Shakespeare’s Lost Years
‘What’s past is prologue’ Shakespeare wrote – but so little is known of his own. There are plenty of theories, each as implausible as the next.
On 20 September 1592 a strange, yet immensely important, pamphlet was entered in the Stationer’s Register in London. Cobbled together from papers left by the recently deceased playwright Robert Greene (1558-92), this work – snappily titled Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit, bought with a million of Repentance – told the story of Roberto, a scholarly ne’er-do-well, who, after trying to fleece his older brother with the help of a courtesan, ends up earning his crust by writing for the stage. Most of it is run-of-the-mill stuff but towards the end the narrator suddenly launches into a tirade against London actors. They were a deceitful, arrogant breed, who had done him no end of harm. He warned those ‘that spend their wits in making Plaies’ to steer clear of them – especially one:
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