Exercises

The Best Playwright in England

By Jennifer Bassett

The plague came and in September 1592 the City Council closed the theatres in London. They didn't open again until June 1594.  

After the plague years, we were busy all the time. There were new companies of players and Will now belonged to the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The Lord Chamberlain was a very important man, close to the Queen, and we often put on plays for the Queen's court, and in the houses of the great lords of England. We had some very good actors. There was Will, and Richard Burbage, of course, and John Heminges. And there was Augustine Phillips, Henry Condell, and Thomas Pope. There were other actors, too, but those six were the real company. They worked together for more than twenty years.

Will was special—because he wrote the plays. And what plays they were! He never wrote the same play twice, like some writers. He was always trying something new, something different. And he wrote fast, too.

John Heminges could never understand that. "How can you write so fast, Will?" he asked Will. "And you never make a mistake or change a word."

Will didn't really understand it himself. "It's all in my head," he said. "I think about it, and then it just comes out on paper."

He wrote a play about love in 1595. Young love. It was Romeo and Juliet. It was a very sad play, because the young lovers die at the end. But the playgoers loved it. They wanted to see it again and again.

Will played the part of old Capulet, Juliet's father. One of the boy actors played the part of Juliet. There were no women actors, so boys played all the women's parts. Of course, Will never put real love-making on stage. He did it all with words—clever, beautiful words, and you forgot that the women and girls were really boys in dresses. Some of the boy actors were very good, and went on to play men's parts when they were older.

The year 1596 began well, but that summer the weather was really bad. Cold. Wet. It never stopped raining, and the plague began to come back into London.

One wet August evening I came to Will's room. He was just sitting there...not doing anything, just sitting.

"What's happened?" I asked. "What is it?"

He looked at me. "Hamnet ..." he began. "Hamnet was ill last week, and...and he died, yesterday. He was only eleven, Toby, and he's dead. My boy. My only son. He's dead, Toby. Dead." He put his face in his hands.

We sat together, silently. I knew that Will loved that boy of his—red-haired, bright as a new penny, full of life. Just like his father.

Richard Burbage said once that Will's writing changed after Hamnet's death. Will still laughed at people in his plays, but he also felt sorry for them—sorry for all the world, good and bad, rich and poor, young and old. And his people were real. No one was all good, or all bad.

There was a man called Shylock in his play The Merchant of Venice. This Shylock was a money-lender and a cruel man—everyone hated him. But in the end, when Shylock lost everything, you had to feel sorry for him. He was just a sad old man.

Perhaps Richard was right. And if anyone understood Will, it was Richard Burbage.  

Every year we took more and more plays to court at Christmas. In 1598 one of Will's plays was Henry IV. A lot of the play was about the King's son and his friend, Sir John Falstaff. Sir John was old, fat, lazy, drank too much, talked too much, laughed too much. But you had to love him. He was a great favorite with the London playgoers, and there were a lot of Falstaff jokes going round at the time.

After the play, the Queen wanted to speak to Will.

We all watched while Will walked over to the Queen's chair. She was an old woman, she wore a red wig, and she had black teeth. But she was still a very great queen. And if the Queen was not pleased...

"Mr Shakespeare," she began. Then she smiled, and suddenly you knew why all Englishmen loved the Queen. It was like the sun coming out on a spring morning.

"Mr Shakespeare, you are the best playwright in England. I enjoyed your play, and I thought that Sir John Falstaff was very funny. I have known many Englishmen like him. Will you write me another play? I would like to see Sir John in love."

When Will came back to us, his eyes were bright, but he was already thinking about it.

"Don't talk to me," he said. "I've got a play to write."

He wrote it in two weeks, and we took it down to Richmond Palace and played it before the Queen on February the 20th. She laughed and laughed at The Merry Wives of Windsor.

In September we opened the Globe theatre. It was a grand, new building near the Rose. Will, Richard Burbage, and the others paid for it themselves. It was the best playhouse in London, and soon the most famous. The other companies had good theatres and some good actors, but we had the famous Richard Burbage—and the best plays.

Will's next play was Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. We all met one day to talk about it. There were six of us—me and Will, Richard Burbage, Henry Condell, John Heminges, and Augustine Phillips.

Will put his pile of papers on the table and sat down.

"Well," he said. "You've all read it. What do you think?"

"It's very good," John Heminges began, "but it's too long. It'll take about four hours in the theatre."

"We don't have to use it all," Will said. "We can cut it down to three hours, perhaps two and a half."

"Richard will play Prince Hamlet, yes?" said Augustine.

"Of course!" Will said. "I wrote the part for him. He's our star actor. I'll play the ghost of Hamlet's father." He looked at me. "Hamlet will wear black, Toby, and Ophelia will wear white."

"It's a good story, Will, with good parts for us all," said Henry. "But will the playgoers like it? It moves very slowly, and they like a play to be fast and exciting. Prince Hamlet knows that his uncle Claudius murdered the king his father. But he doesn't do anything about it for a long time. He just talks about it. And in the end nearly everybody dies, one way or another."

Augustine didn't agree with that. "You haven't understood the play, Henry. It is exciting, very exciting. The play is inside Hamlet himself. He wants to kill his uncle, but he can't. Murder is wrong. But he must kill him, because of his father. We can all understand how he feels."

All this time Richard Burbage was silent. He was reading bits of the play again. Now he put down the paper in his hand and looked up. His eyes were bright, excited.

"Have any of you really listened to the language of this play? This is your best play yet, Will—the best of them all. Just listen to the language, the poetry!" He stood up, and his great voice filled the room.

To be, or not to be—that is the question...            

We sat and listened, silently, while that wonderful voice brought the words to life. Will watched him, smiling. He knew that Richard, like him, was in love with words.  

...To die, to sleep—
To sleep-perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.

Richard Burbage was right, of course. The people loved the play, they loved Burbage as Hamlet, they cried for poor Ophelia's death, and they shouted for the murderer Claudius to die. I think it was Will's most famous play.

( 1,344 words)

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