A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare

1599

James Shapiro

• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780061840906
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia británica

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize's 25th Anniversary Winner of Winners award

What accounts for Shakespeare's transformation from talented poet and playwright to one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this gripping account, James Shapirosets out to answer this question, "succeed[ing] where others have fallen short." ( Boston Globe )

1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England. During that year, Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.

James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare's staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.

SUMMER

– 9 –

The Invisible Armada

By late July, political events began to overtake Julius Caesar. Brutus’s castigation of Cassius for denying him “gold to pay my legions” (4.3.77), may have induced a grimace among playgoers after word got out of “a mutiny threatened among the soldiers in Ireland, for want of pay and scarcity of victuals.” Hopes for a speedy and decisive victory in Ireland had been dashed: “The Irish wars go slowly,” Sir Anthony Paulett wrote as spring gave way to summer, “and will not so soon be ended as was thought.” Never before under Elizabeth had the authorities cracked down so hard on what could be said or written, or had they been so willing to silence those who overstepped. George Fenner explained to news-hungry friends abroad that “it is forbidden, on pain of death, to write or speak of Irish affairs.” Francis Cordale similarly apologized that he could “send no news of the Irish wars, all advertisements thence being prohibited and such news as comes to Council carefully concealed.” Nonetheless, he confided that “our part has had little success, lost many captains and whole companies, and has little hopes of prevailing.” Fresh recruits were conscripted to replace those killed or wounded: “3,000 men are to go… from Westchester this week, and 2,000 more are levying.” “It is muttered at court,” Fenner added, that Essex “and the Queen have each threatened the other’s head.” With their best troops in the Low Countries and Ireland, the English knew how vulnerable they were to invasion. So did their Spanish foes. Current events began to take on the contours of Shakespearean history: “The furious humour of the… Hotspurs of Spain,” Thomas Phillips writes, “may lead the Spanish king into action, whereunto the absence of the most and best of our soldiers, as they conceive, and the scarceness of sea provisions this year may give encouragement.”

These were more than paranoid musings. Reports were arriving with disturbing frequency from spies, escaped prisoners, and merchants that the Spanish were outfitting another armada to sail against England. By mid-July English spies reported home that the Spanish were ready to attack: the “whole force will be about 22 galleys and 35 galleons and ships out of Andalusia…. They report greater sea forces and 25,000 landing soldiers, and that he goes for England, hoping with this sudden exploit to take the shipping. They go forward in their old vanity of 1588.” The Spanish were coming, eager to avenge the humiliating defeat of the Great Armada eleven years earlier. A two-pronged assault was feared, with the Spanish attacking at some point along the southern coast while simultaneously sailing up the Thames, their land forces sacking and pillaging London as they had notoriously done to Antwerp. Even as plasterers, thatchers, and painters were attending to the final touches on the Globe, Shakespeare had to contemplate the prospect that the gleaming playhouse might soon be reduced to ashes—along with the artistic and financial capital he had poured into it.

The Privy Council began requisitioning some of England’s best ships to protect the coast, and the queen postponed her summer progress (no doubt a relief, since she had extended the one she had planned after hearing that her “giving over of long voyages was noted to be a sign of age”). Hoping to raise morale, and seeing the obvious similarities to the threat of the Great Armada, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested to Cecil that the special prayers that “were used in the year 1588 are also fit for this present occasion and cannot be bettered.” By late July (the time when the Spanish had planned to land on the English coast in 1588), anxiety was running high. On the night of July 25, Lieutenant Edward Dodington, one of the defenders at Plymouth, dispatched a messenger to London with the news that “a fleet at this instant coming in upon us, the wind at north-west, and in all likelihood it is the enemy.” The letter’s endorsement conveys his great sense of urgency, spurring on the messenger’s race from one post-horse to the next to let the Privy Council know the invasion had begun: “For Her Majesty’s special use; haste, post haste for life; haste, haste, post haste for life.” It was a false alarm, the first of many. John Chamberlain, who had excellent sources at court, wasn’t sure of the true nature of the threat: he writes from London to Dudley Carleton on August 1 that “upon what ground or good intelligence I know not but we are all here in a hurle as though the enemy were at our doors.”

There was considerable skepticism both at home and abroad that the defensive preparations were intended solely to fend off a Spanish attack. The word on the Continent was that “the Queen is dead.” The same was suspected in England. Henry Wake informed Cecil that it is “secretly spread and whispered that her Majesty should be either dead or very dangerously sick.” Rumors were piled on rumors. One correspondent reported that “the King of Scotland has taken arms against the Queen,” that “the Earl of Essex, viceroy, is wounded, and his soldiers leave him,” and that “in England there is tumult and fear, and many fly into the southern parts. Some say the Queen is dead; it is certain that there is great mourning at Court.”

John Billot, an English prisoner in Spain, escaped and returned home with a smuggled Spanish proclamation, written in English, hidden in his boot. It revealed that King Philip III had commanded his forces to reduce England to “the obedience of the Catholic Church.” And it instructed all Catholics in England to join forces with the Spanish invaders and take up arms against the English “heretics.” Those who because of the “tyranny” of English Protestants were too scared to change sides openly were urged to defect during “some skirmish or battle” or “fly before… the last encounter.” The Spanish threat was now coupled with a fear of disloyal English Catholics rising and joining forces with the invaders. To ensure that the dying embers of religious strife did not get blown into a civil war that would engulf the nation, the English government acted forcefully. On July 20 the Privy Council directed the Archbishop of Canterbury to round up leading recusants—those who remained committed enough to Catholicism to pay fines for refusing to participate in mandatory Protestant worship—and imprison them. In addition, orders were given “to sequester all the able horses of the recusants.” If Catholic gentry were to join forces with the Spanish, they would have to walk. Some felt that these moves didn’t go far enough. Sir Arthur Throckmorton warned that Protestant men with Catholic wives were even more dangerous than professed recusants and should be restrained and disarmed.

William Resould reported to Cecil that the Spanish planned to replace Elizabeth with an English Catholic, and though he wasn’t prepared to name names, “there is some great personage” in England prepared to claim the throne. Catholic treachery was feared in the city as well. The lord mayor of London warned the Privy Council on August 9 that “there are lately crept into this city diverse recusants, who in their opinions and secret affections being averse from the present state, may prove very dangerous to the state and city, if any opportunity should offer itself.” Everywhere one turned, it seemed, there were signs of Catholic plotting. A pair of illiterate London bricklayers stumbled upon what they thought was a handkerchief but turned out to be a letter. They dutifully took it to a scrivener, who directed them to a constable, who in turn alerted a local justice, who wrote to Cecil. The intercepted letter was from the Catholic Irishman, the Earl of Desmond, and was intended for the King of Spain. It urged “the recovery of Christ’s Catholic religion” in England, and justified such action on the grounds that Elizabeth was a tyrant (“Nero was far inferior to the Queen’s cruelty”). Who dropped or planted this letter on the streets of London is anyone’s guess.

The imagined threat didn’t stop with the Spanish troops and their recusant supporters. A letter to Cecil about what the English now feared is worth quoting at length:

I thought it my duty to advertise you of the strange rumors and abundance of news spread abroad in the city, and so flying into the country, as there cannot be laid a more dangerous plot to amaze and discourage our people, and to advance the strength and mighty power of the Spaniard, working doubts in the better sort, fear in the poorer sort, and a great distraction in all, in performance of their service, to no small encouragement of our enemies abroad, and of bad subjects at home; as that the Spaniard’s fleet is 150 sail of ships and 70 galleys; that they bring 30,000 soldiers with them, and shall have 20,000 from the Cardinal; that the King of Denmark sends to aid them 100 sail of ships; that the King of Scots is in arms with 40,000 men to invade England, and the Spaniard comes to settle the King of Scots in this realm.

London preachers fanned the flames, including one who “in his prayer before his sermon, prayed to be delivered from the mighty forces of the Spaniard, the Scots and the Danes.” Nobody was sure what to believe: “Tuesday at night last, it went for certain the Spaniards were landed at Southampton and that the Queen came at ten of the clock at night to St. James’s all in post; and upon Wednesday, it was said the Spanish army was broken, and no purpose of their coming hither: with a hundred other strange and fearful rumors, as much amazing the people as [if] the invasion were made.” Such anxious and conflicting accounts of the destination and size of the enemy fleet would be echoed a few years later in the opening act of Shakespeare’s Othello, where Venice’s leaders argue over intelligence reports: “My letters say a hundred and seven galleys,” says one; “Mine, a hundred forty,” says another; “And mine,” adds a third, “two hundred… yet do they all confirm / A Turkish fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus,” a consensus immediately contradicted when news arrives that the “Turkish preparation makes for Rhodes.” This latest intelligence is quickly dismissed: “ ’Tis a pageant / To keep us in false gaze” (1.3.4–21). As Shakespeare recognized, such crises were rich in drama.

By the first week of August, defensive preparations around London, at sea, and along the coast, had intensified. Rowland Whyte reported to Sir Robert Sidney, who was with English forces in the Low Countries, that in London “there is nothing but alarms and arming for defense.” From every ward in London, he added, ten or a dozen men were conscripted to man her Majesty’s fleet. John Chamberlain provides additional details: London “is commanded to furnish out sixteen of their best ships to defend the river and 10,000 men, whereof 6,000” are “to be trained presently and every man else to have his arms ready.” Letters were sent to the bishops and noblemen ordering them to “prepare horses and all other furniture as if the enemy were expected within fifteen days.” The national mobilization was extraordinary. The objective was to mass upward of twenty-five thousand men in and around London to repel the invaders. The historian John Stow, who lived through it, believed that “the like had not been seen in England since Queen Elizabeth came to the crown.” Sir Francis Vere was ordered to send home two thousand of his best troops from the Low Countries. Messengers were sent to fifteen counties with instructions to send cavalry and rendezvous at prearranged sites around London. Orders also went out to twelve counties to provide thousands of foot soldiers. Earls and barons were told to gather forces, repair to the court, and protect the queen herself. The Earl of Cumberland was put in charge of the defense of the Thames, Lord Thomas the high seas, and the lord admiral the southern front.

As forces began to crowd London and its suburbs, great precautions were taken in the jittery capital. On Sunday, August 5, by royal command, Stow writes, “Chains were drawn athwart the streets and lanes of the city, and lanterns with lights, of candles (eight in the pound) hanged out at every man’s door, there to burn all the night, and so from night to night, upon pain of death, and great watches kept in the streets.” The danger of a sneak attack under cover of darkness outweighed even that of fire in a city containing so much combustible timber and thatch. The next day, Chamberlain writes, panic struck upon “news (yet false) that the Spaniards were landed in the Isle of Wight, which bred such a fear and consternation in this town as I would little have looked for, with such a cry of women, chaining of streets and shutting of the gates as though the enemy had been at Blackwell. Our weakness and nakedness disgrace us, both with friends and foes.” Military leaders like Sir Ferdinand Gorges worried that civilian defenders weren’t up to the task, “for when things are done upon a sudden, and especially amongst people unenured to the business, they are amazed and discouraged.”

The Thames remained a weak link and a major concern. Initially, the Earl of Cumberland intended “to make a bridge somewhat on this side Gravesend, after an apish imitation to that of Antwerp.” Given the failure of such a defense in Antwerp—it hadn’t stopped the Spanish troops who laid waste to that city in 1585—it was probably not the best plan. Still, Cumberland swore that “with 1,500 musketeers he would defend that bridge or lose his life upon it.” This plan was soon succeeded by another: a shipwright named Ayde suggested blockading the river by sinking ships at a narrow point in the Thames, near Barking Shelf. The privy councillors were so taken with his idea that they instructed the lord mayor to put it into effect. It was an indication of just how desperate things were, for if the Spanish didn’t destroy London’s commerce, Ayde’s plan surely would. The mayor and alderman begged the councillors to forgo this desperate measure and rely instead on a score of highly maneuverable boats to “annoy the enemy and impeach his passage.” They had done the math and it had frightened them: Ayde proposed sinking eighty-three ships, their value roughly twenty-five thousand pounds. Once sunk, these ships would flood the adjoining marshland, causing forty thousand pounds worth of damage. Recovering the sunken hulks—and it wasn’t at all clear that it would prove possible to do so—would cost twenty thousand pounds more. If they failed to, the “Thames will be choked and spoiled, and the trade of the city wholly overthrown.” To the great relief of London’s merchants, the Privy Council was prevailed upon and Ayde’s plan abandoned.

The call to arms was heeded in the city by both rich and poor. This wasn’t Ireland; they were defending their families, their homes, their queen, and country. John Chamberlain declared that “though I were never professed soldier, to offer my self in defense of my country… is the best service I can do it.” After casting a horoscope to learn whether the Spanish would attack, the enthusiastic astrologer Simon Forman went overboard, purchasing “much harness and weapons for war, swords, daggers, muskets, corslet, and furniture, staves, halberds, gauntlets, mails, &c.” A contemporary survey of the mustering of the “armed and trained companies in London” in 1599 gives a vivid impression of its citizen army. Many of the captains leading their neighbors had served in a similar capacity in 1588. John Megges, draper merchant, led 125 men from Queenhyth Ward while 250 men of Cripplegate Ward followed merchant tailor John Swynerton, and so on, throughout the various wards. All told, this London muster lists fifteen captains leading 3,375 men from twenty-five wards.

And what about Shakespeare? As a servant of the lord chamberlain, did he join up ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Prologue
• Winter
• Spring
• Summer
• Autumn
• Epilogue
• Bibliographical Essay
• Acknowledgments
• Searchable Terms
• About the Author
• Also by James Shapiro
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher