Shakespeare’s Lost Years

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:

Yes, trust them not: for there is an vpstart Crow, beautiful with our feathers, that with his Tyger’s hart wrapt in a Players hyde, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes fac totum [a Jack-of-all-trades], is in his owne conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrey.

This is generally thought to be a thinly veiled reference to William Shakespeare. Not only is there a pun on his name, but the ‘Tyger’s hart’ also parodies a line from Henry VI, Part 3. Exactly what Greene’s accusation means is debated; but he seems to have been irked that Shakespeare – then an ‘upstart’ actor – was trying to set himself up as a writer by aping the style of educated playwrights like Greene, and even filching lines from their works – a charge which, as recent research has shown, was not entirely unjustified.

Locating Shakespeare

Greene’s attack is significant as it is the earliest surviving reference to Shakespeare as a writer of plays. But, precisely for this reason, it also leaves us with a problem. If Shakespeare was already working in the theatre by the autumn of 1592, what was he doing before that?

It is hard to say. Before 1592 the last time we can pin him down is in connection with his two children, Hamnet and Judith. We know that he was in Stratford in May 1584, when they were conceived; and it is likely – although not certain – that he was present for their baptism on 2 February 1585. After, he is conspicuous in the documentary record only by his near-total absence. The only time his name crops up is in a case brought by his father in the Court of King’s Bench in 1588. The complaint was filed by the family’s lawyer; but as Jonathan Bate has argued, it is possible that Shakespeare – who was named in the court documents – instructed their counsel personally in London. So much, however, is supposition. For at least seven years, from 1584/5 to 1592, nothing for sure can be said about Shakespeare’s life – or his whereabouts.

This is not that unusual. Our knowledge of just about any early modern figure is pitted with lacunae. Because youth was a period of ‘becoming’ – and generally entailed limited legal independence – it rarely left a substantial mark in the record. Even the most precocious ‘genius’ is hard to pin down. Take Christopher Marlowe (1564-93), Shakespeare’s contemporary. Although he had probably staged his first plays by 1587, virtually nothing is known about his early life beyond the facts of his education. As A.L. Rowse once pointed out, the surprise is not that we know so little about Shakespeare, but that we know anything at all.

It is frustrating nonetheless. After all, the question of what Shakespeare was doing before he appeared in Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit isn’t just a matter of idle curiosity. It is central to how we understand Shakespeare himself. How did he go from being the recently married son of a glovemaker in Stratford to an emerging presence on the London stage? What caused him to leave Warwickshire for the capital? Given that he didn’t have the benefit of a university education – unlike Greene and Marlowe – and could not bank on the support of highly placed patrons, he didn’t have an obvious entrance into the literary world. So how did he embark on his chosen career? How, in short, did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?

Thief, traveller… teacher?

There are plenty of theories, of course. Most are based on rumour. One popular story has him poaching a deer from Sir Thomas Lucy’s estate at Charlecote Park and running off to London to avoid punishment. Another, proposed by the 18th-century scholar Edmond Malone, puts him as a legal clerk, who spent his day filing petitions and writs – all of which have been conveniently lost. Yet another, based on the fanciful attribution of a poem, claims that he went to Italy, where so many of his later plays were set.

None of these carries much weight, of course. There are, however, a few which seem to have a grain of truth to them. According to the antiquarian John Aubrey (1626-97), one possibility is that Shakespeare may have been a teacher. In his book Brief Lives (1680) Aubrey reported that, according to theatre manager William Beeston – whose more famous father, Christopher, had been apprenticed to Shakespeare’s company in the 1590s – Shakespeare had ‘been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country’. This is not implausible. Shakespeare’s plays are, after all, littered with references to teachers and teaching. But nor is it free of problems. After all, Aubrey’s ‘evidence’ was hardly that of an eyewitness. It was hearsay about hearsay. Aubrey wasn’t exactly known for his accuracy, either. The inconsistency of his account is hard to ignore. Just before asserting that Shakespeare was a teacher, Aubrey also claimed that he came to London at the age of 18 to take up acting. And that’s to say nothing of the questions it raises: if he had been a schoolmaster, surely there would have been more evidence – or a proud student or two, ready to boast about their time in his classroom?

Printer?

If not a teacher, then perhaps it is more plausible that he had a connection with printing in London. According to A. L. Rowse, the key evidence for this is provided by Shakespeare’s relationship with Richard Field.

The Shakespeares and the Fields were old friends. The two families lived just a few streets apart in Stratford; and their fathers worked in related trades – the one as a tanner, the other as a glover. By 1589, however, Richard had become master of a printing shop in Blackfriars, widely regarded as one of the finest in London. His output was remarkable for its sophistication. Alongside French tracts he printed George Puttenham’s The Art of English Poesy, an edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Sir Thomas North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives, all of which became vital sources for Shakespeare’s works. Most importantly, he launched Shakespeare’s literary career. In 1593 he printed Venus and Adonis – likely Shakespeare’s first publication – followed by The Rape of Lucrece in 1594.

Now, if we follow Rowse in supposing that Shakespeare’s association with Field’s shop predates the appearance of Venus and Adonis, it would answer a lot of questions. For one, it would explain how he came by his learning – how, in Rowse’s words, he was able ‘to beat the university wits at their own game’. It would also suggest that he first intended to become a poet and only turned to theatre to make ends meet.

It is not hard to find hints of this in Shakespeare’s works. He had a keen knowledge of printing and even gave Field a cameo (disguised as ‘Richard du Champ’) in Cymbeline. But this theory doesn’t explain why Shakespeare was in London in the first place, or what his connection with Field’s press really was. Was he employed by Field? Or was he just a hanger-on, dropping in to visit an old family friend now and then, and picking up a few scraps of knowledge along the way? If so, how was he supporting himself – and his family?

Servant?

Another intriguing theory is that Shakespeare was a servant in the household of Alexander Hoghton in Lancashire. This is based on Hoghton’s will, of 3 August 1581, which stipulated that after his death his servant ‘William Shakeshafte’ should pass into his brother-in-law’s service, and that a collection of associated instruments and costumes should go with him. This suggests that ‘Shakeshafte’ was a performer, if not an actor. Tantalisingly, the fact that the Hoghtons were Catholics also would give some clue to his own (much debated) religious sensibilities.

This, too, has weaknesses. The biggest problem is the name. Shakespeare used various spellings throughout his life, but ‘Shakeshafte’ is too different to be explained merely as an orthographical idiosyncrasy. ‘Shakeshafte’ was also a common enough name in Lancashire. It is no great stretch of the imagination to suppose that, while Shakespeare was finding his way elsewhere, an unrelated performer named William Shakeshafte was entertaining his employers in the North.

So what was Shakespeare doing in the ‘lost’ years? How did he find his way onto the stage? Did he, as is sometimes supposed, join an acting troupe known as the Queen’s Men? It seems unlikely. The company did pass through Stratford in 1587, but it is inconceivable that they would have invited an unknown glover’s son to join them. He would have had to work his way up; but again, there is a total lack of supporting evidence.

What, then, is the truth? There is simply no way of knowing. Barring new discoveries, the mystery is unlikely ever to be solved. But does it matter? As with so many of the ‘missing pieces’ this series has explored, the absence of knowledge compels us to interrogate what we do know more closely. It forces us to scour Shakespeare’s works for clues and nurtures a deeper appreciation of his genius. Precisely because we cannot explain how Shakespeare became Shakespeare, we have no choice but to marvel at the fact he was able to achieve so much. And that is no bad thing. 
 

Alexander Lee is a fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance at the University of Warwick.