Jonathan Bate: Shakespeare’s Richard II and a game of “what if”

You’re probably aware of the role of Shakespeare’s Richard II in the downfall of the second Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux. The popular story is that in 1601, just before the uprising, supporters of Essex paid the company to perform the play—to set the mood. That is one of the charges against Sir Gelly Meyrick, Essex’s steward. However, Jonathan Bate points out in Soul of the Age that “The trigger for Essex's march into the streets only came after the show, with the evening summons from the Council.” (Ch.14) 

The uprising failed, Essex and other conspirators were found guilty of treason. Shakespeare’s acting company, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, were questioned but got off. 

Jonathan Bate then says: 

“Historians sometimes find it valuable to play the game of counterfactuals, of “what if?” What if, like Henry Bullingbrook in the play, the earl of Essex had garnered support in the city? If he had then marched on the court and provoked a bloodbath in which the queen's person had been threatened? Because the rebellion proved so farcically ineffective, Elizabeth and her counselors were able to show wide clemency. A handful of ringleaders were executed as an example, but most of Essex's followers got away with, at worst, brief imprisonment and a fine. Had the threat been more serious, the response would have been more draconian. The performance of the play would then have been pursued further. […] At this point, the author of the play would surely have been interrogated. It would have been discovered that though he was now the servant of the unimpeachably loyal lord chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, his printed poems had been dedicated to none other than Essex's right-hand man, the earl of Southampton. […] 

A few years before Essex's act of rash rebellion, the theaters had been closed down and the playwright Ben Jonson imprisoned on the far lesser provocation of some few seditious lines in a play called The Isle of Dogs. Surely in this case, Cecil would have argued, the Globe must be closed, the acting company disbanded, and Master Shakespeare, tarred with the Southampton brush, thrown in the Tower.

Imagine this: Shakespeare's career coming to an ignominious end in February 1601. Not only would Measure for Measure, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, and the other later plays never have been written, but John Hemings and Henry Condell would not have hung around to create a collected Folio of the plays that had been. The only survivals would have been a few quarto editions: the narrative poems, half a dozen history plays (some in garbled texts), four comedies, and two tragedies. No Hamlet or Twelfth Night, no Julius Caesar or As You Like It. The whole course of English literature, indeed of Western culture, would have been different.” (ibid.) 

Imagine that. My 5 favourite Shakespeare plays were all written after this: Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, Measure for Measure, and The Winter’s Tale. But more importantly, we might not even have had First Folio*. The whole course of English literature and Western culture, as Bate says, would have been very different. 

The entire chapter is fascinating: What happened that weekend in February 1601? What were the accusations against Sir Gelly Meyrick? Who commissioned the performance of Richard II, and why? Why was it pinned on Meyrick? Why could Shakespeare’s play be perceived as an Essex play? What’s the connection between Shakespeare’s play and John Hayward’s prose history The First Part of the Life and Reign of King Henry IV? Why were there strong reactions to Hayward’s book, apart from the dedication to Essex? 

Bate also argues: 

“The notion, parroted by Shakespearean biographers and critics (including, it has to be confessed, me), that there was a conscious attempt to prepare the London public for a deposition is wildly implausible.” (ibid.) 

I won’t go into details, as you should get the book yourself. But later on in the chapter, Bate points out that Attorney General Sir Edward Coke, in the treason trial, fuses the play with the prose history and: 

“[T]here was a more fortunate consequence to the elision. Had Coke summoned the author of the play, Shakespeare could have said that he had nothing to do with Hayward's seditious book—how could he have when his play was written years before Hayward set pen to paper? The implicit linkage of the February 7 performance to the furor over the book and its dedication to Essex would have collapsed. It suited the prosecutors not to create a distinction between the book and the play. In short, Sir Charles Percy's commission for the Lord Chamberlain's Men in all probability lengthened Hayward's term in the Tower. He effectively took the rap on Shakespeare's behalf, leaving the dramatist free to write more plays. For that, much thanks.

Was Shakespeare an Essex man? Richard II was probably not written as an Essex play, but it was certainly read as one. Then, however, the elision with Hayward's history put the heat on Hayward, and Shakespeare was able to slip away into the background, his hands clean. On the very eve of Essex's execution, the Lord Chamberlain's Men were back performing a play before the queen and the court at Whitehall.” (ibid.)

I’m going to have to read more about the conspiracy and the trial, but that is interesting. 

In the last section of the chapter, named “Epilogue”, Jonathan Bate also raises some questions about, and casts doubt on, the famous conversation between Queen Elizabeth and William Lambarde about her being Richard II. Bill Bryson’s book has taught me to be careful when it comes to Shakespeare—many things commonly reported as facts may just be conjectures, or complete fabrications.  

To get back to Soul of the Age, earlier in the book, Bate says: 

“[Shakespeare] was the one dramatist of his generation never to be imprisoned or censured in connection with his work. He was the one dramatist who eventually ended his career out of choice, not by force of circumstance.”(Ch.4) 

As we see above, Shakespeare’s company didn’t get into trouble for performing Richard II the day before the uprising, and soon after, again performed before the Queen. 

“He became a wealthy man and bought a large house called New Place.” (ibid.) 

Not only was Shakespeare a genius, he was also a shrewd businessman. I’d known about it, but it only became truly obvious how shrewd and successful and unique Shakespeare was when Bate compared Shakespeare’s life to the lives of the twelve most highly regarded playwrights among his contemporaries: 

“Shakespeare broke the mold in several different ways. His predecessors can be divided into those who married for money and those who were bachelors, either because they preferred to keep the company of men or because they could not afford to marry. No other major writer of the age married before reaching his legal majority, as he did. He was emphatically unlike the university-educated men, who lived from hand to mouth, got into trouble with the authorities, and died young. Kyd, the first successful nonuniversity playwright, suffered a fate similar to theirs.” (Ch.10) 

What did he do differently? He became a shareholder in his company. He didn’t have to write all sorts of pamphlets and other things to make a living, and didn’t have to rely on patronage for his whole career like some other writers did. 

Soul of the Age, like The Genius of Shakespeare, is very good. Jonathan Bate makes me see certain things in a different light.  

*: Last week I was in London, and saw First Folio!