1595 - “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life…”

1595 - “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes, a pair of star-crossed lovers take their life…”

When Shakespeare came back from visiting his home in Stratford-upon-Avon in January of 1595, he had a new sense of purpose. The success of Southampton’s patronage of his poetry, along with the success of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men meant that if the Plague did not close the theatres in 1595, Shakespeare would have a big year in front of him.

While 1595 seemed like a tumultuous year for the Ottoman Empire, the Russians, the Swedes and even Henry IV of France (who although he defeated the Spanish, he almost died in the process) in England it was a relatively quiet year. After the Catholic Robert Southwell was hung, drawn and quartered in London in February, nothing much happened except intermittent news arriving about Sir Walter Raleigh’s exploits in South America and Sir Francis Drake’s exploration in Spanish Main (Southern North America and Meso-America). Shakespeare probably put writing a history play on the backburner and probably started the year with writing a comedy.

With success of Love’s Labour’s Lost in 1594, Shakespeare probably started in earnest on the sequel Love’s Labour’s Won. It is probably a play that takes place a year after the original Love’s Labour’s Lost and using the same characters. This play may have been performed as early as late March 1595 with the opening of the Francis Langley’s The Swan theatre in Southwark across the Thames River and near the Paris Garden stairs. It was one of the grandest theatres to be built in London, a huge amphitheatre with a capacity of 3000 spectators. It was built of flint concrete with wooden support beams which were painted to resemble marble.

It is unlikely that Shakespeare thought that he was writing a highly politically charged History play when he put quill to parchment to write Richard II in April or May of 1595. Elizabeth the First was in good health and a force had been sent off to Ireland in what people in London thought would be quick campaign. Shakespeare probably just wanted to bring the ‘Henry IV Part 1’ and ‘Henry IV Part 2’ into a trilogy. Little would he know the furor ‘Richard II’ would cause in 1601 when the Earl of Essex commissioned a performance to stir a riot and a revolt in 1601. It was probably not seen as controversial in late May or June 1595 at the The Swan theatre when it was probably first performed. Later in December 1595, a private performance at Canon Row at Sir Edward Hoby’s house may have been more controversial since Queen Elizabeth I’s health was not so good in December of 1595.

Richard II is a great piece of theatre. It has lyrical rich poetic verse throughout the whole play with hardly any prose. It is cram packed with metaphors, symbolism and allegories yet despite that, it starts in what seems like a confusing way. Of course you have to remember that Elizabethan audiences knew their English history well, so to see history and the lives of nobles acted out with all the grittiness that the stage brings was a voyeuristic fantasy.

When Shakespeare started work on a new play to open the beginning of the summer season of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at The Swan, he knew he would need a big innovative play to accompany his Love’s Labour’s Won and Richard II to draw in the 3,000 spectators most afternoons. Shakespeare probably thought about a performance he had seen the year before of one of Christopher Marlowe’s earliest plays and one Marlowe probably wrote with Thomas Nashe called Dido, Queen of Carthage. This intense short play was a tragedy but it was an intense tale of love, betrayal and suicide. So it was probably with Marlowe once again on his mind that Shakespeare came back to work on a project he had started on a couple of years prior, an adaptation of Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet.

Shakespeare probably read Arthur Brooke’s 1562 poem ‘The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet’ late in the 1580’s in Stratford upon Avon or early in the 1590’s in London. The story for Brooke’s poem was not original and he probably took it from an Italian novella based on the true 14^th century story of the feud in Verona between the Guelph and Ghibellines families and the legend that a girl from one family fell in love with someone from the other family and she committed suicide after he was killed by a member of her own family. Brooke in his Preface to the poem is almost apologetic for his poem about “… a couple of unfortunate lovers, thrilling themselves to unhonest desire…” This moral tale as told by Brooke would have died on stage. But still Shakespeare saw the potential in the story, but not as the Brooke’s languid moralistic parable bound by its time, verse and structure, but as a rougher, bawdy, rawer, fast-paced more universal story of fate, love and hate. He shelved away the idea for another day.

The plague had decimated the numbers in many companies but Shakespeare’s new amalgamated troupe had fortuitously acquired a feast of strong actors particularly some fine boy actors to play female roles. So, Shakespeare had the actors to put on a masterpiece. With either The Swan or The Rose in mind as a venue, Shakespeare wrote one of his first masterpieces Romeo and Juliet.

I like the idea that perhaps straight after writing Romeo and Juliet, that Shakespeare quickly whipped up over the course of a week, the magnificent magical comedy ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. It gives a symmetry to his work. Besides, Elizabethan playwright’s often wrote a comedy after writing a tragedy mostly to give variety to their audiences and maybe some playwright’s did this as a homage to the Ancient Greek playwrights and festivals where playwrights had to write both tragedy and comedy.

Besides the Elizabethan court seemed to favour light comedies and masques and after over a year of the Plague, distraction pastoral idealism seemed to be back fashion.

Shakespeare went back to read Spenser's 'Epithalamion' as a source for the play. He probably had a deadline, since the play was either performed at the wedding of Elizabeth Carey (Lady Berkeley) and done in a garden setting or performed at court for Elizabeth I in midsummer of 1595. It would later have most of its early public performances at The Swan and The Theatre. 

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ opens on a festive note at the palace of Theseus, Duke of Athens, four days before his wedding to Hippolyta. He is anxious for the wedding but she preaches patience. Theseus orders some “merriments” to be developed for the occasion and Philostrate leaves and this leads to the Mechanicals rehearsing and developing their play for the wedding. So Shakespeare ended 1595, in triumph with a comedy with fairies, players, lovers, multiple weddings, a dance and a song.

“Philomel with melody

Sing in our sweet lullaby.

Lulla, lulla, lullaby: lulla, lulla, lullaby.

Never harm

Nor spell nor charm

Come our lovely lady nigh.

So good night, with lullaby.”