While 1605 seemed to start as a good year for James I and he had to a certain extent succeeded in furthering the notion of a United Kingdom or ‘Great Britain’ through building the relations between England, Scotland and Wales, he had also forged an end to the Anglo-Spanish conflicts reignited in August 1604. Little did James know that even as early as May 1604, Guy Fawkes and a group of Catholic conspirators had started to plan for November 1605 for what would become the Gunpowder Plot. But for the moment, all seemed quiet at the palace.
On the writing front Shakespeare had seemed fairly quiet in late 1604 and early 1605 but he had good reason. He was trying to ensure that he could create financial security for himself in Stratford-Upon-Avon so that he could write full time in London and eventually retire back to Stratford and even do some more writing in retirement. In 1601, he had bought 107 acres of arable land with twenty acres of pasturage for 20 pounds and this seemed to now be bringing in, in rent, almost that much every year. But that was nothing, for, in April of 1605, he purchased even more land and hoped that the income from these land purchases could eventually rake in more than 50 pounds a year. This along with the 10-20 pounds a year he made through what many would label 'grain hoarding', would bring him a substantial income that would lift him into an affluent class.
It is alleged that Shakespeare spent his 41st birthday in Stratford, probably dealing with his investments. But in late April as he took the 140 mile, three or four day horse and cart or carriage journey back to London, his mind must have turned to what his next play could be. When he stopped at Chipping Norton or at an inn near Woodstock (if he was lucky with the road and the rain), he probably took out the books he had carried but not read that day due to the ruts and bumps in the path. Perhaps it was the sense of England reconnecting to its Scottish and Welsh heritage with James I that prompted Shakespeare to take out his beloved Holinshed’s ‘The Chronicles of England, Scotlande and Ireland’. He probably thought of writing another History play on the second day and perhaps even made notes as he travelled to Oxford and stayed overnight there. He may have even lashed out and got a seat on a carriage to travel to Burnham Beaches and he may have even got some reading done on the journey had he done so. As he travelled into London, he probably thought he would stick to some familiar poetry reading as he took out and reread Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ concentrating on a character in it named Cordelia. By the time he reached London proper, he thinking of writing another tragedy using a historical figure and his mind kept coming back to the Celtic figure of King Leir of Britain.
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head…
By the time Shakespeare had finished Anthony and Cleopatra in about July of 1606, the plague numbers had risen again in London and the theatres were closed. Because the next time the theatres were reopened was for a brief time in April 1607 and because many plays from early 1607 onwards are influenced by this play, it is likely that Anthony and Cleopatra had its premiere by the King's men at a court performance sometime in October or November of 1606 when entertainments were vetted for court season for the holiday season.
So with the potential with one more play before the Winter set in, Shakespeare turned to William Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure’ which was a rough translation of Boccaccio’s ‘The Decameron’ to tell a black and cynical tale about human relations, sex and love filled with pleasant and unpleasant characters and even rogues and cads where true love takes second place to manipulation and exploitation. Shakespeare probably never penned a truer set of words when he wrote in late 1606 in ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ - “My friends were poor, but honest.” For both Shakespeare and James I, it was friends and honesty that was needed at the end of a tumultuous but momentous year.
As he unpacked his stuff, the story started to form for King Lear. Shakespeare was probably visited by the chief actor of his company Richard Burbage, who, having recently turned 38 was keen for Shakespeare to write him an older tragic character for him to be tested by. Shakespeare may have shown him a speech or two he had written, none of which was probably new or intended for his new project and he may have even pitched some of the plot to Richard to keep him happy. Burbage probably had told Shakespeare that he had heard rumours that Robert Armin, the comic of their company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was thinking of returning to the Chandos Company. On top of this Burbage had probably just hired another couple of young male actors and probably suggested to Shakespeare that a few more female characters in his next play would be a good idea. Shakespeare knew that he had quite a task ahead of him as he ushered Richard Burbage out of the door. But by the end of the week he had started to finally bring together all the elements for the play he initially titled ‘The True Chronicle of the History of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters’. The play probably proved very popular in that season along with revivals of 'Measure for Measure' and 'Troilus and Cressida' but Shakespeare would have kept adding some bits as he went along and perhaps Gloucester's reference to "...these late eclipses of the sun and moon..." and the whole opening of Edmund and Edgar's in Act One Scene Two was added by Shakespeare after the October 12th 1605 solar eclipse to make the play topical enough for its provincial touring and/or private performances in manor houses or at the law colleges in London. Perhaps he was also thinking of making it topical enough to get invited for a performance for Christmas for King James I at the palace. And why not. James I was very interested in astronomy, witchcraft and other 'magic' arts and almost everyone else seemed to be invited to the palace since James I seemed very open in his policies.
All that was to change when on November 5th, 1605, Guy Fawkes walked out of a gunpowder filled and decorated cellars of Parliament and into the arms of Sir Thomas Knyvet and the history books. It was obvious after that King James I would not be welcoming all and sundry to Christmas this year. Shakespeare would have to wait to flatter and impress the new king. Perhaps he added the lines of King Lear raging against the storm after the Gunpowder Plot or perhaps they act as a foreshadowing of the Gunpowder Plot:
"You sulphurous and thought-executing fire...,"
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen."
Late on the night of November 4th, 1605, as the wind picked up outside his window, Shakespeare probably put down his 1599 copy the ‘Discovery of Witchcraft, and Daemonologie’ wriiten by the new king James I. The weather outside was foul and well suited to a bit of reading on witches. He then probably downed the last of the mulled wine in the goblet beside his bed before he lifted the brass candle snuffer and put out the candle.
Early the next morning, Shakespeare was probably awoken by a loud knock on the door of his large room at his Silver Street lodgings which he rented from Christopher Mountjoy (a French Huguenot and a wigmaker by trade). The news had started to spread that a plot to blow up the houses of parliament had been foiled the night before and a certain Guy Fawkes had been arrested. The early visitor was probably one of Mountjoy’s apprentices, a young provincial boy from Shakespeare’s home county of Warwickshire. News that people from Warwickshire were involved in the plot probably came as warning to Shakespeare to lay low for a while. Shakespeare could see that his family’s Catholic sympathies might come to haunt him again. He probably then got dressed and went down the local inn where he could get a hearty breakfast of porridge and a pint of ale.
As he walked back to his lodgings he probably pondered on how some of the good men of Warwickshire could let their private ambitions drive them to acts like the attempt to blow up parliament. He thoughts may have drifted momentarily to his own ambitions and as he avoided the inevitable horse manure in the streets and slopsbuckets being emptied out of windows and doors, he may have worried that this new plot could stop his dreams of having a new play and a dozen odd performances at the court this winter. At £10 a performance and sometimes £12 for a new play that King James I liked, Shakespeare knew how lucrative a few court performances could be, so he thought of what of the ideas he had and what stories he could make into plays to make a good impression on James I.
As walked back along Muggle Street, Shakespeare could have thought back to one of his first projects for Ferdinando (the Lord Strange) back in the early 90’s when he was commissioned to write the Henry VI trilogy for the company known as the Lord Strange’s Men. They were a good set of plays but ultimately a piece of flattery, a rewriting of royal history but with the exploits and loyalty of the Lord Strange’s ancestors the Stanleys made to sound pivotal to the English crown. Perhaps he could do the same with James’ Scottish ancestors.
In earnest, Shakespeare walked up the stairs of his Silver Street lodgings, unlocked and walked into his room, fully opened the curtains and took out his ‘Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland’. It was a 1587 Second Edition which he either had picked up in London in 1590 or it had been given by the Earl of Southhampton if he had worked for him in 1588 at Titchfield. He scanned through the pages until he found the story he wanted and then took down his copy of George Buchanan’s account of the same story in ‘Rerum Scoticarum Historia’. He then took out a leaf of new parchment and the good goose quill that he had purchased a week before and he wrote the title on the parchment ‘The Tragedie of Macbeth’.
Then his imagination traveled and meandered almost as much as the quill on the page. A Scottish moor, a desolate place. Thunder and lightning crash. Enter three witches.
First Witch: “When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”
This time Shakespeare would not flinch from the new king’s paranoia: James I was obsessed with witchcraft and equivocation. James I had survived numerous assassination attempts, Shakespeare chose to build a headlong descent into regal paranoia round the bloody murder of old King Duncan. King Duncan did not nor would not survive assassination.
Storms seems to lash England for most of the first half of 1606. Floods and storm surges made it impossible to travel much out of London and food prices rose. Shakespeare was lucky with the extra land he had bought in Stratford-upon-Avon and the extra grain he had stored (hoarded more like) meant that he was able to make a pretty profit by waiting for April to offload much of his grain. He knew in the lead up to the summer season, he would need more than ‘Macbeth’ in the mix of plays. Some of his company, the King’s Men, probably thought a revival of the history plays might work or ‘Julius Caesar’ but Shakespeare knew that with the heads of the traitors of the Gunpowder Plot which were bound in metal not yet fully decomposed that a tale of treachery might not prove tasteful.
As the rain continued to fall hard, Shakespeare probably took out his copy of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ and toyed with the idea a play using Virgil’s Dido and Aeneas. At some point he opened his copy of his Thomas North 1579 translation Plutarch’s ‘Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together’ and he turned specifically to ‘The Life of Marcus Antonius’ and was probably struck by the poetry and the potential of a play about Antony and Cleopatra. He could see that it could be a wonderful story about love and loss but also a story about moral and ethical ambiguity, egos, governance, waste and stupidity. A story that resonates even more strongly today.
‘Antony and Cleopatra’ opens in the court of Cleopatra in Alexandria in Egypt around 40BC. Antony's men talk loosely about how Antony seems to have lost his zest for leadership now that he dotes on Cleopatra. Antony and Cleopatra enter. Cleopatra teases Antony teases him about his marriage and demands to know how much he loves her. He declares his love and shows he is distracted from his duties:
“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space."
All’s Well That Ends Well Act One – “My friends were poor, but honest.”
Shakespeare knew that he had to whip up another play to accompany ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and ‘King Lear’ in the new season for The Globe. These two plays had already proved a success in winter venues like the palace and the law colleges but he knew that he had to add a comedy to the mix if he wanted the summer Globe season to be a success.
The Plague looked as if it would not hit too hard that year since only about 500 had died in the lead up months. So with care it looked as if there would be a normal death toll of about 1500 people dead in London for July and August (although reports from Wales were coming in that the Plague was bad there this year). James I and the royals would, of course, leave the city. ‘Measure for Measure’ had played up to King James well and he had paid for a couple of performances but its transfer to The Globe had had a mixed reaction. It was becoming clear to Shakespeare that a different darker sort of comedy was coming into vogue – a comedy of moral disillusionment. Ben Jonson jumped on the bandwagon quickly with his ‘Every Man and His Humour’ and Middleton with his ‘Family of Love’ and ‘The Phoenix’. If it was moral disillusionment they wanted, then Shakespeare could deliver with 'All's Well That Ends Well'.
On the writing front Shakespeare had seemed fairly quiet in late 1604 and early 1605 but he had good reason. He was trying to ensure that he could create financial security for himself in Stratford-Upon-Avon so that he could write full time in London and eventually retire back to Stratford and even do some more writing in retirement. In 1601, he had bought 107 acres of arable land with twenty acres of pasturage for 20 pounds and this seemed to now be bringing in, in rent, almost that much every year. But that was nothing, for, in April of 1605, he purchased even more land and hoped that the income from these land purchases could eventually rake in more than 50 pounds a year. This along with the 10-20 pounds a year he made through what many would label 'grain hoarding', would bring him a substantial income that would lift him into an affluent class.
It is alleged that Shakespeare spent his 41st birthday in Stratford, probably dealing with his investments. But in late April as he took the 140 mile, three or four day horse and cart or carriage journey back to London, his mind must have turned to what his next play could be. When he stopped at Chipping Norton or at an inn near Woodstock (if he was lucky with the road and the rain), he probably took out the books he had carried but not read that day due to the ruts and bumps in the path. Perhaps it was the sense of England reconnecting to its Scottish and Welsh heritage with James I that prompted Shakespeare to take out his beloved Holinshed’s ‘The Chronicles of England, Scotlande and Ireland’. He probably thought of writing another History play on the second day and perhaps even made notes as he travelled to Oxford and stayed overnight there. He may have even lashed out and got a seat on a carriage to travel to Burnham Beaches and he may have even got some reading done on the journey had he done so. As he travelled into London, he probably thought he would stick to some familiar poetry reading as he took out and reread Spenser’s ‘The Faerie Queene’ concentrating on a character in it named Cordelia. By the time he reached London proper, he thinking of writing another tragedy using a historical figure and his mind kept coming back to the Celtic figure of King Leir of Britain.
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head…
By the time Shakespeare had finished Anthony and Cleopatra in about July of 1606, the plague numbers had risen again in London and the theatres were closed. Because the next time the theatres were reopened was for a brief time in April 1607 and because many plays from early 1607 onwards are influenced by this play, it is likely that Anthony and Cleopatra had its premiere by the King's men at a court performance sometime in October or November of 1606 when entertainments were vetted for court season for the holiday season.
So with the potential with one more play before the Winter set in, Shakespeare turned to William Painter’s ‘Palace of Pleasure’ which was a rough translation of Boccaccio’s ‘The Decameron’ to tell a black and cynical tale about human relations, sex and love filled with pleasant and unpleasant characters and even rogues and cads where true love takes second place to manipulation and exploitation. Shakespeare probably never penned a truer set of words when he wrote in late 1606 in ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ - “My friends were poor, but honest.” For both Shakespeare and James I, it was friends and honesty that was needed at the end of a tumultuous but momentous year.
As he unpacked his stuff, the story started to form for King Lear. Shakespeare was probably visited by the chief actor of his company Richard Burbage, who, having recently turned 38 was keen for Shakespeare to write him an older tragic character for him to be tested by. Shakespeare may have shown him a speech or two he had written, none of which was probably new or intended for his new project and he may have even pitched some of the plot to Richard to keep him happy. Burbage probably had told Shakespeare that he had heard rumours that Robert Armin, the comic of their company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, was thinking of returning to the Chandos Company. On top of this Burbage had probably just hired another couple of young male actors and probably suggested to Shakespeare that a few more female characters in his next play would be a good idea. Shakespeare knew that he had quite a task ahead of him as he ushered Richard Burbage out of the door. But by the end of the week he had started to finally bring together all the elements for the play he initially titled ‘The True Chronicle of the History of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters’. The play probably proved very popular in that season along with revivals of 'Measure for Measure' and 'Troilus and Cressida' but Shakespeare would have kept adding some bits as he went along and perhaps Gloucester's reference to "...these late eclipses of the sun and moon..." and the whole opening of Edmund and Edgar's in Act One Scene Two was added by Shakespeare after the October 12th 1605 solar eclipse to make the play topical enough for its provincial touring and/or private performances in manor houses or at the law colleges in London. Perhaps he was also thinking of making it topical enough to get invited for a performance for Christmas for King James I at the palace. And why not. James I was very interested in astronomy, witchcraft and other 'magic' arts and almost everyone else seemed to be invited to the palace since James I seemed very open in his policies.
All that was to change when on November 5th, 1605, Guy Fawkes walked out of a gunpowder filled and decorated cellars of Parliament and into the arms of Sir Thomas Knyvet and the history books. It was obvious after that King James I would not be welcoming all and sundry to Christmas this year. Shakespeare would have to wait to flatter and impress the new king. Perhaps he added the lines of King Lear raging against the storm after the Gunpowder Plot or perhaps they act as a foreshadowing of the Gunpowder Plot:
"You sulphurous and thought-executing fire...,"
“So foul and fair a day I have not seen."
Late on the night of November 4th, 1605, as the wind picked up outside his window, Shakespeare probably put down his 1599 copy the ‘Discovery of Witchcraft, and Daemonologie’ wriiten by the new king James I. The weather outside was foul and well suited to a bit of reading on witches. He then probably downed the last of the mulled wine in the goblet beside his bed before he lifted the brass candle snuffer and put out the candle.
Early the next morning, Shakespeare was probably awoken by a loud knock on the door of his large room at his Silver Street lodgings which he rented from Christopher Mountjoy (a French Huguenot and a wigmaker by trade). The news had started to spread that a plot to blow up the houses of parliament had been foiled the night before and a certain Guy Fawkes had been arrested. The early visitor was probably one of Mountjoy’s apprentices, a young provincial boy from Shakespeare’s home county of Warwickshire. News that people from Warwickshire were involved in the plot probably came as warning to Shakespeare to lay low for a while. Shakespeare could see that his family’s Catholic sympathies might come to haunt him again. He probably then got dressed and went down the local inn where he could get a hearty breakfast of porridge and a pint of ale.
As he walked back to his lodgings he probably pondered on how some of the good men of Warwickshire could let their private ambitions drive them to acts like the attempt to blow up parliament. He thoughts may have drifted momentarily to his own ambitions and as he avoided the inevitable horse manure in the streets and slopsbuckets being emptied out of windows and doors, he may have worried that this new plot could stop his dreams of having a new play and a dozen odd performances at the court this winter. At £10 a performance and sometimes £12 for a new play that King James I liked, Shakespeare knew how lucrative a few court performances could be, so he thought of what of the ideas he had and what stories he could make into plays to make a good impression on James I.
As walked back along Muggle Street, Shakespeare could have thought back to one of his first projects for Ferdinando (the Lord Strange) back in the early 90’s when he was commissioned to write the Henry VI trilogy for the company known as the Lord Strange’s Men. They were a good set of plays but ultimately a piece of flattery, a rewriting of royal history but with the exploits and loyalty of the Lord Strange’s ancestors the Stanleys made to sound pivotal to the English crown. Perhaps he could do the same with James’ Scottish ancestors.
In earnest, Shakespeare walked up the stairs of his Silver Street lodgings, unlocked and walked into his room, fully opened the curtains and took out his ‘Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland’. It was a 1587 Second Edition which he either had picked up in London in 1590 or it had been given by the Earl of Southhampton if he had worked for him in 1588 at Titchfield. He scanned through the pages until he found the story he wanted and then took down his copy of George Buchanan’s account of the same story in ‘Rerum Scoticarum Historia’. He then took out a leaf of new parchment and the good goose quill that he had purchased a week before and he wrote the title on the parchment ‘The Tragedie of Macbeth’.
Then his imagination traveled and meandered almost as much as the quill on the page. A Scottish moor, a desolate place. Thunder and lightning crash. Enter three witches.
First Witch: “When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”
This time Shakespeare would not flinch from the new king’s paranoia: James I was obsessed with witchcraft and equivocation. James I had survived numerous assassination attempts, Shakespeare chose to build a headlong descent into regal paranoia round the bloody murder of old King Duncan. King Duncan did not nor would not survive assassination.
Storms seems to lash England for most of the first half of 1606. Floods and storm surges made it impossible to travel much out of London and food prices rose. Shakespeare was lucky with the extra land he had bought in Stratford-upon-Avon and the extra grain he had stored (hoarded more like) meant that he was able to make a pretty profit by waiting for April to offload much of his grain. He knew in the lead up to the summer season, he would need more than ‘Macbeth’ in the mix of plays. Some of his company, the King’s Men, probably thought a revival of the history plays might work or ‘Julius Caesar’ but Shakespeare knew that with the heads of the traitors of the Gunpowder Plot which were bound in metal not yet fully decomposed that a tale of treachery might not prove tasteful.
As the rain continued to fall hard, Shakespeare probably took out his copy of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’ and toyed with the idea a play using Virgil’s Dido and Aeneas. At some point he opened his copy of his Thomas North 1579 translation Plutarch’s ‘Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared Together’ and he turned specifically to ‘The Life of Marcus Antonius’ and was probably struck by the poetry and the potential of a play about Antony and Cleopatra. He could see that it could be a wonderful story about love and loss but also a story about moral and ethical ambiguity, egos, governance, waste and stupidity. A story that resonates even more strongly today.
‘Antony and Cleopatra’ opens in the court of Cleopatra in Alexandria in Egypt around 40BC. Antony's men talk loosely about how Antony seems to have lost his zest for leadership now that he dotes on Cleopatra. Antony and Cleopatra enter. Cleopatra teases Antony teases him about his marriage and demands to know how much he loves her. He declares his love and shows he is distracted from his duties:
“Let Rome in Tiber melt, and the wide arch
Of the ranged empire fall! Here is my space."
All’s Well That Ends Well Act One – “My friends were poor, but honest.”
Shakespeare knew that he had to whip up another play to accompany ‘Antony and Cleopatra’ and ‘King Lear’ in the new season for The Globe. These two plays had already proved a success in winter venues like the palace and the law colleges but he knew that he had to add a comedy to the mix if he wanted the summer Globe season to be a success.
The Plague looked as if it would not hit too hard that year since only about 500 had died in the lead up months. So with care it looked as if there would be a normal death toll of about 1500 people dead in London for July and August (although reports from Wales were coming in that the Plague was bad there this year). James I and the royals would, of course, leave the city. ‘Measure for Measure’ had played up to King James well and he had paid for a couple of performances but its transfer to The Globe had had a mixed reaction. It was becoming clear to Shakespeare that a different darker sort of comedy was coming into vogue – a comedy of moral disillusionment. Ben Jonson jumped on the bandwagon quickly with his ‘Every Man and His Humour’ and Middleton with his ‘Family of Love’ and ‘The Phoenix’. If it was moral disillusionment they wanted, then Shakespeare could deliver with 'All's Well That Ends Well'.
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