CHAPTER XII. THE STAGE AS A PROFESSION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TIME THE POET'S ARRIVAL IN LONDON, AND HIS FIRST OCCUPATION AND COMPANIONSHIP THERE. THE 'HE theater was, in Shakespeare's time, like the newspaper press of to-day, the one arena toward which an intellectual youth, arriving in a great city, naturally gravitated. It was the great place of recreation, toward which, as it afforded instruction as well as amusement, the people crowded in constantly increasing numbers. "It is pretty evident," says Mr. Hudson, "that in Shakespeare's time the drama was decidedly a great institution; it was a sort of Fourth Estate in the realm, nearly as much so perhaps as the newspaper press is in our day. Practically, the government of the Commonwealth was vested in king, lords, commons, and dramatists, including in the latter both writers and actors; so that the Poet had far more reason than now exists for making Hamlet say to the old statesman: After your death you had better have a bad epitaph, than their ill report while you live.' Perhaps we may add," says the same writer, "as illustrating the prodigious rush of life and thought towards the drama in that age, that, besides the dozen authors of whom I have spoken, Henslowe's Diary shows the names of thirty other dramatists, most of whom have propagated some part of their workmanship down to our time; and in the same document there are recorded, during the twelve years beginning in February, 1591, the titles of not fewer than 270 pieces, either as original compositions or as revivals of older plays." Stephen Gosson, in his Tract entitled "Plays confuted in Five Actions," published in 1581, has this remarkable description of the activity of the London stage at this time: “I I may boldly say it, because I have seen it, that The Palace of Pleasure, The Golden Ass, The Ethiopian History, Amadis of France, The Round Table, and bawdy comedies in Latin, French, Italian and Spanish, have been thoroughly ransacked, to furnish the play-houses in London." And in the Return from Parnassus, a poem published in 1601, there is a passage which strikingly illustrates the wonderful success and enviable position of the Players of the time, the last line in which may refer directly to Shakespeare himself: England affords those glorious vagabonds, That carried erst their fardels on their backs, Here then was a market for dramatic genius; here was an opportunity for him who could produce anything new, fresh, and original in dramatic literature; here was the sphere, the companionship, the sights, scenes, and sounds which attracted the youthful genius, full of all noble fancies, in love with poetry and romance, and burning for a place among the world's heroes. Such was the arena into which Shakespeare entered; such was the promising field that attracted him to London; and such was the market in which he grew rich. Here he found an occupation in which he could bring all his noble faculties into play. He wanted scope for powers greater than those of the money-maker; he wanted room for the expression of his thought, his fancies and conceptions; and the theater, of all the places in the world, was the one place most favorable for this purpose. Unknown and uninfluential as he was, there was no other position so accessible to him; none other so suitable for him. The comfortable situations in the government service were monopolized by the nobility and gentry; these were theirs by a sort of natural right; and the Poet had to look for his living in a more active situation. Thus both fortune and his tastes pointed the same way. Even if he could have had his choice, he would probably have preferred a position in the theater to one in the government. Be that as it may, we know that he enrolled himself in one of those dramatic companies which he subsequently styled "the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time;" and, having once done so, he bent all his energies to master everything connected with it. Nor did he come into unworthy company; for the dramatic societies of that day seem to have been made up of generous and noble souls, fit associates even for Shakespeare. Davies, his contemporary, thus writes of them in 1603: Players, I love ye and your quality, As ye are men that pastime not abused; And some I love for painting poesy, And say fell Fortune cannot be excused That hath for better uses you refused: Wit, courage, good shape, good parts, and all good, As long as all these goods are no worse used: And though the stage doth stain pure gentle blood, Yet generous ye are in mind and mood. |