Numbers in bold brackets [] indicate original page numbers.
The Stratfordian View
VIII
So much for William Shakspere the business man and the reputed author: we come now to the question of William Shakspere the famous actor and theatre shareholder, whose wealth has been partly accounted for by reference to the revenues of prominent contemporary actors and actor-shareholders. In this connection we shall place together passages from his two leading biographers.
Sir Sidney Lee:
"It was as an actor that at an early date he acquired a genuinely substantial and secure income." Meanwhile he "was gaining great personal esteem outside the circles of actors and men of letters. His genius and 'civil demeanour' of which Chettle wrote arrested the notice not only of Southampton, but of other noble patrons of literature and the drama. His summons to act at Court with the most famous actors of the day at the Christmas of 1594 was possibly due in part to personal interest in himself. Elizabeth quickly showed him special favour, etc."
Here, then, was fame of a most exceptional character, hardly to be excelled by those who endure the "fierce light that beats upon a throne." The tax gatherers, who could not lay their hands readily upon this man were guilty, at best, of culpable incapacity; and should have been summarily dismissed for deliberate connivance. Nevertheless, we shall see what Halliwell-Phillipps says:
"There was not a single company of actors in Shakespeare's time which did not make professional visits through nearly all the English counties, and in the hope of discovering traces of his footsteps during his provincial tours I have personally examined the records of the following [55] cities and towns - Warwick, Bewdley, Dover, Shrewsbury, Oxford, Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, etc." And so he proceeds to enumerate no less than forty-six important towns and cities in all parts of the country, as far north as Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and including, in addition to both the great university cities, Stratford-upon-Avon itself, whose fame throughout the world it owes to the lustre which "Shakespeare's" name has, given it, and he concludes:
"In no single instance have I at present found in any municipal record a notice of the poet himself; but curious material of an unsuspected nature respecting his company and theatrical surroundings has been discovered."
Thus do the generous surmises of one biographer suffer at the hands of the unkindly facts presented by another. In the interval between the writing of the two biographies the number of "extant archives" examined is increased to "some seventy," and although Sir Sidney Lee passes over the salient fact that the later investigations were equally without result, so far as discovering traces of Shakespeare's footsteps are concerned, his faith in the Stratford man gives rise to the poetic supposition that "Shakespeare may be credited with faithfully fulfilling all his professional functions, and some of the references to travel in his sonnets were doubtless reminiscences of early acting tours." The workers who have continued the enquiries begun by Halliwell-Phillipps, in their anxiety to find such traces of Shakspere as must exist if he were in reality what is claimed for him, have pushed their investigations as far north as Edinburgh, where the names of Lawrence Fletcher and one Martin are found in the records for 1599. Fletcher's name appears first, evidently as manager, of a company of actors who were "welcomed with enthusiasm by the King," and this Fletcher also heads the list of the company of actors, licensed in London as the King's Players by James, on his accession to the English throne - the list in which the name [56] Shakespeare is inserted second. But there is no Shakspere in the Edinburgh records, nor in any of the other municipal archives that have been examined. The name Martin seems otherwise quite unknown.
The point that concerns us at present, however, is the fact that whilst the names of other actors of no great repute occur in these municipal records, the name of the man who is represented as enjoying almost unparalleled fame in his vocation - poet, dramatic author, actor and actor-shareholder - never appears once, although a most painstaking and laborious search has been made. The inevitable conclusion to which we are forced is that either he was not there or he was not a famous actor. In short, he was not a prominent active member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company, but rather a kind of "sleeping partner" whose functions were quite consistent with his settled residence at Stratford: a situation much more in accord with the idea of a man whose name was being used as a cloak, but whose personality was being carefully kept in the background, than of one enjoying in his own person the attentions and social intercourse which come to a distinguished man whom even royalty delighted to honour.