1591-1592 - “…his Tiger’s heart wrapped in a Player’s hide…”

“... there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country…”

On his deathbed in 1592, the relatively young 32 year old, bitter and impoverished playwright Robert Greene, penned these words in his last pamphlet ‘Greenes, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance’. Robert Greene was a celebrity, a playwright, a poet and a prose writer. By the time he was on his deathbed, Greene had written over 50 pieces of prose and 5 plays. His swipe at the young Shakespeare is probably the first mention of Shakespeare as a playwright. Greene's complaint about the young Shakespeare as "an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers" is not unwarranted, but Shakespeare seems to have shown by the early 1590's how to use the feathers he had plucked from others to make wings to fly on the winds of his imagination.

Shakespeare had had a busy year in 1591.Following the success of the History play that became known as Henry VI Part 2, Shakespeare had written two more Henry VI plays Henry VI Part 3 then Henry VI Part 1. He took up the reigns on the pieces of a project that had probably stumped three or four playwrights before him – Titus Andronicus.

The winter at the beginning 1591 was very cold and grain was in short supply. With the profit from his Henry VI Part 2 play, Shakespeare had probably sent money through a middleman back to Henley Street in Stratford for his wife to invest in grain storage back in October 1590 and they were probably starting to reap the rewards. Grain hoarding was highly illegal but widespread in England at this time and Shakespeare’s wife Anne was starting to probably prove a shrewd and wise investor. So as winter set in in London, Shakespeare felt secure in his choice to come to London and he knew that writing plays could support him in London and his family back in Stratford.

So, Shakespeare knew that he had to write the Henry VI sequel and prequel. He probably had noted the success of Spenser’s narrative poem ‘The Faerie Queene’ and he knew that he could write narrative poetry as good as Spenser but he knew that that sort of writing would have to wait. He knew playwriting was competitive and dangerous. How could he ever match the verse of Marlowe whose Tamburlaine had been revived even in winter?

Shakespeare would have poured over Hall’s ‘Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Families of Lancaster and York’ and Holingshed’s ‘Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland’ and he knew that the next challenge was how to stage the battles and horrors of the ‘War of the Roses’ on the stage. He knew he also had to be careful since many of the horrors of this war had been committed by Queen Margaret, a woman and a monarch.

How could he avoid the fate of a trip to The Tower that had befallen some playwrights and even some of his Catholic relatives? Shakespeare knew that he needed to tread a thin line. He knew he needed to also dramatically do more than to just display the horror and disunity of the times. He pillages from a number of sources including the enigmatic character of Joan of Arc (probably as tribute to Elizabeth I and her defeat of the Spanish Armada back in 1588. He moved quickly between real historical events and events which he invented to evoke a chivalry and patriotism which made the play popular in its time. 

In late April, when the plays were performed probably at polygon-shaped building called The Theatre.

The Theatre was located in the disreputable Shoreditch and had a thrust stage which extended from one side of the polygon shaped building. The two plays were a success and were perhaps performed with Henry VI Part 2 as a trilogy over three afternoons. The audience in the open yard stood for the play and had paid a penny. The people in the galleries probably paid two pennies except for those who sat on a stool who paid three pennies for the privilege. The Theatre could probably hold 1500 people at a time, so you can imagine the resentment which the success of Shakespeare’s plays caused more seasoned playwrights like Greene.

Some other seasoned playwrights saw collaboration as the key to keeping drama alive against other entertainments in Shoreditch like bear baiting, brothels, bowls and gambling games like cherry-pit and cards. After a great success with his play in the 1580’s entitled The Arraignment of Paris, George Peele unlike Robert Greene saw the future in collaboration. One story maintains that three or four playwrights had attempted to write a treatment of Titus Andronicus. Philip Henslowe had made his money and career through a range of interests including dyeing of fabrics, pawn-broking, money lending, the timber trade, brothels and property. 

In 1587, Henslowe built The Rose Theatre and in 1591 when the Admiral’s Men split with James Burbage and The Theatre, he ceased the opportunity to draw the best company of players in Elizabethan London. The story goes that in late May of 1591 when the Admiral’s Men came over to Henslowe’s Rose Theatre he had to have a play written and mounted in a couple of weeks and Henslowe wanted Titus Andronicus to be performed. Someone suggested Shakespeare was the man to pull this off successfully. Shakespeare was riding on the success of the Henry VI plays and he was given the task. Shakespeare consulted and collaborated with George Peele and by late in June 1591, Shakespeare had written his first tragedy Titus Andronicus. He and Peele were probably paid £2 each for the play and a share in the profits if it became a success. It did.

The play is set in the last days of the Roman Empire and it centres around a story of revenge and the conflict between a Roman General called Titus and Tamora, the Queen of the Goths. The play has graphic violence. It has at least five violent acts in each act, rape, mutilation and a death every 100 lines. Act One even ends with Tamora threatening to massacre all of Titus’ family. It must have been popular because even 3 years later it is still earning over three pounds a performance at every performance and it was still in the repertoire of plays performed.

It is after this, early in 1592, that Shakespeare writes his first great tragedy the Tragedy of King Richard the Third. Around this time, Shakespeare moved to lodgings in Bishopsgate. His rent was probably a little more here, perhaps 10p a week but this perhaps included a morning ale and bread and butter left on the sideboard each morning and he might even pay the extra 2p for a stew of mutton. 

Shakespeare probably then walked to The Rose Theatre located on Bankside, Southwark outside of the jurisdiction of the City of London in the ‘liberty’ area of Clink. The walk was about a mile and took about 30 minutes depending on whether Shakespeare walked across London Bridge with its shops and stalls or whether he decided to take a punt (1p one way) across the Thames River.

Rehearsals probably started about 10 am and it is likely only two hours of rehearsals were done each day before the 12 noon break for dinner (the major meal of the day). Time was tight since companies produced about 5 performances each week of three to six different plays. Minor parts would often be allocated the day of the performance. Main actors were paid about 20p a day for rehearsals of a play and a performance in the afternoon. Bit players and boy players who played female parts got paid about 8p a day. Players in Shakespeare’s day had a good memory for lines and even if they didn’t two techniques helped them to perform the lines from a play. Cue Scripting meant that actors were often only given their lines and the cues just before their lines on their scripts. Actors often then were not familiar with the whole of a scene and actors would often pin their Cue Scripts backstage so that when they came off stage they would look at the lines for their next scene. The other technique used was Cue Acting. This is where the actor on stage would receive a whispered prompt or cue from a person offstage or behind stage and the actor would say those lines before being cued the next lines just before uttering them ‘with feeling’.

At 12 noon, the actors would break for dinner of either fresh water or salt water fish, beef or a leg or neck of mutton. Shakespeare and his fellow theatre men would go to an inn for dinner. Three of their favorites in Southwark were the White Hart Inn (on the London Bridge road), The Tabard (mentioned in Chaucer) and the George Inn and coaching house (which was rebuilt on the same site after the Great London Fire). 

They would have probably had boiled ‘sallet’ greens like sorrel or spinach normally served with mustard. They would have had bread and butter with this. Normally the bread was made of a combination of grains including wheat, barley, oats and rye. This would be accompanied by a pint of ale, claret or Rhenish (German wine). The players would probably start to leave the inn at about 1pm ready for a 2pm show. Shakespeare would then have to make sure that he got back to his lodgings before the gates of the city were shut just after sunset (otherwise he would have to stay at a friend's lodgings until the next day). 

When rehearsals had finished sometime in April or May of 1592, Shakespeare’s much anticipated ‘The Tragedy of Richard the Third’ premiered. Shakespeare had probably read Machiavelli’s The Prince before finishing writing this play since besides blood and gore it has political intrigue and machinations. Shakespeare starts the play with the main character (and villain of the play) Richard III talking directly to the audience. So sometime in April or May of 1592, Edward Alleyn probably ambled out to the front of the stage at The Rose Theatre and in front of almost 1500 people, he uttered the famous first lines of ‘Richard III’:

“ Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York…”