The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England (60 page)

As high as learning my rude ignorance.

The seven lesser poets on John Taylor’s reading list have a collective wealth of ability, although not necessarily as much application as Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare. Sir Edward Dyer is a courtier who can turn an exquisite phrase and would be far more famous if he only put his pen to paper more often. He is well known as the author of the famous poem ‘My mind to me a kingdom is’ and the even more touching ‘The lowest trees have tops’. Robert Greene is a libertine, drunkard and philanderer who writes extensively – poems and plays alike – but he is a jealous and conceited man who sees Shakespeare as a rival. Before things come to a head, Greene kills himself with red wine and pickled herring in 1592, at the age of thirty-four. Thomas Nashe, a clergyman’s son from Suffolk, also manages to incur Greene’s wrath, but survives him to write a number of plays, satires and poems as well as a notorious work of erotica,
The Choice of Valentines;
he too dies at the age of thirty-four. Samuel Daniel is of more sober stock: the son of a music master, he writes plays, masques and poetry, including a series of sonnets to ‘Delia’ (for which he is best known), the romance
The Complaint of Rosamond
and a history of medieval England in verse, before he expires, aged fifty-six. Francis Beaumont is best known for collaborating on
plays with John Fletcher, but is also a friend of Ben Jonson and frequents The Mermaid tavern in Cheapside. Sir John Harington has already been mentioned as a great wit, the inventor of the water closet and one of the queen’s 102 godchildren. He is an epigrammatist of the first order, but too risqué for his own good. Having incurred displeasure by translating some of Ariosto’s
Orlando Furioso
in a very racy style, he is requested by his godmother to leave court and not return until he has translated the entire work in a more appropriate manner. This he does – to great acclaim. Apart from Shakespeare, Joshua Sylvester is the only sixteenth-century poet on Taylor’s list who does not have a university education and the only one whose output is limited to translations (from the French), but he too is a highly accomplished wordsmith whose fame lasts for decades.

We should remember, however, that Taylor’s poem only accounts for those poets who have died by 1620. In addition you have the poetry of Renaissance men like Thomas Campion, the physician and composer who dies in 1620, and Sir Walter Raleigh, the explorer, courtier and historian, who is executed in 1618. Then there are those poets who, like Shakespeare, also write plays, such as Ben Jonson and a young John Webster, but who are only at the start of their careers; dedicated versifiers like the prodigious Michael Drayton, best known for
Poly-Olbion
and his historical poems
Agincourt
and
Mortimeriados;
and George Chapman, whose translations of Homer win the hearts of many readers. Although John Donne publishes nothing in Elizabeth’s reign, his early amorous compositions date from this time. You also have the earliest female poets, including Emilia Lanier (whom we met in
chapter 2
) and Sir Philip Sidney’s remarkable sister, Mary, countess of Pembroke. Mary rewrites her brother’s
Arcadia
for publication and presides over a worship of writers at Wilton House. Finally you have dozens of minor poets, such as George Gascoigne, whose
Hundredth Sundry Flowres
(1573) includes the gem: ‘And if I did, what then?’

And if I did, what then?

Are you aggriev’d therefore?

The sea hath fish for every man,

And what would you have more?

Thus did my mistress once

Amaze my mind with doubt;

And popp’d a question for the nonce

To beat my brains about.

Whereto I thus replied:

Each fisherman can wish

That all the seas at every tide

Were his alone to fish.

And so did I (in vain)

But since it may not be,

Let such fish there as find the gain,

And leave the loss for me.

And with such luck and loss

I will content myself,

Till tides of turning time may toss

Such fishers on the shelf.

And when they stick on sands,

That every man may see,

Then will I laugh and clap my hands,

As they do now at me.

The Theatre

In the modern world we have great admiration for Elizabethan theatre. At the time, however, it is in the throes of a radical revolution. At the start of the reign the majority of productions are miracle plays – reconstructions of scenes from the Bible, performed as both civic and religious rituals. These go out of favour when the privy council decrees that they are too close to Catholicism and should stop. Those at York cease in 1569. In Chester the citizens defy the privy council and continue performing their play about Noah’s Flood well into the 1570s. The Coventry mystery plays are finally suppressed in 1579, so this is the town to visit if you want to catch one later in the reign. The Guary miracle play in Cornwall continues for some years, but is so amateurish
that it can hardly be seen as a threat. It is performed by a prompter going to each actor in turn and whispering his speech to him, line by line.
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In their stead, people increasingly choose to see secular plays on historical and moral themes. These are performed up and down the country by theatre companies called after lords, for example ‘Lord Sussex’s Men’, ‘Lord Strange’s Men’, ‘the Lord Admiral’s Men’ and ‘Lord Leicester’s Men’. The reason for these names is that, while unattached actors are liable to be arrested for vagrancy, the Act of 1572 specifically excludes players properly authorised by lords from being considered vagabonds. Note that the actors are all men: women do not perform on the stage in Elizabeth’s reign. If there are any female parts, these are played by boys dressed as women. In London, performances take place in the afternoons in the yards of galleried inns, such as the Boar’s Head Inn in Whitechapel High Street, the Bell Inn and the Cross Keys Inn (both on Gracechurch Street), the Belle Savage Inn (Ludgate Hill) and the Bull Inn (Bishopsgate Street). When on tour, the theatre companies are quite small, sometimes comprising just six or seven actors, each taking on a number of roles. They perform for the fee-paying public in provincial inns or privately in the houses of gentlemen. However, as the new theatre proves more and more popular, actors, writers and audiences become increasingly centred on the London playhouses.

The Elizabethan theatre as we know it develops slowly. In 1562 the play
Gorboduc
, the first English play to include blank verse, is performed in front of the queen at the Inner Temple in London. This is written by two gentlemen, Thomas Sackville (the future earl of Dorset) and Thomas Norton, and leaves a lasting impression. Its tale of a kingdom torn between two heirs has great significance for the audience of the day. Other plays follow, drawing on classical themes as well as on ancient British and medieval history, written by (among others) John Heywood, John Pickering and Lewis Wager. A sign of their success is the construction in 1567 of the first purpose-built theatre, The Red Lion, built by John Brayne in Whitechapel. Unfortunately this is located too far from the city and does not attract large audiences. Performances in the city inns, however, are flourishing – much to the annoyance of those who see them as uncouth and riotous establishments. In 1574 the city authorities are given powers to restrict playhouses, forcing the actors to find new premises
in the suburbs. This becomes a golden opportunity for John Brayne and his brother-in-law, James Burbage, who in 1576 build a new theatre, simply called The Theatre, at Shoreditch, just half a mile north of Bishopsgate. The following year a second theatre, The Curtain, is built just 200 yards away. Despite some heavy opposition from Puritan preachers and moralists, both theatres are successful.
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New plays are written every year, courtesy of the new wave of playwrights, John Lyly, Thomas Preston and Thomas Hughes. The queen continues to encourage dramatic art, personally attending performances at Gray’s Inn, Greenwich Palace and Whitehall Palace. In 1583 she establishes her own theatre company, the Queen’s Men, and leading actors flock to it. Puritans are enraged, and the following year the city authorities try to outlaw plays altogether, both within and outside the city walls. But now that drama has received royal approval, they don’t stand a chance.
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In 1587 Thomas Kyd produces
The Spanish Tragedy
, and soon afterwards Christopher Marlowe brings out the first part of
Tamburlaine the Great
. Kyd is the son of a London scrivener, born in 1558; Marlowe the son of a shoe-maker from Canterbury, born in 1564 (the same year as Shakespeare), whose intellectual brilliance earns him a university education at Cambridge. They employ new verse forms, allowing different spoken rhythms, and compose bold speeches with greater resonance and meaning. The new conceptual framework of a revenge tragedy in particular allows them to portray powerful emotions voiced by strong characters. Suddenly it is possible to show so much more passion on the stage. The old narrative objectivity of the history play is replaced with a much more involved subjective experience, which excites and astounds audiences in equal measure. More theatres open their doors to the public. The Rose is built by Philip Henslowe at Southwark, not far from the bear-baiting and bull-baiting arenas, in 1587. Eight years later Francis Langley erects The Swan on a site nearby; and in 1596 Richard Burbage builds The Blackfriars Theatre, an indoor venue, although it does not open its doors until 1599. Most important of all, Shakespeare, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage and their partners dismantle The Theatre and remove its beams to a new site at Southwark, where it is rebuilt in 1599 as The Globe. When Edward Alleyn builds The Fortune on the northern edge of the city in 1600, the array of Elizabethan theatres is complete. Including the inn yards
and the various other places where plays are still staged, London now has a dozen playhouses.

This exciting and rapidly expanding cultural melting pot – developing in parallel with the music and poetry of the 1590s – is the environment in which all the new plays are written. Over the last fifteen years of the reign Shakespeare completes no fewer than twenty-five plays, including
Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
, the great historical cycle of
Richard II, Henry IV
(Parts 1 and 2) and
Henry
V,
The Merchant of Venice
, As
you Like It
and
Hamlet
. Marlowe composes the second part of
Tamburlaine
and adds
The Jew of Malta, Doctor Faustus, Edward II
and
The Massacre at Paris
to his oeuvre. George Peele writes all his plays (most notably
Edward
I), Robert Greene composes all his (including the comedy
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay)
, and John Marston completes his first five works. Thomas Nashe brings forth his masterpiece
Summer’s Last Will and Testament
. Thomas Dekker writes (or co-writes) his first twenty plays, some in conjunction with Michael Drayton, Henry Chettle, John Marston and Robert Wilson. And Ben Jonson starts his headlong charge into English literature.

Alongside Marlowe and Shakespeare, Jonson is the third great dramatist of the age. Like Shakespeare, he does not go to university but, after schooling at Westminster, becomes a bricklayer and then a soldier. By the end of the reign he has married, had two children and lost one, tried to become an actor and failed, become a playwright, been arrested for a scurrilous play and released, killed another actor in a duel, been arrested again and put on trial for murder, and escaped hanging by pleading Benefit of the Clergy. The play for which he is arrested,
The Isle of Dogs
, co-authored with Thomas Nashe, is so slanderous and offensive that the privy council orders the closure not just of the play, but of every theatre in London. The following year, after most of the theatres open again, he has a blockbuster success with
Every Man in his Humour
. This he follows up with a sequel,
Every Man out of his Humour
, and three more plays:
Cynthia’s Revels, The Poetaster
and
Sejanus his Fall
. As with so many Elizabethan playwrights, he is prolific: by the age of twenty-nine Jonson has completed at least six plays, comparable with Marlowe (at least six) and Shakespeare (at least seven).

With so many playwrights at work there are plenty of plays to choose from. Each theatre shows twenty or thirty plays a year, changing the programme every day. In 1594–5 the Lord Admiral’s Men
perform a total of thirty-eight plays, twenty-one of which are newly written. One in three adult Londoners sees a play every month.
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It all adds up to a maelstrom of creative energy, theatrical delivery and personal rivalry. But if you travel around England you will notice how all this is increasingly centred on London. Whereas in the 1550s and 1560s several companies tour the country, by 1590 the principal actors stay in the city. The burgeoning population of London provides them with large audiences, especially when they become established at their respective theatres: the Lord Admiral’s Men at The Rose and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men at The Globe. Only when the theatres are closed by the authorities because of the plague – in 1581–2, 1592–3 and 1603–4 – do the London companies start to tour again, from Bath to Nottingham. Ironically, although many players visit Stratford in Shakespeare’s youth, the town’s corporation prohibits travelling actors from performing there in 1602.
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