"Shakespeare in Company" by Bart Van Es

What made Shakespeare different from and better than the pack of other playwrights of his age?

This book suggests that the key moment came in 1594 when, after some promising plays, he became a member of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. He was almost unique in being, at the same time, an actor, a playwright and a sharer in the profits of what was a stable company, soon to become one of only two official acting companies in London. At this point he began to write plays which focused on the relationships between different characters, using the personalities of the other members of his company as models. From this point on he eschewed collaboration (the standard practice among other playwrights) until 1608 when the theatres were closed due to plague. By the time they reopened, Shakespeare had left off acting and moved back to Stratford and his later work is more influenced by other playwrights, especially those with whom he began to collaborate, than his fellow actors. 

It's a compelling argument, no where more convincing than when Van Es considers the company member who provided the comedy lead. Until 1599 this was Will Kemp, a clown, famous for his physical ability and his jigs. Shakespeare wrote the parts of Bottom in a Midsummer Night's Dream, Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, and possibly Falstaff in Henry IV (parts 1 and 2) and The Merry Wives of Windsor. After 1599 the comic character changes completely. Robert Armin, replacing Kemp, was a 'fool' in the old jester tradition. His portrayal of Touchstone in As You Like It signalled a change to a much more reflective humour which, via Feste in Twelfth Night, Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, and Lavatch in All's Well That End's Well, culminated in the Fool in King Lear.

The book also helped me understand why Shakespeare should have been so willing to collaborate in his later plays - Henry VIII, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and the lost Cardenio - with John Fletcher. Shakespeare was interested by Fletcher's development of dramatic art, perhaps especially because Fletcher was experienced in writing for indoor spaces (and the Blackfriars Theatre was now in use). Fletcher's 'The Shepherdess' seems to have been a source for both The Winter's Tale and The Tempest. “Ultimately, what the connection with Fletcher amounts to is the embrace of conscious literary artifice.” (Ch 13)

It's also very interesting on Senecan revenge tragedy. 

Selected quotes:

• “Shakespeare's early drama is often spectacularly imitative and as a result his personal voice is much less distinct.” (Ch 1)
• “The phenomenon of the attached poetic playwright (writing for only one company) was initiated by Shakespeare.” (Ch 4)
• “Very likely the role of Starveling was taken by John Sincler, a hired man of the Chamberlain’s company, who was famously emaciated.” (Ch 4)
• “The boys’ theatre had something of a modern arthouse culture” (Ch 10)

An intriguing theory backed up by a convincing argument in a very readable book.

June 2025; 311 pages

Published by the Oxford University Press in 2013

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Shakespeare" by Bill Bryson

This might be a short, lightweight and very readable biography of the Bard but its 'evidence first' approach debunks a number of myths.

For example, the book considers whether Shakespeare spent his lost years in a Roman Catholic household in Lancashire and finds no evidence for it. It comprehensively debunks the theories that the plays were written by Francis Bacon or the Earl of Oxford and lists the considerable evidence that they were written by ... William Shakespeare. Though it does show that he lifted some of his material from his sources. 

I also learned that the Curtain Theatre had no curtains.

A perfect introductory biography to this great playwright.

Selected quotes:

• “Even the most careful biographers sometimes take a supposition ... and convert it within a page or two to some-[page break]thing like a certainty.” (Ch 1)
• “We know more about Shakespeare then about almost any other dramatist of his age.” (Ch 1)
• “A standard part of a teacher's training ... was how to give a flogging.” (Ch 2)
• "Vegetables were eaten mostly by those who could afford nothing better.” (Ch 3)
• “For foreigners English ale was an acquired taste even then ... it was ‘cloudy like horse’s urine’.” (Ch 3)
• “Shakespeare was a wonderful teller of stories so long as someone else had told them first.” (Ch 5)

May 2025; 195 pages

First published in 2007 by HarperPress

My updated paperback edition was issued by William Collins in 2016

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Shakespeare's Borrowed Feathers" by Darren Freebury-Jones

 An attempt to portray Shakespeare as a dramatist developing his craft by learning from, collaborating with, and sometimes borrowing from other dramatists of his time.

The title refers to the 'Upstart Crow' gibe by Robert Greene in which someone called 'Shake-scene' is described as "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers". 

There sometimes seems to be a belief that Shakespeare was a genius so unique that he, unlike every other great writer, never had to learn from others. This does a disservice to other great playwrights of the time who have been so overshadowed that they stand in danger of being forgotten. Maybe, it is conceded, Christopher Marlowe wrote some interesting stuff as Shakespeare was just getting going perhaps Ben Jonson penned some amusing plays. But Shakespeare ...

There is no doubt that Shakespeare was a box office draw and he is one of the very few writers of the time who escaped an early death in poverty. But he was not the only writer of best-sellers. The crowds flocked to see not only Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus but also Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Robert Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. This book even suggests that Shakespeare wrote The Contention between York and Lancaster’ and ‘The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York’ (now known as Henry VI parts 2 and 3) in response to the smash hit 'Harey the vi' and that later. when his company got its hands on the rights for that play, he revised it, adding a few scenes, and presented it as the first part of his Henry VI trilogy.

This book uses textual similarities to establish whether and to what extent Shakespeare was influenced by earlier writers. It suggests that his bombastic characters such as Don Armado in Love's Labour's Lost and Falstaff in Henry IV (1 and 2) and Merry Wives were inspired by the style in which John Lyly wrote his best-selling prose romances 'Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit' (1578) and 'Euphues and His England' (1580). There are echoes of Marlowe's 'The Jew of Malta' and 'Edward II' in Shakespeare's Shylock and Richard II. George Peele worked with Shakespeare on Titus Andronicus and John Fletcher on Henry VIII (All if True) and The Two Noble Gentlemen. 

But the biggest influence may be that of Thomas Kyd. Hamlet contains a number of echoes of Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, including a ghost, a character called Horatio, and a play within a play. Kyd might also have been the author of King Leir, the original for Shakespeare's Lear, and for an ur-Hamlet which has now been lost. 

The arguments that Freebury-Jones use make extensive use of similar words and phrases that occur in different plays, the suggestion being that Shakespeare the actor remembered these when writing. I didn't find this evidence especially convincing. More interesting was the percentages of things such as 'feminine' endings (iambic pentameter lines that have an extra, eleventh, syllable added, as in "To be or not to be, that is the question"): Shakespeare's used a far higher percentage of such lines than most dramatists of the time, especially Marlowe. Other stylistic differences included the percentage of lines that rhyme and the amount of 'end-stopping' (rather than enjambment). 

I would have liked to learn more about these but this information wasn't presented in a consistent way which made it hard for a general reader like myself to decide whether the case had been made for influence, or collaboration, or sole authorship. 

It was a fascinating introduction to a group of playwrights whose work deserves better recognition. I have seen and enjoyed both The Spanish Tragedy and Thomas Middleton's The Changeling but there are lots of other plays that need performing.

April 2025; 205 pages

Published by Manchester University Press in 2024

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Love's Labour's Lost" by William Shakespeare

 One of Shakespeare's comedies. 

The King of Navarre persuades three of his Lords to abjure women and study philosophy together for a period of three years; they all swear to do this although Berowne is reluctant. They then realise they must immediately break their oaths because the Princess of France and three ladies have arrived on a diplomatic mission. They meet the ladies and fall in love but, before they can  all go off happily into the sunset, or to bed, a messenger tells the Princess that her dad is dead so they must all endure a period of mourning for a year and a day. These courtly romances, enlivened by the usual mistaken identities and misdirecting of love letters, are repeatedly interrupted by the lower class.

Much of the humour relies on wordplay, making this play a challenge for the reader (I often needed to check the notes) and the audience. On the whole, it was heavy going and it is generally regarded as one of Shakespeare's lesser works. 

There's a lot of poetry in it (including a sonnet in Alexandrine hexameters). Well over one third of all the lines are rhymed , more than any other Shakespeare play (the next contenders are Richard II and The Midsummer Night's Dream). 

It also contains 189 proverbs, beaten only by Romeo & Juliet (223) and King Lear (197). 

Most of Shakespeare's plays are clearly sourced but LLL isn't and it shares the same number of scenes (9) as the other unsourced plays: The Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.

Some of the lower class characters seem to share characteristics with the Commedia dell'Arte. For example, Armado is a Braggart and Holofernes a Pedant.

Selected quotes:

• "O, I am stabbed with laughter." (5.2.80)
• "Light seeking light doth light of light beguile." (1.1.77) It was thought that eyes saw by shining a light out of themselves.
• "Small have continual plodders ever won,/ Save base authority from others' books." (1.1.86 - 87)
• "Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit; write, pen; for I am for whole volumes in folio." (1.2.175 - 177)
• "To jig off a tune at the tongue's end, canary it with your feet, humour it with turning up your eyelids, sigh a note and sing a note, sometime through the throat as if you swallowed love with singing love, sometime through the nose as if you snuffed up love by smelling love, with your hat penthouse-like o'er the shop of your eyes, with your arms crossed on your thin-belly doublet like a rabbit on a spit, or your hands in your pocket like a man after the old painting; and keep not too long in one tune, but a snip and away." (3.1.10 - 20)
• "A lover's eyes will gaze an eagle blind." (4.3.308)
• "Love's feeling is more soft and sensible/ Than are the tender horns of cockled snails." (4.3.311 - 312)
• "A time methinks too short/ To make a world-without-end bargain in." (5.2.782 - 783)

One of my mum's favourite poems comes from a song at the end of LLL:

When icicles hang by the wall

And Dick the shepherd blows his nail

And Tom bears logs into the hall

And milk comes frozen home in pail,

When blood is nipped and ways be foul, 

Then nightly sings the staring owl:

'Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!' A merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow

And coughing drowns the parson's saw

And birds sit brooding in the snow

And Marian's nose looks red and raw,

When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, 

Then nightly sings the staring owl:

'Tu-whit, Tu-whoo!' A merry note,

While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

I saw a production of LLL by the Eastbourne Operatic & Dramatic Society at the Eastbourne Royal Hippodrome on Friday 26th January 2024. My review is here.

I also saw a more or less straight-from-the-text LLL streamed on Digital Theatre from a 2015 Stratford Festival production. 

Other Shakespeare plays that I have reviewed can be found here.

January 2024

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Julius Caesar" by William Shakespeare

 

A sort of mixture between history and tragedy, whose real hero is not the eponymous Julius but Brutus, the moral man destroyed by his ideals. 

The play revolves around one of the best-recorded events in classical antiquity: the assassination of Julius Caesar which signalled the end of the Roman Republic and began the transition towards Empire. 

The background to the play, which would have been well-known to educated people of the time, is that the Roman Republic was founded after Lucius Junius Brutus overthrew King Tarquin the Proud; the fundamental ethos of the Republic is to distribute power so as to avoid a monarchy; any suggestion of king-making is anathema to the Roman citizens.

So when, in Act One, Caesar, who is the effective ruler of Rome following his defeat of Pompey the Great during civil war, is offered a crown, Marcus Junius Brutus, descendant of the earlier Brutus, is profoundly disturbed. Even though Caesar three times rejects the crown, Brutus believes that Caesar would like to be King. Cassius, a senator who had previously supported Pompey, uses this to persuade Brutus to join a group of conspirators who plan to assassinate Caesar. Cassius needs the support of Brutus so that the Roman citizens, recognising Brutus as a moral idealist, will believe that the motive of the assassins is to liberate Rome from tyranny, rather than just to facilitate regime change.

In Act Two there are repeated references to portents in the weather and unusual occurrences. Caesar's wife has an ominous dream. A soothsayer warns Caesar to beware the ides of March. Brutus has to make a decision: Caesar is one of his best friends but may prove a threat to the Republic. Caesar himself is indecisive, oscillating between the warnings, which frighten him, and his public persona which has to be one of fearlessness. But the conspirators manage to persuade him to go to the Capitol.

The assassination occurs in Act Three. Brutus then speaks to the Roman people and convinces them that killing Caesar was for the public good. But Brutus, idealistically impractical and against the advice of the politically astute Cassius, then allows Caesar's ally, Marc Antony, to speak at Caesar's funeral. This speech, a classic of oratory, making much use of irony in its repeated references to the "honourable" Brutus, turns the crowd against the assassins. It is the midpoint and the principal turning-point of the play. 

Act 4 sees Antony plotting with Octavius, Caesar's nephew, to assassinate their political rivals and to defraud the Roman citizens and to pin the blame on Lepidus, the third member of their triumvirate. The contrast between Antony's high-minded rhetoric at the funeral and this cynical opportunism is immediate. The next scene shows Cassius and Brutus falling out (Brutus, ever the idealist, accuses Cassius of self-interest while at the same time asking him to provide the money that Brutus needs to pay for troops because Brutus himself can't stoop to base means of raising cash). They need one another, however, too much and so they reconcile, deciding to do battle with Antony and Octavius at Philippi (another bad decision made by Brutus). 

Act 5 is the battle. Cassius and Brutus are defeated and commit suicide. Antony calls Brutus "the noblest Roman of them all".

There are four main characters. Brutus is the tragic hero, doing the wrong thing for the right reasons (this was a very renaissance view of Brutus; in the middle ages Brutus was seen as a man who betrayed his friend, a traitor nearly as bad as Judas, consigned to the lowest level of the Inferno by Dante). Cassius acts as the tempter, almost a devil, who works on Brutus much as Iago works on Othello. The antagonist is, in the first half of the play, Caesar, though scarcely glimpsed in the first act, who is ambiguously portrayed both as the ambitious wannabe monarch feared by Brutus and as a frail human. Upon Caesar's death, Marc Antony takes over as a much more cynical and dangerous opponent. 

Themes:

Brutus, the virtuous murderer

In many ways, this play is a tragedy and the tragic hero is Brutus, whose fundamental flaw is his idealism. Cassius and the conspirators recognise that they need Brutus on their side to give the assassination of Caesar the appearance of something that is honourable (the word repeatedly mocked by Mark Antony) so that they can gain the support of the Roman people. But recruiting Brutus means that they are saddled with his impractical idealism which leads him to make mistake after mistake. They recognise that Mark Antony might prove dangerous and propose murdering him as well, but Brutus won't let them. Instead, disastrously, he lets Mark Antony speak at Caesar's funeral. Later it is the hypocritical idealism of Brutus that fuels his fight with Cassius when he reproaches Cassius for failing to provide him with cash for his troops while telling Cassius that it won’t do for a Brutus to be sullied with extracting taxes from the peasantry.

Brutus is saddled with the reputation of his glorious ancestor who gave birth to the Republic of Rome after sending the last of their kings into exile. Brutus believes, or is manipulated into believing, that Caesar seeks to become king and that it is an act of virtue to prevent this. His naive idealism is displayed when he tries to divorce the act of murder from its reality. "Let's carve him as a dish fit for the gods,/ Not hew him as a carcase fit for hounds." he says in Act 2 Scene 1 (173 - 4), trying to pretend to himself that an act of butchery can be reinterpreted in religious terms. This is more hypocrisy. 

But perhaps his greatest moral failing is that he doesn't condemn his friend Caesar for what he is but for what he might become. Caesar has rejected a crown three times but Brutus believes that Caesar wants to be king. And that "might change his nature" (2.1.13). Brutus tells himself that must think of Caesar "as a serpent’s egg/ Which hatch’d, would, as his kind grow mischievous;/ And kill him in the shell." (2.1.32 - 34) It's a preemptive strike. 

There's more hypocrisy on display within this same speech. Brutus, seeking justifications for killing his friend, muses that"The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins/ Remorse from power" (2.1.18-19). He admits that he's never seen this in Caesar ... yet. But the irony is that Brutus himself is planning murder, which is an act of power thoroughly disjoined from remorse.

I suppose it was quite a testament to the renaissance rehabilitation of Brutus for him to appear as a hero at all. In Dante, Brutus is consigned to the lowest level of hell, as a traitor, on a par with Judas.

Selected quotes:

• "I was born as free as Caesar" (1.2.97)
• "this man/ Is now become a god; and Cassius is/ A wretched creature, and must bend his body,/ If Caesar carelessly but nod on him." (1.2.115 - 118)
  "Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world/ Like a Colossus, and we petty men/ Walk under his huge legs, and peep about/ To find ourselves dishonourable graves." (1.2.134 - 137)
• "Men at some time are masters of their fates:/ The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/ But in ourselves, that we are underlings." (1.2.138 - 140) What's particularly nice about this is the way that Brutus semi-quotes this back to Cassius in act 4 scene 3 when he talks about the "tide in the affairs of men".
• "Let me have men about me that are fat,/ Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep a-nights:/ Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;/ He thinks too much: such men are dangerous." (1.2.191-195) One of my father's favourite quotes; he was always a slender man!
• "He reads much." (1.2.200)Another reason for Caesar to be suspicious of Cassius!
• "Between the acting of a dreadful thing/ And the first motion, all the interim is/ Like a phantasma or a hideous dream." (2.1.64 - 66)
• "Cowards die many times before their deaths" (2.2.32)
• "When love begins to sicken and decay,/ It useth an enforced ceremony." (4.2.20 - 21)
• "There is a tide in the affairs of men,/ Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;/ Omitted, all the voyage of their life/ Is bound in shallows and in miseries." (4.3.216 - 219) More irony: Brutus is about to make yet another error.

Other Shakespeare plays reviewed in this blog may be found here.

I saw JC in a superb RSC production at Stratford in March 2017. I was in the front row of the stalls! At one point, Brutus, who was reading a letter, handed it to me; not knowing what to do I nodded wisely and returned it. My wife enjoyed it particularly because Cassius not only had "a lean and hungry look" but also an impressive six-pack and was topless for a large part of the time.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"William Shakespeare: his life and work" by Anthony Holden

 

A competent biography of the celebrated playwright. Much of the details I already knew. What this book adds is a (slightly speculative) suggestion that Shakespeare was a closet-Catholic in his youth, having lived in a Catholic household in Lancashire during the 'lost years' when he was young. I also hugely enjoyed the very start of chapter one in which Holden roundly trashes the "usually snobbish attempts" to deny that Shakespeare was the author of the plays via conspiracy theories that must assume that Ben Jonson and Robert Greene and Will Kemp and King James I all lied when naming Shakespeare as a playwright/actor/shareholder. 

While one can always quibble with anybody about the chronology of the plays (eg the BBC recently put Titus Andronicus first, as a collaboration with George Peele, while Holden gives primacy to Henry VI), this book is a useful reference for sources; it is both scholarly and well written.

A useful addition to the canon. Other works about Shakespeare reviewed in this blog can be found on this page.

November 2023; 328 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona" by William Shakespeare

This shows the moment when Valentine rescues Silvia from Proteus with 'Sebastian' (Julia) looking on. It was painted by Angelica Kauffman in 1789 and is in the public domain.

One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, this comedy explores the betrayal of friendship.

The Plot

Valentine and Proteus, the two gentlemen of Verona, are best mates, having grown up together. Valentine is about to travel to Milan and wants Proteus to come, but Proteus is in love with Julia (who, despite her protestations to the contrary, reciprocates his love) and he wants to stay in Verona. So they part.

In Milan, Valentine falls in love with the Duke's daughter, Silvia, and she with him, but her dad the Duke wants her to marry Thurio, who is richer. Meanwhile, back in Verona, Proteus is told to go to Milan by his father. Proteus and Julia say their fond farewells, exchanging kisses and rings and promising eternal fidelity.

When Proteus arrives in Milan he meets Silvia and falls in love with her. (His namesake, Proteus, was the 'Old Man of the Sea', a figure from Greek myth famed for his shape-shifting. It is from this that we get the word 'protean' meaning changeable.) So when Valentine tells Proteus of his plan to elope with Silvia, using a rope ladder to rescue her from the tower her father shuts her in at night, Proteus sees his opportunity to pinch his mate's girl. He betrays Valentine to the Duke, and Valentine is banished from Milan. In the countryside he is captured by a band of outlaws but they are impressed by his gentlemanly looks and his ability to speak more than one language and they make him their captain.

Meanwhile, back in Verona, Julia decides to travel to Milan in search of Proteus. To “prevent/ The loose encounters of lascivious men” she decides to disguise herself as a male page. 

Proteus pretends to assist Thurio who serenades Silvia. Julia arrives and realises that Proteus is in love with Silvia. Silvia, who knows that Proteus has betrayed Valentine, berates Proteus: “Thou subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man”. 

Sebastian employs pageboy 'Sebastian' (Julia in disguise) to take a present to Silvia: it is the ring Julia gave Proteus. Silvia refuses the ring.

Silvia flees Milan searching for Valentine. The Duke enrols Proteus and Thurio in a posse to capture the absconders. 

Silvia has been captured by the bandits but Proteus frees her. He thinks she should be grateful but she still refuses him so he decides to rape her. At this point Valentine, who has been lurking in the undergrowth, steps forward. He's a bit cross with Proteus who begs forgiveness. Val grants this and says “All that was mine in Silvia I give thee”. Sebastian (Julia), who witnesses all this, swoons. Recovering she tells Proteus that she failed to deliver his ring to Julia and then gives him the ring that he gave to her. She reveals her identity. Proteus, still protean, realises he really loves her.

The outlaws come in with captives: the Duke and Thurio. Thurio claims Silvia but when Valentine threatens to kill him, renounces Silvia. The Duke, unimpressed by Thurio’s cowardice, gives Silvia to Valentine and unexiles all the outlaws.

Added to this are two (three?) other key roles. The servants of Valentine and Proteus are Speed and Launce (who has a dog, Crab) respectively. Speaking usually in prose (often reserved by Shakespeare for lover-class characters) this pair comment on the action and have solo and paired comedy routines. But it's classed as a comedy because of the happy ending.

Shakespeare at his most misogynistic?

Modern sensibilities have difficulty with the scene in which Valentine, having prevented Proteus from raping Silvia, then appears to offer her to him as a gesture of friendship with the words: “All that was mine in Silvia I give thee”. This sounds utterly patriarchal. On the one hand there is love at first sight and on the other hand marriage as a dynastic partnership between two patriarchies. Silvia is a very strong women, refusing to marry the man her father has chosen for her, contracting a secret relationship with another man, running away to be with him when he is sent into exile; will she acquiesce to become a mere body gifted by Valentine to his inconstant mate? This is either Shakespeare at his most misogynistic or Shakespeare the tyro dramatist who hasn't yet realised that plot must follow character.

The sources Shakespeare may have used

Aspects of the Julia-Proteus courtship (the business with the letter and Julia’s annoyance with her maid in 1.2, Proteus being sent away by his father in 1.3, Julia, disguised as a boy, becoming the page of her lover and being used to carry messages to his new sweetheart in 4.4) are drawn from the story of 'Felix and Felismena' in Los Siete Libros de la Diana by Jorge de Montemayor originally published in Spanish in Valencia in 1542 but translated into English by Bartholomew Yong in 1598. 1598 is later than the normally accepted date for 2GoV but Yong claims in his preface to have finished his translation in 1582, so it is possible that Shakespeare saw a manuscript copy; alternatively he saw the French translation which was published in 1578. A third (and I think the likeliest) possibility is that he saw a play (by anon) called The History of Felix and Philomena which was performed at Greenwich Palace by the Queen's Men on 3 January 1585. This is likely to have starred Richard Tarlton, the best-known clown of the time, a leading player in the Queen’s Men (and possibly the original of Yorick), who was known for working with a dog; there are suggestions that Shakespeare wrote the part of Launce for Tarlton but that Tarlton never performed it because he died in 1588.

Another likely source was The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet, a narrative poem by Arthur Brooke, published in 1562, which contains a character called Friar Laurence and the device of a young man attempting to meet with his forbidden love using a rope ladder.

Another source is thought to be Arcadia by Philip Sidney published in 1590 which contains a woman dressed as a page who follows her betrothed and another character who becomes captain of an outlaw gang.

The friendship of Valentine and Proteus may have been inspired by the intimacy of Titus and Gisippus in The Boke Named the Governour by Thomas Elyot published in 1531 (which is based on a story in the Decameron but there are more verbal similarities between 2GoV and The Governour than the Decameron). In The Governour, Titus and Gisippus are inseparable until Gisippus falls in love with Sophronia. He introduces her to Titus, but Titus is overcome with jealousy and vows to seduce her. Upon hearing of Titus' plan, Gisippus arranges for them to change places on the wedding night, thus placing their friendship above his love.

Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, a novel by John Lyly, published in 1578 also mentions two friends, inseparable until divided by a woman. Lyly (whose younger brothers went to school with Christopher Marlowe) was private secretary to the Earl of Oxford - thought by some fools to be the author of Shakespeare’s work - and leaseholder of the Blackfriars Playhouse where his boy-company performed plays, some of which he wrote, including Midas, performed in 1589 - 1590, which contains a scene similar to that between Launce and Speed discussing the pros and cons of a woman.

Date when Shakespeare wrote 2GoV
2GoV was mentioned in Palladis Tamia by Francis Meres which was published in 1598, so it predates this.

If we accept the theory that one of the sources was The History of Felix and Philomena then 2GoV must date to 1585 or later. If Richard Tarlton was the original player for Launce, 2GoV was written before 1588 when Tarlton died. But If Shakespeare also used the material from Lyly’s Midas the earliest date for 2GoV is 1589. So it may be that Shakespeare wrote the part for Tarlton but hadn't completed the play before Tarlton's death and maybe went back to it at a later date.

Many experts argue that 2GoV is one of the earliest plays Shakespeare wrote, possibly the first. There are a variety of flaws:

• Whenever there are three participants in a dialogue, one tends to fall silent, making it a duologue. Shakespeare employs duologues, soliloquys and asides almost entirely. 
• The conversation between the outlaws is less a conversation and more an arrangement of speeches. 
• Proteus is not the only character to be inconstant: Valentine is the perfect romantic gentleman until he seems to hand Silvia to his rival; Silvia is a strong women until she fails to protest against being handed over; Sir Eglantine is reputed to be brave but is a coward at the first opportunities

Furthermore, much of the blank verse is end-stopped; in his later plays Shakespeare made much more use of enjambement and caesuras. He also is much stricter with his iambic pentameters in 2GoV than in his later verse. 

All these things argue for an early date of composition. Shakespeare is thought to have arrived in London in about 1590 so 2GoV probably dates to around 1591 or 1592.

Flaws and errors
Some snobs refuse to believe that a lower middle-class oik like the son of a glover from Stratford could possibly write the wonderful poetry contained in the plays; instead they postulate that they must have been penned by an aristocrat. They suggest that Shakespeare's knowledge of Europe could only have come from somebody who had been on the Grand Tour. 

In 2GoV (Act 1, Scene 1) Valentine says his father seeks to see him “shipped” (1.1.54) from Verona to Milan and Proteus, near the end of the scene, tells Speed, Valentine’s servant, to “be gone, to save your ship from wreck” (1.1.145). But to travel from Verona to Milan by ship would be crazy. You’d need to go to Venice first (that's heading in the opposite direction from Milan) and then sail all the way around Italy, land at Genoa, and then travel overland to Milan. The overland section of the journey alone would be longer than the direct land route from Verona to Milan. Perhaps Valentine knew about the bandits and was trying to avoid them, and when he went into exile (travelling overland) he didn't much care about being caught. On the other hand, Julia, when she goes off in search of Proteus, travels overland. Perhaps she didn't know about the bandits which might explain why she didn't get caught.

Other geographical errors include the Duke of Milan, in Milan, who says he fancies a “lady in Verona here” (3.1.81) and Speed who welcomes Launce to "Padua" (2.5.1) when they are in Milan.

I, personally, love it when Shakespeare makes mistakes and when his plays are flawed. I don't want to think of him as the "immortal" bard. He isn't born a genius. To me he is a lad from Stratford who has a talent for writing plays and poetry. He reads voraciously and watches lots of rival plays and is a reasonable actor who specialises in the second-string roles. He has to learn his craft and his plays get better and better. He's quick at taking the ideas of others and improving them; in particular he learns blank verse from Kit Marlowe. He writes for the actors he knows and for the playhouses in which they perform; he writes for the audience and he becomes expert in knowing what will work on stage which is why he is so good at adapting the work of others. This is a portrait of a real writer rather than the impossible 'icon on a pedestal' fantasy so beloved by so many.

Selected quotes

• “For he was more than over shoes in love” (1.1.25)
• “I think him so because I think him so.” (1.2.24)
• “They do not love that do not show their love." (1.2.31)
• “Thus have I shunn'd the fire for fear of burning,
  
• And drench'd me in the sea, where I am drown'd.” (1.3.78-79
• “O, how this spring of love resembleth
• The uncertain glory of an April day,
• Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
• And by and by a cloud takes all away! (1.3.84-87)
• “Ay, but hearken, sir; though the chameleon Love can feed on the air, I am one that am nourished by my victuals, and would fain have meat.” (2.1.164-7)
• “I'll be as patient as a gentle stream,
• And make a pastime of each weary step,
• Till the last step have brought me to my love,
• And there I'll rest, as after much turmoil,
• A blessed soul doth in Elysium." (2.7.34-38)
• “Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee?” (3.1.156)
• “For Orpheus' lute was strung with poets' sinews,
• Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
• Make tigers tame and huge leviathans
• Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands. (3.2.78-81)
• I wonder whether the ‘huge leviathans’ were inspired when Shakespeare read John Stow’s Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles ... Abridged which had multiple edition, including one in 1590 and which mentions on page 314 a “monstrous fish of the sea did shoot himself on shore, where for want of water beating himself on the sands he died” in 1574 at the Isle of Thanet.

August 2023

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Other Shakespeare plays reviewed in this blog can be found here.

"Tyrant: Shakespeare on Power" by Stephen Greenblatt

In this wonderful book, Greenblatt dissects some of Shakespeare's great tragic heroes (including Richard III, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus) and uses the depiction of the tyrants to draw lessons about the nature of tyranny, power politics and fraudulent populism. This book works both as literary criticism and a forensic examination of how people grab power and what this does to them and those around them.

Brilliant and acute.

Selected quotes:

• “Even those at the centre of the innermost circles of power very often have no idea what is about to happen.” (Ch 1)
• “Populism may look like an embrace of the have-nots, but in reality it is a form of cynical exploitation. The unscrupulous leader has no actual interest in bettering the lot of the poor. Surrounded from birth by great wealth, his tastes run to extravagant luxuries, and he finds nothing remotely appealing in the lives of the underclasses. In fact, he despises them, hates the smell of their breath, fears that they carry diseases, and regards them as fickle, stupid, worthless, and expendable.” (Ch 3)
• “He is not merely indifferent to the law; he hates it and takes pleasure in breaking it. He hates it because it gets in his way and because it stands for a notion of the public good that he holds in contempt.” (Ch 4)
• "Richard’s deformity - or, rather, his society's reaction to his deformity - is the root condition of his psychopathology ... a child unloved by his mother, ridiculed by his peers, and forced to regard himself as a monster will develop a certain compensatory psychological strategies, some of them both destructive and self-destructive.” (Ch 4)
• “The tyrant, Macbeth and other plays suggest, is driven by a range of sexual anxieties: a compulsive need to prove his manhood, dread of impotence, a nagging apprehension that he will not be found sufficiently attractive or powerful, a fear of failure. Hence the penchant for bullying, the vicious misogyny, and the explosive violence. Hence, too, the vulnerability to taunts, especially those bearing a latent or explicit sexual charge.” (Ch 7)
• “Societies, like individuals, generally protect themselves from sociopaths. We would not have been able to survive as a species had we not developed the skill to identify and deal with noxious threats from within as well as without. Communities are usually alert to the danger posed by certain people in their midst and contrive to isolate or expel them. That is why tyranny is not the norm of social organization.” (Ch 10)
• “The elite perceive the poor, and the urban poor in particular, as a mere drain upon the economy, a swarm of idle mouths demanding to be fed. After all, most of the land and what it produces, along with the houses, the factories, and almost everything else, belongs to the patricians. To them, looking down from the top of this mountain of possessions, the poor, who own virtually nothing, seem like parasites.” (Ch 10)
• “It is a perverse but familiar pattern: the party of privilege argues that it needs authoritarian power so that it can preserve order in the state. ... Then when the wealthy are proved wrong - when the state, rich and poor alike, turns out to thrive under a more democratic system - they long for the disorder they promised to quell.” (Ch 10)

October 2022; 189 pages

Other books about Shakespeare reviewed in this blog can be found by clicking here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Shakespeare: Richard II" by A R Humphreys

This slender monograph of literary criticism was published in 1967. It offers a commentary of Shakespeare's Richard II. Whilst there is interest in its enumeration of Shakespeare's sources, and in its description in the political atmosphere of the time (there was a contemporary debate between the concept of the Divine Right of Kings and that of Justice), its greatest failing is that there is no mention of the undoubted fact that Shakespeare wrote this play to be acted by actors upon a stage. It is as if the work is one of poetry (and Humphreys is excellent in describing how the style of the poetry varies both according to character and according to what is happening) and was never staged.

Selected quotes:

• “In structure and theme, as well as in certain phrases, there is considerable resemblance to Marlowe’s Edward II.” (p15)
• “It opposes the old ceremonies of courtly form (often a mask for misrule) to the strong and realistic exercise of power, as it opposes the histrionic fantasies of Richard to the practical cogency of Bolingbroke.” (p17)
• “The striking impact of Richard’s exchanges with Aumerle, Bagot, Greene, and Bushy in Act 1, scene iv, results from the sudden dropping of courtly pose in favour of a venomous realism.” (p18)

October 2022; 60 pages

Other books about Shakespeare reviewed in this blog can be found by clicking here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Troilus and Cressida" by William Shakespeare

Troilus and Cressida is a strange play. It is a love story in which at least one of the lovers is unfaithful. It ends on this sad note, compounded by the death of brave Hector. There are some brilliant scenes and some also-rans. But it contains some of the best Shakespearean insults, perhaps some of the best in all drama:

• “Thou bitchwolf’s son, thou mongrel beef-witted lord!” (A2 S1)
• “he has not so much brain as earwax” (A5 S1)

Introduction from the Folger edition

“By convention in epic, the characters associate with the gods and thereby share the glory of these divinities; by convention in drama, the gods do not appear, and the characters therefore cannot exceed the limits of their humanity.”

“In contrast to Chaucer’s Troilus, Shakespeare’s fails to mature in response to his love and remains in adolescent self-absorption,

Shakespeare’s Cressida shows nothing of the thoughtful reflection of her Chaucerian predecessor; it is replaced in her by calculation and manipulation of her suitors.”


I saw T&C in an amateur production by the Marlowe Youth Theatre on 5th March 2020 and the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury.

The Play: Spoiler alert!
Act 1
Scene 1
Troilus confesses his love for Cressida to Pandarus (who is the uncle of Cressida and has been acting as a go-between). This love unmans him, prevents him from going to fight the Trojans.

“I am weaker than a woman’s tear, 

Tamer than sleep” (8-9)

This theme of love unmanning someone is reflected elsewhere in the play in the theme of Achilles, who has withdrawn to his tent because he loves a Trojan princess and has sworn to her that he will not fight. It is contrasted with the fact that the Greek army is fighting to retrieve Helen for Menelause and that therefore Helen is the cause of much death:

“Helen must needs be fair 

When with your blood you daily paint her thus.”

Scene 2

Cressida prefers Hector to Troilus. Pandarus tries to persuade her that Troilus is the better man by saying Helen fancies Troilus.

There is a little procession of Trojan warriors (Aeneas Hector Paris Helenus) returning from battle and Pandarus names them to Cressida. A useful bit of stagecraft to introduce characters.

After the princes come the common warriors ... and Pandarus refers to them in the most disparaging terms:

“Asses, fools, dolts, chaff and bran, chaff and 

Bran, porridge after meat. ...

... the 

Eagles are gone. Crows and daws, crows and daws!”

This is another of the themes. Ulysses later speaks in favour of the established order in which each man knows his place. Opposing this is the major role played by Thersites, a servant of first Ajax and later Achilles, who insults his masters with a most inventive range of insults. It is possible that Shakespeare meant Thersites as a comic character, a clown, but traditionally Thersites has been seen as a critic of the established order; he criticises Agamemnon in the Iliad and is beaten for it. So it seems safe to treat Thersites as a threat to the establishment, a way that Shakespeare could use to argue against the pride and arrogance of the Greek and Trojan princes.

Scene 3
We move to the Greek camp. Here is the hymn in which Ulysses praises hierarchy in society:

“When degree is shaked, 

Which is the ladder of all high designs, 

The enterprise is sick. How could communities, 

Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities, 

Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 

The primogeneity and due of birth, 

Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, laurels, 

But by degree stand in authentic place? 

Take but degree away, untune that string, 

And hark what discord follows.”

But, on the other hand, Ulysses recognises that ambition is dangerous:

“appetite, an universal wolf, 

So doubly seconded with will and power, 

Must make perforce an universal prey 

And last eat up himself.”

The theme of pride (a key theme of the Iliad) is important elsewhere in this play.

Aeneas bears a challenge from Hector to fight the best man of the Greeks but Ulysses schemes with Diomed to keep Achilles from Hector, putting Ajax in to fight instead, on the principle that you reserve your best till later (but mainly because he thinks Achilles will grow too proud if he wins and perhaps because he is hoping that Ajax will be killed).

“Let us like merchants 

First show foul wares and think perchance they’ll sell; 

If not, the luster of the better shall exceed 

By showing the worse first.”

Act 2
Scene 1
This is our introduction to Thersites, perhaps the most ingeniously insolent of any of Shakespeare’s characters, with a wonderful repertoire of insults:

“I would thou didst itch from head to foot,

and I had the scratching of thee; I would make 

thee the loathsomest scab in Greece.”

“thou sodden-witted lord.”

"Ajax, who wears his wit in his 

belly, and his guts in his head”

Scene 2
Priam and the Trojan princes: the Greeks have offered peace if Helen is returned. The Trojans are debating the offer.

“What’s aught but as ’tis valued?”

“’Tis mad idolatry 

To make the service greater than the god;”

“We turn not back the silks upon the merchant 

When we have soiled them,”

There is, in passing, an obvious reference to Marlowe’s Faust:

“Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl 

Whose price hath launched above a thousand ships”

Scene 3

“He that is proud eats up himself.”

“I do hate a proud man as I hate the engendering 

of toads.”

Ulysses winds Ajax up to the point where Agamemnon has to restrain Ajaz from attacking Achilles

Act 3
Scene 2
This, in the middle of the play, is where Troilus kisses Cressida. There are hints of sexual love but also heavy foreshadowing that love cannot last:

“This ⟨is⟩ the monstruosity in love, lady, that

the will is infinite and the execution confined, that 

the desire is boundless and the act a slave to limit.”

“They say all lovers swear more performance

than they are able”

Scene 3
Back in the Greek camp, Ulysses is scheming to take Achilles down a peg or two.

“pride hath no other glass

To show itself but pride,”

He proposes that the Greek princes all pass by Achilles’ tent in a procession and ignore Achilles, sending him to Coventry.
Achilles is stung:

“they passed by me 

As misers do by beggars,”

Ulysses points out that Achilles can’t rely on his past prowess to stay popular. As they say nowadays: you’re only as good as your last gig.

“Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back 

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, 

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes. 

Those scraps are good deeds past, which are devoured 

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon 

As done.”

Act 4
Scene 1
The Greeks send an embassy to Troy proposing a prisoner swap: Antenor, a Trojan prince, for Cressida. Cressida is the daughter of Calchas, a Trojan soothsayer who has defected to the Greeks. Diomed wants Cressida as his bride.

Scene 2
Troilus and Cressida have spent the night making love and now Troilus is ready to be off. They get wind of the proposal for Cressida to be off.

Cressida, in an attempt to delay Troilus, delivers one of the great Shakespearean double-entendres:

“My lord, come you again into my chamber.”

Scene 3
The Greeks come to take Cressida away

Scene 4
A sad goodbye scene. T & C swap love tokens: his sleeve for her glove.
He proposes that, if she will keep faithful to him, he will sneak into the Greek camp at night “To give thee nightly visitation.”

She, talking to proposed husband Diomed, tries to persuade him not to demand her but he refuses to be bound by her.

Scene 5
The start of the single combat of Ajax and Hector

Act 5
Scene 2
Diomed woos Cressida while Troilus (who is part of a Trojan embassy to the Greek camp) and Ulysses, his host, watch them, unobserved. Cressida at first refuses Diomed and then accepts him, giving Diomed Troilus’s love-token sleeve. Troilus swears he will kill the man with the sleeve; Ulysses tries to restrain him. But fundamentally, Troilus realises that Cressida is unfaithful:

“any man may sing her, if he 

can take her clef.”

“The bonds of heaven are slipped, dissolved, and loosed, 

And with another knot, ⟨five-finger-tied,⟩ 

The fractions of her faith, orts of her love, 

The fragments, scraps, the bits and greasy relics 

Of her o’er-eaten faith are given to Diomed.”

The rest of the play is a series of battle scenes which culminate in the death of Hector at the hands of the Myrmidons of Achilles.

Other great lines

“When I do tell thee there my hopes lie drowned,
Reply not in how many fathoms deep
They lie indrenched” (A1 S1)

“Do you know what a man is? Is
Not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood,
Learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality and
Such-like the spice and salt that season a man?” (A1 S2)

“When the splitting wind
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks” (A1 S3)

“They tax our policy and call it cowardice,
Count wisdom as no member of the war,
Forestall prescience, and esteem no act
But that of hand.” (A1 S3)

“The worthiness of praise distains his worth
If that the praised himself bring the praise forth.” (A 1 S3)

“There is a law in each well-ordered nation
To curb those raging appetites that are
Most disobedient and refractory.” (A2 S2)

“some men creep in skittish Fortune’s hall,
Whiles others play the idiots in her eyes!” (A3 S3)

“A plague of
opinion! A man may wear it on both sides, like a
leather jerkin.” (A3 S3)

March 2020; 

Other Shakespeare plays reviewed in this blog may be found here.

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God