All the Queen's Men (29 page)

The Queen had also been anxious to improve the intellectual quality of her clergy and considerable efforts had been made at university level to ensure that Protestant clerics should be far better educated than their Catholic predecessors. If anything, this well-intentioned stratagem proved over-successful, resulting in a surplus of potential clergy in the latter half of the sixteenth century with no church livings readily available. Happily, however, this state of affairs coincided with the growth of the theatre, so many university graduates decided to see whether they could make a living writing for the stage rather than taking Holy Orders, thereby creating an instant army of potential playwrights for whom there was fortunately a rapidly expanding market. Nashe, Greene and Peele were three such young graduates, who became playwrights and were known as ‘University Wits'.

The growth of the Elizabethan theatre is a classic instance of the laws of supply and demand: a constant requirement for new plays was met by an inexhaustible procession of new young playwrights, intelligent, highly creative and hungry for success. The rapid growth of the theatre towards the end of the sixteenth century is as much due to a variety of socio-economic factors as purely cultural influences. The population of London rose rapidly during Elizabeth's reign, becoming large enough to support the major capital cost of the purpose-built theatres which had begun to replace the tiered courtyards of traditional coaching inns as suitable venues for theatrical performances. There was an increasing demand for a wider range of entertainment and leisure activities, coupled with a growing, more sophisticated middle class with more leisure time to enjoy who were looking for new activities which were rather more intellectually stimulating than traditional pursuits such as bear-baiting and cockfighting. Conveniently for the new playwrights, the old style of drama provided by the traditional morality plays was no longer available, having been banned by the authorities as being theologically incorrect – the Protestants disliked God being portrayed as simply an old man with white hair and a long beard. Yet the working classes also wished to be entertained and flocked to the new theatres to stand in front of the stage in an area which became known as ‘the groundlings'.

Suddenly theatre builders, impresarios, playwrights and actors had an audience. Action, lights, music! Theatre became the new art form of the Elizabethan age. A handsome living could be made out of live theatre: there was no such thing as a long-running production, the theatre company would stage a different play each and every day, creating a continual requirement for fresh material from new writers. So great was the demand that plays were created by teams of dramatists, in much the same manner as modern-day television scriptwriters create a long-running serial or soap opera. Rival theatre owners and impresarios scrambled to outdo each other in a frantic desire to attract the largest audiences to their own particular production. Speed was of the essence, in order to effectively respond to a neighbouring theatre's successful production or to cash in on the latest popular theatrical trend. As a leading modern-day Oxford literary don amusingly explains:

If you read the diary of Philip Henslowe, the owner of The Rose, the rival theatre to The Globe, you will find him saying, ‘what are we going to put on next Wednesday? Here's a shilling, go down to the pub and share it out amongst half a dozen popular poets and tell them to come and see me. The place up the road has a play about Anthony and Cleopatra, we must have our own Anthony and Cleopatra. Here's the story, carve it up, an act each, come back on Monday with it finished. We'll rehearse for two days and perform it on Wednesday.'
⁶

It was in this frenetic atmosphere, this seething cultural climate, in which playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker found themselves in London during the last decade of the sixteenth century, where actors such as Ned Alleyn, Richard Burbage and William Kempe trod the boards in front of enthusiastic and totally classless audiences.

None of their activities would have been possible without the direct interest and support of the Queen and a number of her most prominent courtiers, men such as the Earl of Leicester, Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Strange. Without the authority of the Lord Chamberlain, it was illegal to form a company of actors or perform a play; furthermore the Puritan-dominated City of London frowned on theatrical performances and made great efforts to have them banned. This threat caused the major new playhouses such as The Globe, The Swan and The Rose to be clustered together on the South Bank of the Thames so as to be outside the jurisdiction of the City of London. Amid this sprawling area could be found every conceivable pleasure and vice – gambling dens, brothels, cockfighting and bear-baiting pits – all ironically located on land owned by the Bishop of Southwark!

While the Queen could be said to have been lukewarm about art and architecture, she certainly made up for this supposed lack of interest in her enthusiasm for the theatre, attending performances at the Middle and Inner Temples and other locations such as the residences of wealthy courtiers. She also summoned theatrical companies to perform at the Royal Court and even had her own company of actors, ‘The Queen's Men'. Elizabeth's enthusiasm and patronage successfully kept the Puritans at bay throughout her lifetime and encouraged her leading courtiers to become involved in the theatre. Theatrical companies, including the Earl of Leicester's Men, Lord Strange's Men and the Lord Chamberlain's Men, came into existence, while her Master of Revels, responsible for organizing court entertainment, shrewdly realized that it was more economical to hire groups of players for important functions at Court rather than finance full-time in-house performers. Thus, theatre flourished under the protection of the sovereign and the patronage of rich courtiers with cultural inclinations or pretensions. The Queen cleverly realized that theatre was an excellent place for her citizens to be entertained and kept out of mischief that could otherwise interfere with the orderly conduct of her kingdom. Thus she permitted the leading impresario James Burbage, who employed both Shakespeare and Marlowe, to produce plays virtually wherever he desired: ‘As well for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure.'

Elizabeth's specific interest in the stage is impossible to evaluate as examples of her personal involvement tend to rely on amusing yet apocryphal stories. Her favourite Shakespearean play was supposedly
The Merry Wives of Windsor,
written so it is said after the Queen had seen Shakespeare's
Henry IV
and requested him to write another play wherein Falstaff falls in love.
⁷
If there is any truth in this entertaining anecdote it would be a splendid early example of a Royal Command Performance! The Queen is thought to have attended the initial performance of
Twelfth Night
, escorted by her favourite, the Earl of Essex. A hilarious tale of particularly doubtful authenticity involves Elizabeth appearing on the stage in one of Shakespeare's productions. In those days it was apparently customary for VIPs to sit or stand around the stage during a performance – on one such occasion, the Queen supposedly became bored and walked across the stage through a crowd of actors that included Shakespeare, who was performing in one of his own plays as he was often accustomed to do. When the Queen's walkabout was studiously ignored, she retraced her steps and pointedly dropped a glove at Shakespeare's feet. Without pausing, Shakespeare picked up the glove and returned it to Elizabeth with a flourish, extemporizing:

And though now bent on this high embassy
yet stoop we to take up our Cousin's glove.
⁸

There was tremendous applause from the audience. In the context of an age where the law did not permit female performers, the concept of the Queen in a walk-on part is ingenious yet implausible. It is highly unlikely that Elizabeth, always conscious of her social standing, would have attended a public performance at a theatre such as The Globe or The Rose although she certainly watched many at private venues.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
was said to have been premiered at Windsor Castle while the Court was present.

The attendance of Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex at
Twelfth Night
at the Middle Temple had a greater degree of credibility, as the young Earl of Southampton, a close colleague of Essex, was one of Shakespeare's major patrons, along with both the 3rd and 4th Earls of Pembroke. Shakespeare may have been concerned when, as a result of Essex's abortive uprising against the Queen, Southampton was thrown into the Tower and not released until after the Queen's death in 1603. Essex's ill-conceived coup had been signalled by his supporters arranging for Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, to put on a special performance of
Richard II
, Shakespeare's powerful play about an unpopular monarch being deposed. Shakespeare may well have been fearful of being suspected of an involvement in the plot against the Queen and being suddenly drawn into a real-life scenario every bit as dramatic as one of his own plays.

In many respects, Elizabeth's entire reign resembled a long-running stage performance of epic proportions, full of love and lust, death or glory, triumph and tragedy, heroes and villains, all the classic ingredients for a successful drama series. Shakespeare did not have to look far for his inspiration, it was all around him. He had arrived in London around the time of the defeat of the Armada and lived there in the euphoric aftermath of this famous victory. He subsequently witnessed the steady slide into the sea of disillusion which arose in the final years of the Queen's life, when rhetoric finally began to outrun reality. His work fully captures the flavour of Elizabethan England. Plays such as
Henry V
portray the more upbeat moments, Henry's stirring speeches to his soldiers at Agincourt having much in common with Elizabeth's to her troops at Tilbury at the time of the Armada. Productions such as
Hamlet
and
Measure for Measure
brilliantly convey the brooding intensity of the Royal Court, everyone anxiously watching each other while meddling in each other's affairs.

It was a time of both high tension and frantic cultural endeavour as London thronged with all manner of aspiring playwrights and poets, drawn from all walks of life and all levels of social strata. Marlowe, Middleton, Jonson, Spenser, Fletcher and Shakespeare were the dominant playwrights of the day. Christopher Marlowe was the son of a cobbler in Canterbury while Ben Jonson's stepfather was a bricklayer, Marlowe, Spenser and Fletcher were all university educated, whereas Shakespeare had been to grammar school in Stratford. Marlowe's work displayed his marvellous gift with words: ‘Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?' from
Doctor Faustus
; or from
Tamburlaine
: ‘Accurst be he that first invented war'; and in
The Massacre of Paris
: ‘pale death may walk in furrows on my face'. Yet Marlowe lacked Shakespeare's ability to create believable characters, while his plots displayed no real coherence or continuity. Truly powerful passages in
Doctor Faustus
were bewilderingly interspersed with frivolous practical jokes in scenes more suitable for a knockabout farce, as Marlowe lost the plot in order to engage in the trivial pursuit of a cheap laugh from the groundlings. He did not possess the ferocious, intellectual calibre of Ben Jonson or the ability to conjure up the chilling sense of menace which John Webster was later able to conceive, most particularly in his two brilliant tragedies
The White Devil
and
The Duchess of Malfi
, both works full of death, despair and decay. Marlowe lacked discipline, and his life contained too many diversions in the twilight world he inhabited when engaged in espionage for Walsingham on the Queen's behalf. Eventually he was to be murdered in an East End tavern. Marlowe was not yet thirty.

John Fletcher is said to have collaborated with Shakespeare on
Two Noble Kinsmen
and Shakespeare's last work,
Henry VIII
, which is more a pageant than a play. When produced at The Globe, a spark from a cannon which was part of the special effects, set fire to the thatched roof of the tiered gallery and burnt the theatre to the ground. A deeply shocked Shakespeare retired to Stratford and wrote nothing further.
Henry VIII
is rarely performed today, while Fletcher's own work is now considered to be rather too flavourless for modern-day tastes.

Edmund Spenser created
The Faerie Queene
in order to ingratiate himself with Elizabeth and acquire royal patronage, yet he too could write a memorable line: ‘Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.'
⁹
Predictably, the mean-minded Lord Burghley disapproved, ‘What! All this for a song?'
¹⁰
he grumbled when the Queen instructed him to pay one hundred pounds for a collection of Spenser's poems. Thomas Kyd was also a popular dramatist when Shakespeare first arrived in London, his best-known play being
The Spanish Tragedy
which was enormously popular in its time. Thomas Middleton was as much in demand as Shakespeare as a dramatist towards the end of the sixteenth century and was playwright in residence at the Globe when Shakespeare was involved with that theatre. Middleton's play,
A Game Of Chess
, once ran for nine successive days, an unusual occurrence at that time. Other playwrights such as John Lyly and Thomas Dekker were very popular in Shakespeare's day, but are now almost forgotten.

Poetry was equally important during Elizabeth's reign. An aspiring young man made his mark by writing verse full of wit, elegance and intellectual brilliance. A law student at the Middle Temple or Lincoln's Inn needed to demonstrate more than a sound knowledge of legal issues so he engaged with his fellow students in rowdy ‘wit contests', shouting out elegies, satires and epigrams amid a literary Tower of Babel in order to appear the wittiest, most cynical and cleverest young man about town. John Donne acquired his position as secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, the Queen's last Lord Keeper, and later Lord Chancellor under James I, in this manner. Donne, like many ambitious young men of the time, was desperate to become a gentleman but never fully succeeded. After he had been dismissed from Egerton's service for marrying without informing his employer, he had to endure many years of poverty, a situation not helped by Donne's unerring ability to make his wife perpetually pregnant. The ingenious Donne had tried a variety of ways of achieving success and had sailed with Essex and Ralegh on the Islands Voyage in 1597 as a volunteer. Originally a Roman Catholic, he converted to Protestantism, later taking Holy Orders, and was Dean of St Paul's for the last years of his life, noted for his fine sermons. Donne's verses were not published until after his death in 1631 and it was some considerable time before his delicate touch and subtle use of language gained him the recognition which his work now commands: