1606 -“How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

1606 -“How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

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'.

1604-1605 - "O, Beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on..."

1604-1605 - "O, Beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on..."

When Shakespeare returned to London from Stratford after Easter, he probably looked at London with new eyes. The plague of 1603 seemed to be abating by April, and the theatres looked like they would reopen in May or June of 1604. With more leisure time to write because of the Plague but no compelling reason to write, the pace of Shakespeare’s life would have changed through the end of 1603 and the beginning of 1604. Shakespeare probably started lodging at the Mountjoy's residence on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London around this time. It is possible that he paid the £25 a year rent in advance. This was a step up from other accommodation he had rented prior but Shakespeare probably was making around £200 a year by this point with his tenanted farmland, his investments in moiety, his shares in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe and the money paid to him for writing plays.

London city was busy in the spring and the ports were busy with boats and traders from Europe, Africa and the East. Shakespeare was a great observer of people and places and it was probably while observing people and ships at the port that he turned a tale by Cinthio called Hecatommithi, which dealt with jealousy and the unfaithfulness of husbands and wives and he adapted it to an English context.

Although the play may have been performed in July 1604, the first mention of the play is in the Revels Office 1604 records which states that on "Hallamas Day, being the first of Nouembar... the King's Maiesties plaiers" performed "A Play in the Banketinghouse at Whit Hall Called The Moor of Venis."  

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure was probably performed also in July 1604 at The Globe Theatre although the Revels Office records it being performed at King James I court on December 26^th 1604 (St Stephen’s Day). After some success with ‘Othello’, time Shakespeare's Measure for Measure was probably performed in July 1604 at the Globe Theatre although the Revel's Office records a performance at King James I's court on December 26, 1604 (St Stephen's Day).  Shakespeare experimented with this play stylistically and probably started to pull together the tragic and comic elements of Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ and Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ into the tragic-comedy or comi-tragedy which eventually became ‘Measure for Measure’. The starts with a ruler (The Duke) appointing his trusted subordinate Lord Angelo while he goes away on a long trip. The play looks at the nature of power and hypocrisy and looks at the pitfalls of imposing an overly strict moral code. Although the play is a difficult one, it was probably a success since it was performed before King James I. 

In October of 1604, Shakespeare was involved in a real life domestic incident of high drama and intrigue. Shakespeare's landlady asked for his help with a personal family matter. Her husband's apprentice Stephen Belott had promised to marry the Mountjoy's only daughter Mary, but Belott had started to get cold feet because Christopher Mountjoy would not pay the dowry. Marie Mountjoy asked Shakespeare to talk to Belott. Shakespeare successfuly intervened and gave the young lovers the assurance that "...they should have a sum of money for a portion from the father..." Shakespeare then united them in a handfast (like that done between Rosalind and Orlando in As You Like It). Eventually the lovers married and eventually in 1612, Belott belatedly took his father-in-law to court to claim a fair dowry.

Early in 1605, Shakespeare probably worked quickly to produce ‘Timon of Athens’. He hadn't produced many plays over the last year and now that he was settled back in London with his properties in the country making a fair sum for him, he probably started in earnest. Once again, he looked around him to see what aspects of contemporary life struck him. His company were desperate to get the opportunity to perform more before the new king but the queues outside St James's Palace seemed to stretch for hours with sycophants of all sorts from nobles to painters and poets. This probably gave him the idea behind 'Timon of Athens'. 

Shakespeare probably went back to his lodgings on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London and took out his Plutarch and probably happened upon Timon of Athens. The real Timon was a philosopher and misanthrope who lived around 445-400BC in Athens during the time of the Peloponnesian War. Shakespeare then probably took out a copy of ‘The Misanthrope’ which was written around 165AD by Lucian but which he had an 1580 translation of. The idea of a misanthrope (a person who dislikes humans) would have caught his fancy. The allusions in 'Lysistrata' to Timon hating men but being liked by women probably interested him too. He then looked through the verse of Brooke's 'The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet' (1562) again as well as looking at the prose of William Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' (1567) to give a sense of some characters and stories. It is alleged that Shakespeare worked closely with someone else on 'Timon of Athens' since some of the language is more like that of Thomas Middleton. Maybe the Jacobean era meant that Shakespeare and other playwrights started to develop their plays in a more collaborative manner. Nevertheless, 'Timon of Athens' is an interesting play that takes us on the journey of a wealthy fool who loses everything and shuns human society and curses humanity only to find honesty in the friendship of a single man.

The play starts with a Poet, a Painter, a Jeweler, and a Merchant entering  Timon's house in Athens. The Jeweler is trying to sell a jewel to Timon while the Painter and Poet talk about works they created for Timon. Then Timon enters and being told his friend Ventidius is now in prison, Timon says he will his friends debt to free him. An old Athenian enters and when Timon hears his servant Lucilius is after the old Athenian’s daughter, Timon gets an agreement of a marriage between Lucilius and the girl. Lucilius feels he is forever in Timon’s debt. Timon then takes the gem from the jeweler, the poem from the poet and the painting from the painter.

We have no idea what audiences at The Globe in 1605 thought of Timon of Athens at the time. Perhaps the play’s investigation of Asceticism would have sat well with the new world of James I’s court. Its unexplained plot points, combination of verse and prose makes it a strange play for modern audiences. Some people see the play as both satire and tragedy. The great writer Herman Melville saw the play as one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays and stated in an article about Shakespeare that he is not "…a mere man of Richard-the-Third humps, and Macbeth daggers," but rather "it is those deep far-away things in him; those occasional flashings-forth of the intuitive Truth in him; those short, quick probings at the very axis of reality:–these are the things that make Shakespeare, Shakespeare. Through the mouths of the dark characters of Hamlet, Timon, Lear, and Iago, he craftily says, or sometimes insinuates the things, which we feel to be so terrifically true, that it were all but madness for any good man, in his own proper character, to utter, or even hint of them."

1600-1603 - “If music be the food of love, play on Give me excess of it…”

1600-1603 - “If music be the food of love, play on Give me excess of it…”

Things must have going pretty well for Shakespeare in 1600, even if it was a pretty slim year for his writing. The Globe seemed to be becoming very lucrative and revivals of many of Shakespeare’s plays in the 1600 season seemed to keep the crowds coming from June through until September (even despite heavy snowfalls outside London even as late as April). He even had a 1600 production of his ‘Julius Caesar’ mentioned in the diary of the Swiss ‘tourist’ Thomas Platter when Platter wrote that he saw "… in the straw-thatched house the tragedy of the first emperor, Julius Caesar, quite excellently acted by about fifteen persons.”

Shakespeare was even able to sell a few copies of his plays with the publication of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream’. He and the Chamberlain’s Men were able to clamp down a bit on stealing and copying of popular plays like ‘As You Like It’ which they registered with the Stationer’s Company to prevent unauthorized copying of this play.

As the calm of 1600 came to a close, the turbulence of 1601 came to the fore. The year started in January/February with a rebellion started by the Earl of Essex. After having being deprived of public office at the end of 1600, in January, Essex started to gather an army of his followers and began to fortify his house on the Strand. On February 4^th, some of Essex’ followers including Charles and Joscelyn Percy, approached members of the  Chamberlain’s men to commission a special performance of Shakespeare’s ‘Richard II’ (a play which involves the usurping of a king) at the Globe Theatre and offered the handsome sum of forty shillings for the performance (at least ten shillings above the going rate). The players consented and to a small audience on the early afternoon of February 8^th, they performed ‘Richard II’. In the late afternoon, Essex moved with a band of others nobles and gentlemen into the confines of the City of London to force an audience with Queen Elizabeth I. Essex was driven back and retreated to Essex House and surrendered after the Queen’s Guard stormed Essex House. Essex and his followers were tried and executed before the start of March 1601. One interpretation of the poem is that it is about the death of the relationship between Essex and Queen Elizabeth I.

‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ is Shakespeare’s only truly metaphysical poem, an allegorical poem which explores the death of truth and beauty of symbolized by the Turtledove and the Phoenix. The poem was first published in a collection of poems supplementing the title poem by Robert Chester published in 1601 called “Love’s Martyr’. ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’ could be seen as being about the death of truth and beauty as abstract concepts. Alternatively, the poem can be seen as a lament for the inevitable end of the Tudor monarchy and the choice of the mythical phoenix can be seen as a symbol for the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I. Some also suggest that the poem is also about the relationships of real people in Shakespeare’s time. Some contenders are: Elizabeth I and the Duke of Essex, Elizabeth I and John Salusbury; and John Salusbury and Ursula Salusbury. Whatever the basis or inspiration for this poem, it is truly a rich diversion for Shakespeare which stands on its own as perhaps the first metaphysical poem ever written. The poem starts like a funeral or death march. Truth (in the Elizabethan meaning it is linked to constancy) and Beauty are united in death. Some see the last part of the poem as showing Shakespeare’s exasperation with the religious and the faithful or neglected the birth of the Age of Reason.

In September 1601, William Shakespeare’s father John Shakespeare died and was buried in the Holy Trinity Churchyard in Stratford. William Shakespeare was executor of the will and he within a month signed a new lease for 91 years on the Henley Street house to Lewis Hiccox. Perhaps William and Ann Shakespeare needed the money. Since William Shakespeare was probably making about £250 a year some people assume that The Bard and his wife had started to speculate on property shares and tithes.

“If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it…”

‘Twelfth Night or What You Will’ was probably performed in December 1601 or in January or February of 1602 for beginning of the Christmastide celebrations or for twelfth night celebrations or at the Candlemas celebration at the end of Christmastide celebrations. Originally celebrations for Christmas went for twelve days hence the Twelfth Night was the end of Christmastide and then it was extended for forty days so that Candlemas (the celebration of Jesus’ presentation by his mother at the temple) traditionally ended the Christmastide celebrations.

So, ‘Twelfth Night’ may have been performed on the first day of Christmas on December 1601 or on Twelfth Night on January 6^th, 1602 or at Candlemas on February 2^nd, 1602. Any of these dates meant that it was probably performed in doors so the playwright and screenplay writer Tom Stoppard in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ making the play one that was requested by Queen Elizabeth I is not beyond the realms of belief (even though this is highly improbable since it would place the play much earlier and the quite precise Royal records would probably confirm this if it was so). So we can probably best imagine that on the evening of January 6^th (the Twelfth Night) or February 2^nd (Candlemas) 1602, the candles were lit in the Middle Temple of the Inns of Court (one of the four law schools in London at the time), musicians appeared on stage and played a lyrical melancholic tune on a violin, a viola da gamba, a lute and theorbo (bass lute) and then the actor Richard Burbage entered the stage dressed as Lord Orsino and the music stopped and Burbage uttered the now famous first lines of the play that let us know that this play is going to be about love, rejection and desire:

“If music be the food of love, play on; (music continues)

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more… 

After the ‘triumph’ of a complex play like ‘Hamlet’ it is possible that Shakespeare sat down in 1602 and decided to tackle a project he had been thinking of for a long time. He knew that Elizabethan audiences could accept plays that were complex in ideas characters and themes and now he wanted to challenge the boundaries of their understanding of dramatic style and form. 

The Globe Theatre was proving a financial and popular success and ‘Twelfth Night’ had been a triumph when it was revived there in May, June and July of 1602 along with ‘Hamlet’ and other plays. As the weather turned colder and The Globe closed its doors, Shakespeare’s mind turned to what new project he could premiere at an indoor venue in Winter at one of the inns or colleges inhabited and run by the lawyers in London. He was also probably thinking of making this new play easily transferable to The Globe and its more eclectic audience in May in the Summer of 1603. It is then that he probably burnt the late night candle with re-reading Homer’s ‘Iliad’ and Chaucer's fourteenth-century epic poem, Troilus and Criseyde. Chaucer and the work of the Ancient Greeks were undergoing a revival in publishing at that time, yet strangely, not too many dramatic versions had made it to the stage and those that did were largely unsuccessful. It must have struck Shakespeare that these stories were absurdly tragic and romantic to the point of strangeness and Shakespeare knew that his audience would know the end of the story involving Cressida's treachery and Hector's death well. With a passion for the story in hand and a good idea of what an audience might expect and how to still challenge them, Shakespeare would have sat at his table sometime on a dark night in October 1602 and started writing the Prologue to one of his most strange and problematic of his plays - ‘Troilus and Cressida’.

The New Year of 1603 would not have been a happy and ceremonious occasion for Shakespeare and others who lived in London. After a relatively subdued party for her 69^th birthday on September 7^th in 1602, Queen Elizabeth started to be seen even less in public and everyone played the waiting game. She knew people wanted her to name a successor but she also knew that she had successfully played the political game of not naming an heir for a while now and this had worked for stability in her case. She knew that her cousin Arabella was popular but Arabella had annoyed Elizabeth on a number of occasions due to flippant statements and besides, Elizabeth knew that the Privy Council favoured a male heir. So although not publicly announced, her preferences swayed towards James VI of Scotland who was already a monarch and a fortuitously for Elizabeth and England, a Protestant. The weather deteriorated further in January 1603 and Queen Elizabeth’s health and will to live took a further blow when the last of her close friends and confidante’s Catherine Howard (Countess of Nottingham) died in February. Elizabeth fell into "settled and unremovable melancholy" and was moved to Richmond Palace early in March 1603 and so the waiting game began.

The events surrounding the ‘melancholy’ of Queen Elizabeth I, the questions of succession and the cold and wet weather meant that William Shakespeare probably was stuck in London for most of January, February and early March of 1603. He spent much of his time reading and buying manuscripts which he found in the market place but uncertainty about Queen Elizabeth and whether the theatre would open in May, meant that this was a lean time for Shakespeare. Sometime in early March of 1603, he may have re-read through Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’.

‘Hecatommithi' is a set of tales framed within the story of Roman fugitives escaping by sea who sit down every couple of nights at different ports and tell stories. These stories within the main story each have a theme (normally one for each night of the storytelling) and there is a sense that by telling the stories that the fugitives achieve some redemption. The story of Epitia which involves a corrupt magistrate who, when the wife of man who is to be executed gives up her body to the him, sleeps with the woman and then kills her husband anyway, must have been seen to have some dramatic legs for Shakespeare. He probably saw the potential in this story even though in its original form it lacks a sense of character and purpose. 

As the waiting game continued as Elizabeth I’s health deteriorated further, Shakespeare probably turned to older plays by English playwrights. It was probably out of frustration that he burnt the candle late one night reading Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ for another time. Shakespeare had probably seen Whetstone’s play when he was young or maybe even acted in it as a young actor some 13 years earlier. The comic sub-plot of the play and the character of Mistress Overdone who runs a brothel would have been seen to have dramatic potential for Shakespeare. What probably troubled him about the main plot of the play was that Cassandra marries Promos, the murderer of her brother. Shakespeare saw that he needed a very clever and subtle handling of the main tragic plot but he probably was also fascinated with putting a tragic plot with high and bawdy comedy (a idea that had worked with the character of Falstaff). With Falstaff it had worked because the story of Henry V was so well known and the comedy helped to move along the narrative of history plays but Shakespeare probably mused over whether it could work with a tragedy or even dominate the tragic events. But his musings and initial writings came to a halt when on March 24th 1603, the bells rang out over London.

Through much of March 1603, Queen Elizabeth I had refused to see doctors and even members of her Privy Council. She even refused to take to her bed and would stand for hours looking out the window of Richmond Palace. It is said that her servants even made a day bed for her on the floor of one of the rooms. Then on March 23rd she was finally taken to her bed and early in the morning of March 24th depending on your sources she either spoke to Lord Robert Cecil in whispered tones on her death bed and "...mildly like a lamb" and "easily like a ripe apple from the tree..." and said “I will that a king succeed me and who but my kinsman the king of Scots.” Or if you follow the other common scenario, Elizabeth, being unable to verbally reply to the question should James VI of Scotland succeed her, she simply nodded and gestured a circle crown on a head. Even as her body was still warm, a rider was dispatched to Scotland and to London (since relay riders would have been set in place days if not weeks before). Later on the day of her death, Cecil and the Privy Council announced James VI of Scotland as her successor. A torch and candle lit barge was arranged and Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall. On 28 April, her coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey and she was interred with her half-sister, Mary with the inscription "Regno consortes & urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis" ("Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection") written on the tomb.

By early May, Shakespeare was being pressured to have a play ready for late May to open the Globe Theatre’s 1603 season. He had probably started lodging at the Mountjoy's residence on the corner of Silver and Muggle Streets in East London around this time. It is possible that he paid the £25 a year rent in advance. This was a step up from other accommodation he had rented prior but Shakespeare probably was making around £250 a year by this point with his tenanted farmland, his investments in moiety, his shares in the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the Globe and the money paid to him for writing plays. With parades in the streets on May 7^th when James arrived in London in preparation for his July coronation, Shakespeare knew he needed something new for a new age for his play and the main topic of conversation on the street seemed to be questions of what sort of ruler James VI of Scotland (soon to be crowned James I of England) would be. Time was running out when Shakespeare probably started to pull together the tragic and comic elements of Cinthio’s ‘Hecatommithi’ and Whetstone’s ‘Promos and Cassandra’ into the tragic-comedy or comi-tragedy which he called ‘Measure for Measure’.

1599 - "O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention..."

1599  - “O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention…”

For Shakespeare 1599 was one of his greatest years. It is the year that he and the other shareholders of the Chamberlain’s Men built The Globe Theatre, the year he wrote Henry V, Julius Caesar and As You Like It. It is also the year that Shakespeare started and probably completed one of his greatest and perhaps his most complex play Hamlet. It is also the year that a collection of twenty poems appeared attributed to William Shakespeare and published by William Jaggard.

Modern commentators and academics tend to agree that only five of the twenty poems are written by Shakespeare. But let’s start with the beginning of 1599.

Shakespeare worked for the Chamberlain’s Men (later known as the King’s Men). He also become a shareholder in the company in 1594. The Chamberlain’s Men had been performing in the actor/manager James Burbage’s purpose built Shoreditch venue The Theatre since 1587 when it was built. The Theatre was a multi-sided structure with a central open yard and three tiers of covered seating was built. This gave The Theatre an amphitheater appearance. One side of the polygon extended out to form what was a thrust stage. The Theatre probably cost about £700 construct (a huge sum at the time). Standing room was a penny, covered standing two pennies and three pennies for a covered seating. The Theatre venue was a timber building with a tiled roof and probably held about 1500 to 2000 people.

In 1596, a dispute arose of the renewal of the leasing of the land The Theatre stood on. When James Burbage died in 1598, the issue became more complex. Believing that they owned The Theatre (especially the building materials), James Burbage’s sons Cuthbert and Richard offered some of the members of the company (including Shakespeare) shares in the building.

So on the rainy morning of December 28^th 1598, carpenter Peter Street along with the half a dozen laborers and the shareholders of the Lord Chamberlain’s men including Richard Burbage, Cuthbert Burbage, John Heminges, William Shakespeare, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope and William Kempe, began dismantling The Theatre to take the timber to a riverside warehouse Street had by the River Thames in Bridewell. This was in preparation for using the timber for a new theatre with a new design. This theatre was to be built on a new site at Maiden Lane Southwark when the weather was a bit drier. Early in spring of 1599 The Theatre’s beams were raised again to build the new theatre which could accommodate an audience of 2000 people. This theatre was to be called the Globe Theatre.

The Globe Theatre was a large open air theatre which would have appeared from the air as doughnut shaped or a polygon of 20 sides. The three-tiered seating area was covered and the stage had a front apron performance area and later a thrust stage was also added.  It probably had an audience capacity of up to 3000.

Over January and February of 1599 as work was progressing on The Globe, William Shakespeare was writing Henry V. He also had to deal with the illegal publication of a collection of poems under his name published by William Jaggard. It is now agreed that only about five of the poems were written by William Shakespeare. The collection included some poems from Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost. However, most of Shakespeare’s time would have been spent in early in 1599 on Henry V.

Shakespeare had had great success with the trilogy of ‘Richard II’, ‘Henry IV Part 1’ and ‘Henry IV Part 2’ and now it was time to deliver on the finale of these history plays with the most anticipated and most well-known of these histories, ‘The Chronicle History of Henry the Fifth’.

William Shakespeare had probably written speeches for the Henry V and scribbled plot ideas for a couple of years now, but with his 15 % ownership in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and bills to pay on the new Globe Theatre and back in Stratford, he and the company needed a success. Elizabethan audiences had met the wild, undisciplined Prince Hal but now it was time for them to meet King Henry V as he embarked on a quest to reunite all of England on his conquests and trials on the battlefields of France.

“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!”

It is a stirring moment in theatre to hear The Chorus’ first words in the Prologue of ‘Henry V’. “O for a Muse of fire…” Unlike a Greek Chorus, The Chorus in this play is more like the medieval chorus of a single actor. The scene is set and The Chorus fires our “imaginary forces” asking us to see “within this wooden O” and imagine two mighty monarchs, thousands of soldiers, great battles, and the sound of thousands of “proud hoofs”. The stage is set for the actors and the audience to embark on a great journey through history and their own imaginations. The excitement of hearing these words is made more so when you consider they were perhaps the first words uttered on the stage at The Globe Theatre in late April 1599 when this famous theatre first opened.

You can imagine that day in April, when the red flag to indicate that a history play was going to be played was raised early in the morning. Around midday, crowds would start to arrive and by 1pm Henry V would have started. Just after 4pm, the crowds would leave the theatre having witnessed the premiere of one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.

As rehearsals were underway for the opening of The Globe Theatre and Henry V, Shakespeare would have started on another of his greatest plays, ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar’.

“Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world

Like a Colossus, and we petty men

Walk under his huge legs and peep about

To find ourselves dishonourable graves.”

There are many reasons why Shakespeare’s ‘The Tragedy of Julius Caesar’ is a great play. It is a very innovative play which does not shy away from plot complications but conversely embraces the cheap thrills of deaths, blood, gore and omens. It was written and performed probably in May of 1599 and was probably performed in the newly built Globe Theatre. It is a wonderful mix of tragedy and historical drama. The death of Julius Caesar occurs early in the play and it builds towards the Act Five climax where Cassius dies when he orders his own servant to kill him. On a macro level, the play centres around the attempt of Cassius and others to keep the Republic of Rome from becoming an Empire. The play is set in 44BC and has two protagonists (Brutus and Cassius) and two antagonists (Anthony and Octavius). Although the play shifts its perspective many times, the most sustained perspective on the events that unfold is that of Brutus who eventually kills himself with his own sword.

I like to think that as the summer was drawing to a close in 1599, Shakespeare thought it was time for a good pastoral comedy. In June or July of 1599, Shakespeare took up his quill to write a rustic love story which starts in a duchy somewhere in France and moves to the mystical Forest of Ardenne (aka Arden). Perhaps writing ‘Julius Caesar’ had made Shakespeare question the machinations of power and city life and he yearned for the simple pleasure of country life. When the white flag indicating the performance of one of Shakespeare’s great comedies As You Like It was raised over The Globe, people were in for a treat. This comedy play starts with a feud between brothers. Orlando, whose father Sir Rowland de Bois has recently died, describes to Adam (an old family servant), how since his father’s death his brother, Oliver, who inherited his father’s estate, has deprived him of education and a decent allowance. This is against his father’s expressed wishes. Moreover, Oliver allows Orlando’s older brother to be educated widely and broadly. Orlando wants to confront his brother with his grievances.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark Act One – “Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend, And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry…”

By mid-year in 1599, everything seemed to be coming together for Shakespeare professionally. He had just moved with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to the Globe Theatre, he had had a great success with the play ‘Julius Caesar’ and he finally had an actors worthy of playing great parts since the actor Richard Burbage seemed to be growing in skill and reputation. But still Shakespeare was restless or as Shakespeare’s Hamlet puts it, “Something is (was) rotten in the state of Denmark.” On about August 9^th, 1596, William Shakespeare’s only son Hamnet had died and sometime in August 1599, Shakespeare had returned to Stratford Upon Avon for a memorial service. He wrestled with the ‘ghost’ of his son and notions of mortality and death in ‘King John’, ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Julius Caesar’ and even had entered a period of writing comedies like ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and ‘Much Ado About Nothing' to forget his loss, but still the big questions of life and death seemed to plague him. On top of this, with Queen Elizabeth I entering her 66^th year without a direct heir and questions of who would succeed her always on people's thoughts (and sometimes their tongues), questions of death, life and stability abounded in the minds and hearts of most English men and women, including Shakespeare.

It is not, therefore, unthinkable that as the summer weather started to turn in August 1599 and the rain and ghostly mist worked its way back into Shakespeare’s daily life, that Shakespeare turned his mind to reworking Saxo Grammaticus’ ‘Amleth’ (probably as influenced by Beleforest’s 16^th century retelling of the story).

It may be useful to ask why ‘Hamlet’ has become such a famous play for Shakespeare. It is his longest play, though probably the full five-hour version we have today is a conglomerate of a number of versions and a number of approximately four-hour stage versions of the play that would have been performed in Shakespeare’s time. This means that he wrestled with this play even after writing it and it is probably the only one of his plays that seems to have been re-written and had speeches added to many times. What I think is so riveting about the play is its dramatic structure, its complex characterization, its rich verse and dialogue and the masterly way it deals with complex issues of life, death, love, revenge and fate.

The play starts on a dark, misty winter’s night on the walls of Elsinore Castle in Denmark in about 1200. Bernardo relieves Francisco from his watch on the wall and the darkness and the mist make it difficult for them to identify one another. Francisco leaves and Bernardo is soon joined by Marcellus and Horatio (a good friend of the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet). We soon discover the reason for why Horatio is on the wall this dark night. It seems that Bernardo and Marcellus wanted Horatio to witness something strange that they have encountered on previous watches.

Hamlet is a unique play. It has a complex and intriguing flawed main character. When Richard Burbage, who Shakespeare wrote the part for first played the part, even he must have struggled with learning the part of Hamlet in what is Shakespeare’s longest play. The play went on to win acclaim for Richard Burbage and for Shakespeare and it was probably the fourth most popular Shakespeare play in his lifetime (after Henry IV Part 1, Richard III and Pericles). 

1598 – “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, one foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never…”

1598 – “Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more, Men were deceivers ever, one foot in sea and one on shore, to one thing constant never…”

Although 1598 saw the publication of his plays Love's Labour's Lost and Henry IV Part 1, Shakespeare may not have received any money for these publications. The listing of Shakespeare’s name on as the principle actor for Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humour meant that he must have still been pursuing the triple life as playwright, actor and country land owner.

After the turmoil of the previous couple of years, Shakespeare must have been thinking much about what makes human nature when he penned ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ in 1598. It may seem like 1598 was a lean year for Shakespeare on paper but the fact of the matter is, he was probably reaping the benefits of revivals of his most successful recent plays ‘Romeo and Juliet’, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and the Henry IV plays. He also knew that he must milk the Henry IV plays as much as he could before writing the most anticipated play of this sequence ‘Henry V’.

The emergence back in 1598 in the streets of London of so many soldiers who had been fighting the wars in Ireland meant that Shakespeare was not lost for stories and background for ‘Henry V’. He would have been collecting stories and material for this play, but Shakespeare must have felt that the rumours that abounded about what was really happening in Ireland with the wars and rebellion must have made writing Henry V in 1598 a little too controversial. These rumours were further compounded by stories that Elizabeth I had started to make political overtures to James VI in Scotland. Shakespeare would have put this project on the shelf for the moment. On the business front, after buying the 2^nd biggest house in Stratford, Shakespeare had also bought a quite large granary in Stratford upon Avon. 

So with business in order, a history play almost complete, Shakespeare turned to more poetic pursuits. He probably continued writing sonnets and was thinking about writing a comedy when one day after greeting a bright spring day, Shakespeare went out into the streets of London and he probably saw soldiers in the street and lovers on the doorsteps. It was then that it probably occurred to Shakespeare to write a comedy set in the Italian country town of Messina as soldiers return from war. As the talk of Ireland and the wars filled the streets, Shakespeare probably thought of creating a play with meandering plots dependent on overheard conversations, mischievous plotting and misunderstandings. Shakespeare always liked multiple plots and having events within one plot balanced by other events so with these ideas in mind Shakespeare started to write Much Ado About Nothing.

1597 - “He hath studied her will, and translated her will, out of honesty into English.”

1597 - "He hath studied her will, and translated her will, out of honesty into English."  
Shakespeare probably returned from Stratford after the Lenten holiday in 1597 having done considerable work on the New House. Besides purchasing huge quantities of stone, some for building and some for stone walls, he also seems to have had two large sheds built presumably for grain storage. This could be seen as the normal actions of a normal country lad who who had acquired new wealth, but the famine and grain shortages which ravaged southern England in 1597 make this action opportunistic at least and criminal at worst. Court records from a few years later actually mention Shakespeare's property so the authorities had concerns about William Shakespeare's and his wife Anne Hathaway's purchases. Let's see this merely as opportunism. So, just as Shakespeare's wealth had afforded him the opportunity to expand his prospects, his new found fame afforded him other artistic opportunities.

The front page of the first publication of The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1602 gives the full title of the play as 'The Most Pleasaunt and Excellent Conceited Comedie, of Syr John Flagstaffe, and the Merrie Wives of Windsor'. On the same cover it later states that this play had been performed "...both before her Maiestie, and else-where." This is important and helps us to date the first performance of the play probably to Windsor Castle when aligned to play performance records. This theory sometimes called the Garter Theory, states that it is likely that the occasion at which this play was performed was at the ceremony of the investiture of knights into the Order of the Garter on April 23rd 1597. This theory also consistent with a story which supposedly was around in Shakespeare's day, but was first written down in 1702, that Queen Elizabeth I was so taken by the character of Flagstaff in the two parts of Henry IV that she commanded Shakespeare to write a play that showed Flagstaff in love. It is also all edged that she commanded Shakespeare to write it in fourteen days. If this is true, then that would mean that Shakespeare started writing The Merry Wives of Windsor on April 9th, started rehearsing the first scenes a week later and had it completed and rehearsed around April 22nd. The play would not have been difficult for Shakespeare to write since it has many elements of the Commedia dell'arte with English archetypes, intrigues, deceptions, disguised characters and characters with an over-inflated sense of their own self worth and so Shakespeare's actors would probably have had quite a bit of input into the scenes and the play as a whole. The play also starts with a scene in the streets of Windsor where Justice Shallow and Sir Hugh Evans (a man of the church) meet with the intent of bringing Sir John Flagstaff before the court because of a number of grievances. The recent death of William Brooke 10th Baron of Cobram in March 1597, on whom allegedly Flagstaff is modeled, meant that the re-appearance of this popular character in 1597 may have had the element of tribute to Cobram. Needless to say, it seems that Queen Elizabeth I would have been well pleased with the performance, and Shakespeare was probably paid about 3 pounds for the play and perhaps another 10 shillings if he performed in the play as an actor.

From the jovial atmosphere of April 1597, the climate started to change and by July of 1597, England seemed like a different place. Grain shortages persisted and famine seemed on the rise. London and other cities saw greater influxes of people from the provinces and in late July of 1597, the English Parliament had passed the Vagabond's Act which introduced penal transportation to British colonies for even petty criminals. The Privy Council had also started to clamp down on entertainments and plays such as Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson's magnificent satire The Isle of Dogs was banned. It is in this climate that Shakespeare wrote the relatively conservative history Henry IV Part 2.

This play is strange History with elements of an Ancient Roman Comedy. Like a character from an ancient Roman comedy or "Fama," the goddess of rumour who appears in Virgil’s epic poem ‘The Aeneid’ or a Butcher’s Guild character in a medieval pageant, Rumor comes out to start this play with a Prologue. Although in Ancient Roman times and Medieval times Rumor’s costume would have been decorated and made in many ways (including sometimes decorated in real ox tongues), in Shakespeare’s times the costume would have been covered in painted tongues to represent the nature of gossip. Rumor tells of how he travels everywhere and is as fast as the wind and that people are always ready to believe him. He arrives at the house in Northern England of Northumberland. Rumour at this point quickly retells some of the background to Northumberland’s son, Hotspur, and the rebellion against King Henry IV, and states that he has come to spread lies including the lies that tell Northumberland’s son has won the battle and is alive and well. Rumor leaves as mysteriously as he appeared. And this is only the start of the play.

1596 - “Grief fills the room up of my absent child…”

1596  - “Grief fills the room up of my absent child…”

After the success of 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'A Midsummer's Night's Dream', and the relative absence of the plague in 1595, William Shakespeare could start to enjoy the relative quietness of his lodgings in Bishopsgate and get down to writing for the 1596 season. Although there were probably murmurings in the streets about the rebuilding of the Spanish Fleet and potential attacks to France and England and the wars in Ireland were looking to have no end, 1596 probably started well for Shakespeare as he put plume to paper to write The Life and Death of King John.

It was written sometime around 1596 and on one level it could be seen as a rather staid and relatively historically accurate play set in the 13^th century. It is much less dramatic and more histrionic than some of Shakespeare’s previous Histories. But on another level, for an Elizabethan audience, this could be seen as a radical examination of who has a legitimate claim to inheritance and the throne. We can see John or even Philip the Bastard as representative of either Elizabeth or even her father Henry VIII and Arthur as representative of Mary Queen of Scots. In this context, the play and events take on a whole new meaning.  In 1596, Queen Elizabeth I was 66 years old. Her beauty was fading and most of her hair had fallen out. To exacerbate her situation, Elizabeth I had started to grant monopolies as a simple and relatively cost free way of assuring patronage. This started to lead to price fixing and this soon became worse when the spring 1596 harvests started to fail. This environment makes King John an interesting choice of subject matter for Shakespeare.

In the context of 1596, the continuation of the Henry plays with Henry IV Part 1 is also an interesting choice for Shakespeare.

“I'll so offend, to make offence a skill; redeeming time when men think least I will,”

Queen Elizabeth I had no children or direct descendants in the wings. Speculation was rife, particularly with the rebuilt Spanish Armada and Spanish troops having captured Calais. James VI of Scotland (the son of Mary Queen of Scots) seemed like the major contender and this is known as the Stuart claim. The Suffolk claims had the Grey family and the Seymour and Beauchamp families at the centre of ascendency claims and the Yorkist claims had not disappeared. Having just turned thirty and having reigned for almost as many years in Scotland, James VI was starting to look like a true contender but just like Henry V in Henry IV, he did not start that way. Although seemingly initially virtuous and conservative, by 1596 rumours of James VI mixing with all unsavoury sorts in his interest (or some would say obsession) with witches and whisky. His troubles with Highlanders also started to create a schism in Scottish unity. In some senses, ‘Henry IV Part 1’ can be seen as a ‘coming of age’ drama where we see the making the boy Hal into the king, King Henry V. Oh, just to remind you (and myself) ‘Henry IV Part 1’ is set around 1403 and it is the second play in the Henry Tetralogy by Shakespeare (his great mini-series) which started with ‘Richard II’ and will eventually end with ‘Henry V’. The play could have been seen in its time as a plea for James VI to change his ways or a play advocating that young men can become great kings despite their pasts. Nevertheless, the continuing turmoil in London with food shortages, failed crops and an escalation of the conflicts in Ireland and Calais created a sense of uncertainty about the present and speculation about the future.

This environment of growing resentment also started to extend to the money lenders and merchants in London, many of whom were Jewish. It is in this environment that Shakespeare’s second new offering for the start of the 1596 season in May is The Merchant of Venice.

It is strange to think that in Shakespeare’s time a performance of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ would have been heralded with the raising of a white flag above The Rose or The Curtain to indicate that a comedy was to be performed that day in May of 1596. It certainly has some romantic comedy threads but stylistically it is eclectic and complex by any times definition and tastes.

Many modern critics and audiences see the greatest barrier for modern audiences for this play is that see it as anti-Semitic. I think that two things must be kept strongly in mind when contemplating such a question. ‘The Merchant of Venice’ was first staged in about 1596 and also it was listed as viewed as a comedy at the time.

Comedy is a wonderful form. Humour is a master of many styles and purposes and one of its essential purposes is that it allows through imitation, mockery and even satire the criticism of prejudices, attitudes and conceptions. It is also a fickle mistress to fashion and form and what seems hilarious or even astutely poignant in a piece one year can be embarrassing, not humorous and misunderstood a year hence. My point is that perhaps Shakespeare’s audience saw that even though it was dramatic in much of its form, that ‘The Merchant of Venice’ was mocking their prejudices. The way the play ends with Shylock’s punishment and conversion is stylistically a little overdone even for Shakespeare’s time and perhaps we miss the subtle social and cultural commentary that some or many of Shakespeare’s audiences would have picked up.

Jewish people had lived in England for centuries but from about 1300, the expulsion of and confiscation of Jewish property was continuous (or at least it kept coming in waves). There simply weren’t that many around in England anymore so ignorance abounded. Also, just as we go through waves of using ethic and religious groups as villains (remember when ever villain was a Russian or a South African, ah, those were the days), writers and audiences have always done this. Will we cringe in years to come at the way that nearly every second villain in our movies seems to be a Muslim or someone from a dis-enfranchised ex-Soviet state, or both? I certainly hope we do, because that will mean that we meeting our prejudices in the face. And let’s face it, villains are not meant to painted with the simple delicate brush strokes and hues of sympathy but with the broad emotionally charged slaps and dashes of a bright pallet that challenges our values, perceptions and prejudices. ‘The Merchant of Venice’ also begins with such beautiful simplicity. It begins at the end of a conversation about Antonio’s, a merchant of Venice, melancholy:

“In sooth, I know not why I am so sad:

It wearies me; you say it wearies you;

But how I caught it, found it, or came by it,

What stuff 'tis made of, whereof it is born,

I am to learn;

And such a want-wit sadness makes of me,

That I have much ado to know myself.”

The Elizabethans used the Julian Calendar rather than the Gregorian Calendar. They also tended to date their years from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth the 1st. So sometime on the morning of prabably August 4 in Anno 38 Reginae Elizabethae (August 4, 1596 AD in our system), an urgent message would have been dispatched from Stratford upon Avon for William Shakespeare resident of Bishopgate in London. The message probably was delivered by a family friend or by urgent dispatch and the message probably reached London in about 30-40 hours. So while Shakespeare was just leaving The Swan theatre or the White Hart or George Inn, he received the dispatch. It would have told him that his 11 year old son Hamnet was extremely sick and dying. William Shakespeare would have probably left on the evening coach for Stratford and hopefully managed to see his son before he died on August 10 Anno 38 Reginae Elizabethae. Then on August 11, William Shakespeare buried his only son Hamnet.

Before Shakespeare left Stratford to return to London after the tragic loss of his son, he probably spent some evenings drinking and thinking with his father John Shakespeare and together, they probably decided that John Shakespeare’s 1569 claim to acquire a family coat of arms should be taken up again and pursued. So William Shakespeare left Stratford near the end of August 1596 with a heavy heart and a heavy bag filled with documents to back up the application to the College of Arms. So as Shakespeare left on a coach for London, he probably thought of a new speech for his King John  play which was still new and still running in London. He probably thought of his son's death and the desperate feeling of permanent separation when he wrote an extra very touching speech for the character of Constance. The speech resonates even more when we think that Shakespeare had just lost his only son Hamnet.
"Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts...
My life, my joy, my food, my all the world!" (King John III iii 93-108)