What we do know is that at nineteen he married an Anne Hathaway at great speed. No surprise then, that six months after the wedding they had a daughter, who they called Susanna. Young people behaving foolishly? Possibly, but Anne Hathaway was eight years older then Shakespeare. Yes, William Shakespeare was a sixteenth century toyboy! Another girl and a boy, twins, would follow several years later, although the boy, Hamnet, died when he was eleven.
Whatever happened, Shakespeare moved to London in 1584. We know nothing more about him until 1592, when he was already a successful actor and playwright. Some have thought he visited Italy in the intervening years, as a lot of his plays are set there, but there is no evidence at all to suggest that. The most likely thing he did in these years was work as an actor, laying the groundwork for his later success as a writer. It's not surprising that there are no records about his life during these years as who would pay any attention to an obscure young man from the provinces?
By 1599 Shakespeare was a "sharer" in his theatre company, The Lord Chamberlain's Men, (later to be renamed The King's Men). This meant he received a profit from the takings of the theatre.
The theatre from which the company operated was called The Globe.
It was circular in shape and had no roof over the stage area - people got wet quite often! It has very recently been rebuilt close to its original position - I fly over it most days - well worth a visit!
London Life
London in the 1590s was a vast, splendid city. At least, it was compared to the rest of the country: only a quarter of a million people lived here (compared to around nine million today).
It was an exciting time in which to live - the potential of the New World (part of it is now known as the United States of America) was beginning to be realised with the introduction of incredibly exotic items such as the potato and tobacco. An explosion in the Arts and Sciences (know as the Renaissance, literally translated - a rebirth) had increased the outlook of people considerably, much as the Information Communications Technology revolution is doing today.
Queen Elizabeth I was on the throne, much less a symbol that our own Betty Britain (aka Queen Elizabeth II), but a powerful, despotic monarch with enormous power over her people. The picture here is quite flattering - Elizabeth's teeth were so rotten they were black - and personal hygiene wasn't exactly up to our standards either, I can tell you!
Although it was an exciting time in which to live, with many possibilities for the individual, it was also an incredibly scary and violent time. War was always on the horizon (usually with Spain, who we now invade in our millions every year around August as payback!). Civil disorder was rife - the population would riot almost spontaneously over any issue they felt strongly about and there was no real police force as such.
Life for an actor or playwright wasn't often very comfortable either - they were considered the lowest of the low, and portrayed as people determined to lower the moral tone of the nation and to corrupt its population to decadence and sexual deviance. Mary Whitehouse is not a modern phenomenon, then, after all!
Plus, to cap it all, there was the Plague. Otherwise known as the Black Death, it reared its head every now and again and would quite regularly effectively close London down.
Imagine having the flu really badly, but with lesions on the skin and enormously swollen glands with very little hope of recovery, and you have a good idea what it was like. The nursery rhyme “Ring a roses” refers to the Plague. No wonder people considered the over forties long lived.
It was during this period of great advances and equally great upheavals that Shakespeare wrote his plays and poems. They can be roughly split into three groups:
Tragedies: Such as Macbeth and Hamlet, which usually involve a high ranking man with a fatal flaw which brings about his downfall.
Comedies and Romances: Such as As You Like It or Much Ado About Nothing, comedy with fairly complicated plots often centred around a love against the odds scenario.
Histories: Such as Richard II and Henry IV, stories of the Kings of England showing their triumphs and/or defeats (dependant on which royal dynasty they belonged to!)
It is important to remember here that Shakespeare worked on his plays with an eye to making a living. Anything too dry and dusty or difficult to understand would have been rejected by an audience.
Where there is no doubt about the beauty of his work, there should also be no doubt that he wrote his plays for the entertainment of the citizens of (primarily) London. Theatre audiences of the day did not stand on ceremony - they were more like the football crowds of our era - not hesitating to interrupt the players, invade parts of the stage and weep openly at the sad parts.
