The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [3499]
At the present time the most generally accepted hypothesis regarding the beginning of Shakespeare's theatrical career is that he joined the Earl of Leicester's company of players upon the occasion of their visit to Stratford-upon-Avon, either in the year 1586 or 1587. Upon the death of the Earl of Leicester in 1588, when this company was disrupted, it is thought probable that in company with Will Kempe, George Bryan, and Thomas Pope (actors with whom he was afterwards affiliated for years), he joined Lord Strange's players, with which company under its various later titles he continued to be connected during the remainder of his theatrical career. I shall prove this theory to be erroneous and adduce evidence to show that of whatever company, or companies, he may later have been an active member, his theatrical experience had its inception in a connection as theatrical assistant with the interests of the Burbages; with whose fortunes he thereafter continued to be connected till the end of his London career.
In judging of the youthful Shakespeare, of whom we can only conjecture, we may reasonably draw inferences from the character of the man we find revealed in his life's work. I am convinced that Shakespeare's departure from Stratford was deliberate, and that when he went to London he did so with a definite purpose in view. Had Shakespeare's father been a prosperous man of business, in all probability the world would never have heard of his son; though the local traditions of Stratford might have been enriched by the proverbial wit and wisdom of a certain anonymous sixteenth-century tradesman.
Unconfirmed legend, originating nearly a hundred years after the alleged event, is the sole basis for the report that Shakespeare was forced to leave his native town on account of his participation in a poaching adventure. It is possible that Shakespeare in his youth may have indulged in such a natural transgression of the law, but supposing it to be a fact that he did so, it does not necessarily brand him as a scapegrace. A ne'er-do-well in the country would probably remain the same in the city, and would be likely to accentuate his characteristics there, especially if his life was cast, as was Shakespeare's, in Bohemian surroundings. Instead of this, what are the facts? Assuming that Shakespeare left Stratford in 1586 or 1587, and became, as tradition reports, a servitor in the theatre at that period, let us look ten years ahead and see how he has fared.
We know that he had already returned to Stratford in 1597 and purchased one of the most important residences in the town. From the fact that John Shakespeare's creditors from this time forward ceased to harass him, we may assume that he had also settled his father's affairs. We have record that in 1596 he had, through his father, applied for the confirmation of an old grant of arms, which was confirmed three years later, and that he thereafter was styled "William Shakespeare, Gentleman of Stratford-upon-Avon." At this period he had also produced more than one-third of his known literary work, and was acknowledged as the leading dramatist of the time. All of this he had attained working in the same environment in which other men of about his own age, but of greater education and larger opportunities, had found penury, disgrace, and death. Marlowe, his confrère, at the age of thirty, in 1593, was killed in a tavern brawl. A year earlier, Greene, also a university man, would have died a beggar on the street but for the charity of a cobbler's wife who housed him in his dying hours. Spenser, breathing a purer atmosphere, but lacking the business aptitude of Shakespeare, died broken-hearted in poverty in 1599. George Peele, another university man, at about the same date, and at the age of thirty-four, we are told by Meres, died from the results of