic, too primitive in the levelsit reaches.ro The magic kingdom dissolves; the dispossessedEdgar, in his final words finds only another way of saying 'Therest is silence.'

The kingdom of fools 2or

Was there, as in Macbelh, a reflection of the contemporaryscene, however oblique? In so far as shakespeare was-dealingwith an archaic kingdorn, Lear's proposed division of his landwas the opposite oT James's stress upon the uniting of hiskingdoms.-However, at this time there was a certain amountof ienewed tension as it was getting clearer that a completepolitical union between England and Scotland was not desiredLy either of the parties, and James's plans for political unifica-titn were thwaried. So far the play might be taken as reflectingfor the benefit ofhis subjects the well-known dangers oldivision.The miracle hailed in the coronation procession had not takenplace.' This meant, however, that there would be no further explora-tion of the myth of state . Jonson had this same ve ar (I6o6) pro-duced his Hy:menaei, his most complex celebration of social andcosmic ordei and harmony symbolized in marriage . It was fol-lowed by a contest between Truth and opinion, 'so alike attiredthat they could by no note be distinguished'; eventually anAngel descends to reveal Truth and strip Opinion' These.sports',".i i., honour of the Howard*Essex marriage designed bv theKing, which ended later in adultery, in divorce, in murder'fragite indeed was the basis of courtly life upon which JonsonexeJuted his visions. His next comedy, Volpone, was the bitteresthe had made. shakespeare did not follow any further his designwhich had obliquely reflected the life of the times in his livingscene. The divisions in that life, where political conflicts tookreligious form, were to prove irreconcilable. Rather he sharedhis ilrterests between the ancient lands of his'Roman' plays andthe mythical country of his romances, in both seeking to explorethe eiement of fantasy and dream in the relations of hischaracters with each other. He had already penetrated so farbelow the level of ordinary appearance that in his strange finalplays he emerged on 'the other side of despair' into a newiou.rtry of thJ mind, filled with figures 'past the size ofdreaming.'

z A challenge to fortune

r Citedby John Dover Wilson, Shakespeare's England (r9r I)' pP: t9t-"e. In Qpeen Mary's reign, assembly for Protestant worship had

b..n .Jr.i.d out in Lonion inns under pretence of assemblirg

for a PlaY.z See below, chaPter 6, PP' te4-5'

3 if,. op.ning scene ofD.kktt't OId Fortunatus shows the goddess For-" ,urr. with four captive kings at her chariot' one being Bajazet'

andsheherselflamentshisfateatthehandsof.Fortune'sbestminion, warlike Tamburlaine'' For further examples see m]'

Themes and conttentions of Elizabethan Tragedy (t93s)' pp' 95-6-and Shakespeare the Craftsman $969), pp' ro5-8'

I

+5

See below, chapter 5' P. I05' n' I I 'He said that he had as good u right to coin as the Queen' tricd

-,o i*pr.rs her iinage and found himself in Newgate jail: a

characteristic insolence'See L. G. Salingar, shakespeare and the Traditions of comcdy (t gz+) T

discussion ofthesources' He points out that the Dromios are much

more like the zannis of the cimmedia dell' arte than Roman slarcSee Harold Broolc' 'Themes and StructuteinTlu Conedy of Enon"

Stratford-upon-uuo,t Studies, number 3' ed' B' Harris and J' RBrown (I96t).

9 'His MajestY's Poor PlaYers'

r The text may be found in E' K' Chambers' The Etizabethan Stage'

u, zo8-9.z L. G. Salingar, Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy (rg7+)' Pp'

3r3-r6.

248 Notes

3 From Matthew 7.r*z (this follows the Lord's Prayer) :'Judge notthat ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge ye shallbejudged;and what measure ye mete, it shall be measured toyou again.'

4 That sort ofjustice had been sufficiently shown on Ralegh and Cob-ham, brought to the verge of the scaffold, and played about with,before the King's 'especial mercv' restricted the execution to twomiserable minor figures.

5 Robert Catesby was, however, the descendant of that WilliamCatesby who was Richard rrr's trusted counsellor and who assistsin all his plots in Shakespeare's Richard III. His ironic words tothe doomed Hastings, 'Tis a vile thing to die, my gracious lord /When men are unprepar'd and look not for it' (3.2.63-4) mighthave served in r6o5.

6 A full account of all Stratford connections is given in Leslie Hotson'sI, William Shakespeare (t937), chaprer 8. He makes a great dealof Sir Edward Bushell, once retainer to the Earl of Derby, whosebrother married a Greville and his sister a Quiney, gentlemanusher to the Earl of Essex.

7 I am indebted here to an unpublished essay by Guy Butler on ,TheGreat Doom's Image' and to Frederick Turner, Shakespeare andthe Nature of Time ( r 97 t ) , chapter 7. For hell castle, see GlynneWickham in Aspects of Macbeth, ed. K. Muir and P. Edwards(rgtt).

B Robert Southwell's poem was in print by 16oz;he died in r5g5.Ben Jonson told Drummond that he would have given all hispoetry to have written it. At the climax of the Croxton ptay ofthe Sacrament an infant Christ appears to the Jew who is torturinghim and effects a conversion.

g See Peter Milward, Shakespeare's Religious Background ( r g7g ), p. 54,and C. Devlin, Life of Robert Southwell (1956), p. 15.

Io See Charles Williams, Shakespeare Criticism, rgrg-35, ed. AnneBradby (r9:6), p.r34.

r r Jonson's elaborate antimasque of witches in The Masque of fueens(r6o9) - they retreated into a traditional Hell-Mouth at theend - preluded the appearance of the Queen as hersel{, Bel-Anna,Queen of the Ocean, leading eleven famous queens of antiquity.There are conjurings with charms, songs and dancing round thecauldron. Marston uses a witch in Sophonisba (16o6). Macbethhas, of course, been especially susceptible of translation into

Noter t49other media and other cultures owing to its deep and rimpk in'tensity. Such are the Japanese film Throne of Blood, the Zulu llna'batha, etc.

ro The kingdom of fools

r See Frank Kermode, preface to King Lear in the Rivenide Shake-speare (Boston, I9TI); Maynard Mack, King Lear in our Time(Berkeley, r965).

e See William Willeford, The Fool and his Sceptre (Edward Arnold,r 969).

3 Sheldon P. Zitner in Somc Faceh of King Lear, ed. R. Colie and F.T. Flahiff (Toronto, 1974).

4 Printed r6o3 and reprinted I6o4. I have used the Folger Library'scopy of r 6o4. William Weston's own account inhis Autobiographyis edited by P. Caraman (I955).

5 His book was printed by James Roberts who in 16oo had printedA Midsummer Night's Dream and who had a special licence to printplaybills for theatres. Roberts also protected players' rights byregistering plays in his name, so that no one else could printthem; he did this for Troilus and Cressida.

6 He left Stratford in r575, returned as priest and died a martyr inr586 (see Peter Milward, Shakespeare's Religious Background, pp.39' 52)'

7 'When she cries O ! then the devil is there . . . ever and anon theywere at the holy chair and the dislodging, coursing and pinching,the devil was still in their Parks . . . if they had dispatcht hastily,much good hunting sport had been lost' (pp. Z6' Zg).

8 A number of extracts from Hannett are given in the Arden editionof King Lear edited by Kenneth Muir. He also comments on theiruse in Tia Sources o.f Shakespeare's Plays (t977), pp. zoz-6.

9 Pillicock is the penis. One of the witches quoted by Darrellbewitched a boy who f;arted in her Presence with the rhyme, 'Gipwith a mischief and fart with a bell / I shall go to heaven andthou shalt go to hell' - and then, says Darrell, her Minnie enteredinto him.

ro 'Whether one deplores or rejoices in the fact, there are still somezones in which savage thought, like savage species, is relativelyprotected. This is the case ofart, to which our civilization accordsthe status of a National Park, with all the advantages and

250 Notes

inconvenienc€s attending so artificial a formula' (C' Levi

Strauss, fn' so'og) Mini' q-"ottd in rerence Hawkes' Shakespeare' s

Tatking Animals, P' 2I3')