Shakespeare: A Life (60 page)

Every problem with
Avisa
,
at any rate, shrinks when one comes to the mystery of the Sonnets'
publication. Shakespeare, it is believed, had almost certainly revised
his lyrics, and he may have arranged them for a sonnet sequence in
the tradition of Samuel Daniel
Delia
( 1592), which had its
groups of sonnets, a lightweight interlude, and a 'Complaint of
Rosamond'. Months of plague would have given him ample time to order
his sonnets in small groups within two main sections, followed by an
interlude in Sonnets 153 and 154, and A Lover's Complaint.

Certainly, too, Shakespeare's income was reduced by long closures of
theatres in 1607 and 1608, and he would have had reason to sell poems
of a slightly outmoded fashion while he could. At any rate, a volume
of his lyrics was licensed in London on 20 May 1609 and printed by
George Eld, for the quality publisher Thomas Thorpe, who since 1600
had brought out works by Jonson, Marston, and Chapman and had contacts
with the universities. There is no sign that Shakespeares Sonnets was
later withdrawn from publication, or that it appeared in irregular
circumstances. Thirteen copies still exist, which could mean that a
few readers very lovingly saved the volume, or that it was not liked
well enough to be read literally to pieces (the highly popular Venus
and Adonis of 1593 survives in only one copy).

Thorpe, who depended on writers for the theatre, had a fairly
creditable record when he issued the Sonnets. His books were respected,
and his printer Eld kept to fairly good, if not exceptionally high,
standards. In 1611, perhaps as a Jonsonian joke, Thorpe was to issue
Coryate's Odcombian Banquet without a main text but with its prefatory
matter, and in fact he lacked authority for that, although he never
printed the Banquet itself.
¹⁰

For Shake-speares Sonnets he used the impressive, famously obscure
dedication which follows. It has become a Riddle of the Sphinx for
Shakespeare scholars, who of course have not hesitated to tell us what
Thorpe may mean. Supposing 'W.H.' to be a misprint for 'W.SH.', one
critic observes that Thorpe elsewhere signs himself, 'T. Th.' or 'TH.
TH'. If 'W. H.', then, is a slip for 'W. SH.' or W. Shakespeare, the
odd dedication, which is meant to resemble a Latin lapidary
inscription, might be nearly intelligible.
¹¹
The phrase 'ever-living poet' might refer to Our Lord, and the metaphor about a 'well-

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wishing adventurer' could apply to the enterprising volume itself. Even so, the phrasing is remarkably contorted:

TO. THE. ONLIE. BEGETTER. OF.
THESE. INSVING. SONNETS.
Mr. W. H. ALL. HAPPINESSE.
AND. THAT. ETERNITIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OVR. EVER - LIVING. POET.
WISHETH.
THE. WELL - WISHING.
ADVENTVRER. IN.
SETTI NG.
FORTH.
T. T.

And, one asks, is it likely that Eld, a competent printer, would let
'W.H.' stand as a glaring misprint? (There are not many misprints
elsewhere in the work.) Worried over sales, Thorpe may have hoped to
allure sonnet-readers by mystifying them, as publishers did in the
1590s, and changed 'W.SH.' to 'W.H.' himself. That explanation, at
least, is not inconsistent with what little is known of Thorpe's
character. The 'misprint' theory (first mooted by Brae in 1869) has no
small merit in being sane, but attention has focused on a person with
the initials 'W.H.' (entailing a little trouble if we favour Henry
Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton) who may have been the Sonnets'
'onlie begetter'. The latter word meant 'originator', but it has been
taken to mean 'inspirer' or 'procurer', and, so far, the leading
contenders for 'M
^r
. W.H.' are still Sir William Harvey (
Southampton's stepfather) and William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. There
was a precedent for addressing a nobleman as 'M
^r
', but it is unlikely that a publisher in touch with the theatre, or a public actor, in 1609, would refer in print

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to the great Earl of Pembroke, a patron of the King's men, merely as 'M
^r
.
W. H.' Only frail circumstantial evidence supports the attribution to
Sir William Harvey, and the dedication remains an alluring enigma --
as one suspects Thorpe hoped it would be.

Either the Shake-speares Sonnets sold too poorly to be quickly
reissued, or they were withheld from republication during the author's
lifetime. But there was a possible tactical advantage, for
Shakespeare's actors, in having these elegant lyrics in print in
London at a crucial time in 1609.

At the time of Susanna's marriage to John Hall the city theatres had
suffered from repeated closures. The plague hardly relented. Or if it
relented for a few weeks, the death-toll, in either cold or warm
weather, might subsequently rise unpredictably, forcing the Privy
Council to give new orders to the justices of the peace, so that doors
again would shut. Weeks passed for acting companies beset by high,
inflationary costs, but taking in no money, and yet in this period the
King's Servants were helped by their own patron, as when they were
allowed to play at court nine days after Lent had begun in 1607. They
had good reason to bless King James. In the next year, fifty deaths
were recorded in London on 28 July, and more than forty a week
thereafter, with up to 102, 124, or 147 dead in three autumn weeks. A
long, enforced hiatus had begun -- and with the Globe's doors shut for
sixteen months, even modest royal gifts were welcome.
¹²

The Globe's men, however, had taken a risky step to be in a good
position when the sickness lifted. Success would hinge on their
prestige, authority, and high quality, since they aimed to fulfil a
dream by having a theatre inside the city in an élite neighbourhood
which had previously rebuffed them. Those who had got up a petition
against Burbage and signed their gentlemanly names, such as Harmon
Buckholt, Ascanio de Renialmire, and the like, had complained of 'a
common playhouse' in their midst. Twice again such residents were to
protest, and, indeed, success for the King's men might depend on their
own luck in avoiding
early
complaints while they established

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themselves in new city quarters. It would have helped to have
Shakespeares Sonnets in print to testify to their poet's courtly
refinement, and Thorpe's edition was thus no calamity in 1609.

The actors were a centre of Shakespeare's observations, though a work such as
The Tempest
suggests that he went well beyond actors' circles for his living
sources. Over the years, he can only have heard a good deal about the
advantages of a 'winter' hall in the city's west near the Thames. Back
in 1596 old Burbage had hatched a plan for a roofed theatre and had
purchased the Blackfriars room, but the plan had failed: up to the end
of that decade the Upper Frater was empty as a cavern. Then the great
hall was leased to the Chapel Children, and when the boy actors got
into hot water with satire and political gibes, their leader,
impresario, and leaseholder Henry Evans bargained to sell their lease.
Finally, when the boy actors had been closed down, Evans made a new,
acceptable offer to the troupe, so the Upper Frater came back into the
hands of Shakespeare's men in the summer of 1608.

At that juncture, when plague had closed every venue, the Burbages
settled on a new 'housekeeper' scheme, and extended this to seven men
on 9 August 1608. Pope had died, Phillips lay buried at Mortlake; and
their Globe shares meanwhile had gone to William Sly and Henry
Condell. Holding back two shares for themselves, Richard and Cuthbert
Burbage now brought in Sly and Condell, as well as Heminges and
Shakespeare (as survivors of the company's earlier housekeepers), to
be equal sharers in the Blackfriars. A seventh share went to an outside
financier, Thomas Evans. Sly died when the deal was in progress, and
so, when the plague relented, the new housekeepers were six, four of
whom were King's players.
¹³

Flaunting their supremacy, the actors decided to keep two theatres,
although the Globe could easily have been rented or sold. No company had
ever been foolish enough to try to maintain two playhouses, each
empty as a tomb for half of the year. But from 1609 onwards, the Globe
would be used from May to September, then stand empty for the seven
colder months, when, with courtiers and lawyers back in town, the
company acted in London's affluent west near the river. Indoor hours
would be about the same as at the Globe to appeal to idlers or
'afternoon's men' (often the main clientele for a hall theatre),

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and six shows might be given weekly. A winter stage could be lit partly
by daylight, with the help of candles and torches, but whereas the
Globe's prices began at a penny, a roofed theatre could charge more.
At Blackfriars the cost would be 6
d.
for entry to a gallery, a further
1s.
for a bench in the pit. A box cost half a crown. As many as ten
showy, tobacco-smoking gallants, often in feathered hats, could go
through the tiring-house, hire a stool, and sit on the stage itself
for a total outlay of 2
s.

Blackfriars proved ideal for offstage music. The 'little eyases' had
capitalized on that, and Shakespeare made increasing use of music and
song in works up to The Tempest. The Globe's stage balcony, in fact,
was rapidly altered so that a consortium of musicians could play
there, too, and higher charges were not expected to lead to 'a
difference in the plays staged at either place'.
¹⁴
Shakespeare had used instrumental effects at times, perhaps, as an
artistic crutch to make up for a play's vagueness, confusion, or
feeble effects (his poorest work may be lost to us, or expunged from
revised texts that exist). Music is sparingly used in the early
comedies, but two crucial songs at the end of
Love's Labour's Lost
and a music of enchantment in the
Dream
anticipate a sudden, marvellous development in As You Like It, in which
instrumental music and song reinforce theme after theme, such as
time's passing, the humour of 'holiday', the Forest of Arden's
delights, or man's ingratitude. Even so, the late romances are musically
his most excitingly innovative works. New facilities at Blackfriars,
and then at the Globe, must have led him to experiment, and music in
Cymbeline or The Tempest becomes, in an Elizabethan way, 'an act of
faith', reinforcing present but elusive meanings in the work's action.

Even before he had an indoor stage, he had begun the series which
includes Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest.
These plays are naïvely presentational, conciliatory in mood, less
gestured and less emphatically structured than anything he had done
before. They recall Tudor dramatic romances of his youth, as well as
the miracle works of late medieval times. Why does he seem to reach
back? In avoiding the limits of modern realism, logic, and literalness
he might use his art to exploit rich areas of popular romance. But
there is something more personal in his aims, if one judges from his
insistent

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return to variations upon only a few themes. From the time of
King Lear
,
he appears to have drawn on an effort he was making to set himself
right with people he cared for, and perhaps to overcome some aspects
of estrangement in his absences from home. Yet if that is so, he also
transcends such a need, both intellectually and artistically, and none
of his dramatic work correlates exactly with any known outward event
in his life. The origin of none of it can be reduced to psychological
causes, neuroses, worries, or anything of the kind. Though they differ
in form and tone, his late plays are alike in a power of open
spiritual enquiry, as also in an expanded focus. With the heightening
effects of romance, they seem less concerned with an individual than
with what happens to a family over a span of time. A motive such as
bitter jealousy splits the family, and causes grievous estrangement,
odd outcomes, possible death, and 'painful adventures'.

Again and again, he turned over in his mind the needs of
reconciliation, mercy, and forgiveness. These themes permeate even Henry
VIII, played in 1613, and he looks into the conditions of their
existence, such as growth and decay, chance and time's passage, the
development of self-awareness, and the effects of one generation upon
the other. In Pericles and The Winter's Tale, a wide gap of years
separates two royal generations. Infants grow up; separations have
unforeseen results in distant lands. The young aid the regeneration of
the old, and heroines have effects which do not depend on the
struggle known, say, to a Cordelia or Helena, but rather on their
being. Alarmed that his son Florizel loves the supposed shepherd-girl
Perdita in The Winter's Tale, the King of Bohemia threatens to
disfigure her face with briars, but nothing can harm Perdita, nor will
the men who lust for Marina in Pericles' brothel experience anything
but her grace. Evil is sudden, implacable, and ferocious but every
evildoer in this series is pardoned, except for the incestuous
Antiochus in Pericles. Disruption and violence are offset by
ceremonial, elaborate endings, and by the recovery of persons supposed
lost or dead.

Clearly, though,
Shakespeare still catered for upper sections of the play-going market
which his troupe needed to hold, and his romances have affinities with
Sidney Arcadia, a favourite book for university men and young
gallants. The public's taste was turning to courtly fare.

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