Shakespeare's London: The Temple, the Tavern, and the Tower (ep 52)

We know London was very important to Shakespeare and his evolution from life in Stratford in the 1580s when he married and had children to the early 1600s when his company became the favored actors of the King and he dressed in the King’s livery. Shakespeare’s London was a place where fortunes were made and lost, where reputations were forged and destroyed, and where life could expand to include appearances and applause at court but could also be extinguished in a street fight or the executioners axe.

London was where Shakespeare lived for 20 years (at least). We know he was there by 1592 when disparaging comments were published by Robert Greene in his A Groat’s Worth of Wit. He wrote and acted in London; his plays were performed there. He lived in Shoreditch and Southwark. He successfully petitioned for the award of Shakespeare family coat of arms in his father’s name. He became a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and was involved in the building of the Globe Theatre. He purchased property in London. His reputation grew as his company was favored by James I. The company acquired Blackfriars Theatre, allowing them to put on indoor plays to a more affluent audience. Sometime around 1608 he returned to live in Stratford, although he kept ties with London and his company and continued writing plays. He retired around 1613, possibly related to the burning of the Globe Theatre—an event which was said to have devastated him. He died in 1616 in Stratford and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church.

The 20 years in London shaped his life and work. His history plays, some of his early successes, were based in London and told the story of the city and the country. The theater allowed Shakespeare to explore the questions of violence, religious chaos, population growth, an influx of foreigners, and new opportunities for economic and social success that were happening around him. Let’s take a look at three of the places that were especially important to Shakespeare and his plays: the Temple, the tavern, and the Tower.

London was more than a home for Shakespeare: it was a library, a laboratory, a playground. He lived and worked and watched and listened. And the world of London, as the examples of the Temple, the tavern, and the Tower demonstrate, shape the essence of his plays.

History shows us what's possible.

Transcript

            It’s April and as we approach the celebration of Shakespeare’s birthday, we’re continuing to explore his life and plays. 

            We know London was very important to Shakespeare and his evolution from life in Stratford in the 1580s when he married and had children to the early 1600s when his company became the favored actors of the King and he dressed in the King’s livery. Shakespeare’s London was a place where fortunes were made and lost, where reputations were forged and destroyed, and where life could expand to include appearances and applause at court but could also be extinguished in a street fight or the executioners axe.

            London was where Shakespeare lived for 20 years (at least). We know he was there by 1592 when disparaging comments were published by Robert Greene in his A Groat’s Worth of Wit. He wrote and acted in London; his plays were performed there. He lived in Shoreditch and Southwark. He successfully petitioned for the award of Shakespeare family coat of arms in his father’s name. He became a shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and was involved in the building of the Globe Theatre. He purchased property in London. His reputation grew as his company was favored by James I. The company acquired Blackfriars Theatre, allowing them to put on indoor plays to a more affluent audience. Sometime around 1608 he returned to live in Stratford, although he kept ties with London and his company and continued writing plays. He retired around 1613, possibly related to the burning of the Globe Theatre—an event which was said to have devastated him. He died in 1616 in Stratford and was buried in the Holy Trinity Church.

            The 20 years in London shaped his life and work. His history plays, some of his early successes, were based in London and told the story of the city and the country. The theater allowed Shakespeare to explore the questions of violence, religious chaos, population growth, an influx of foreigners, and new opportunities for economic and social success that were happening around him. Let’s take a look at three of the places that were especially important to Shakespeare and his plays: the Temple, the tavern, and the Tower.

The Temple

            Many of the most powerful men on the royal council had their start at the Inns of Court, four law schools in London: the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, Gray’s Inn, and Lincoln Inn. As they were initially unchartered, there are few records early on. Teaching could have begun as early as the 14th century; records exist from 1569 on. Although they were established for the training of London’s lawyers, by the 16th century students also participated in social and cultural events. In particular, students organized and acted in plays during the Christmas festival times. The students were proud of this opportunity to show off their rhetorical skills in the masques they created.

            All four sites had indoor halls that were used not only for student performances but also for visiting companies of players. 

            Shakespeare’s association with the Inns of Court—particularly the Middle Temple—is important in two areas. His plays were performed there, and he sets a key scene in one of his first plays in the Temple Garden.

            In 1594, Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors was performed at Gray’s Inn as part of the Christmas festivities. In fact, it might have even been written specifically for that performance. The celebrations of December 1594 were especially elaborate at the Inns of Court, as the previous two years had been canceled by the plague. (I’m sure we can all relate to that right now!) The theme of all the entertainments, which stretched into February of 1595, was friendship. Many VIPs attended these events. On the 28th of December, when Shakespeare’s play was scheduled, the guest list included the Earl of Southampton, playwright Thomas Hughes, John Lily, and Francis Bacon. 

            But the VIPs weren’t the only ones there. In fact, the Hall was overcrowded and fights broke out as people jockeyed for better seats. For some reason, the performance was delayed. Why? There might be a clue in the account of Sir Thomas Heneage, who was Treasurer of the Household. On 28th December, Holy Innocents’ Day, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men performed at court. Alan H. Nelson reasons that while there could be other explanation for an apparent double booking, it’s possible a last-minute royal command called the players to court even though they had committed to performing at Gray’s Inn. Of course, the Queen’s requests took precedence over everything else! So after playing at court, the company rushed to Gray’s Inn. By then the audience had been waiting for hours. The event lasted well into the morning and was referred to thereafter as “The Night of Errors.”

            Shakespeare did have other more successful experiences with performances at the Inns of Court. His play Twelfth Night was performed there in 1602 and Troilus and Cressida may have been written for a performance there. But the “Night of Errors” is surely the most memorable!

            In addition to performances staged at the Inns of Court, Shakespeare set one of his most famous scenes there. The Henry VI plays were among those Shakespeare first wrote (although he probably did not write them in the part 1, part 2, part 3 order we generally think of them). They cover the period of English history leading up to the Tudor regime, the so-called Wars of the Roses. That title was not used in Shakespeare’s time, but he reinforced the association of the civil war with roses—imagery started by Henry VII after he defeated Richard III and became King.

            Henry VII’s association of the ongoing battles for the throne with a simple battle between the Lancastrian red rose and the Yorkist white rose was a masterstroke. It enabled him to flatten the complexities and changing loyalties that had shaken the most powerful families in England and to present himself and Elizabeth of York as the inevitable and permanent end to the conflict. Shakespeare, writing in the time of Henry VII’s granddaughter, was probably keen to reinforce the idea. So he literally set his play in the Temple garden with opponents picking roses.

            An argument over the law and the right to be King started in the Temple Hall and moved out into the garden. There, the characters of Richard Plantagenet (AKA the Duke of York) and the Earl of Somerset (staunch supporter of Lancastrian King Henry VI) face off around a rose bush. Plantagenet challenges his friends to choose his side.

Plantagenet:

Since you are tongue-tied and so loath to speak,

In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts:

Let him that is a trueborn gentleman

And stands upon the honor of his birth,

If he suppose that I have pleaded truth,

From off this brier pluck a white rose with me.

            Challenge delivered, and dramatically demonstrated by plucking a white rose. Then Somerset, who is associated with the House of Lancaster, responds.

Somerset:

Let him that is no coward nor no flatterer,

But dare maintain the party of the truth,

Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me.

            Others are now eager to jump in. Neville, Earl of Warwick, rushes to support Plantagenet.

Warwick:

I love no colors; and without all color

Of base insinuating flattery,

I pluck this white rose with Plantagenet.

            And now Suffolk, a known Lancastrian supporter, gets in on the challenge as well.

Suffolk:

I pluck this red rose with young Somerset,

And say withal I think he held the right.

            This exchange reinforced so strongly the notion of the civil war being a war of roses that it is referenced in Lady Maria Callcott’s Little Arthur’s History of England as if it were a historic event. In the heading to chapter 32, “How the wars of the White and the Red Roses were brought about,” she explains:

I have read that some gentlemen were walking together in the Temple garden after dinner, and determined to defend King Henry and his family, and desired who agreed with him to do as he did, and pluck a red rose, and wear it in their caps, as a sign that they would defend the family of Lancaster.

The gentlemen who thought it would be best to have the Duke of York for their king turned to a white-rose bush, and each took a white rose, and put it in his cap, as a sign he loved the Duke of York; and for more than thirty years afterwards the civil wars in England were called the Wars of the Roses.

            So Shakespeare is able to literally rewrite history with his Temple scene.

Tavern

            Life within the City of London was carefully controlled, and frivolous activities like theatre were kept out. From 1574, the construction of playhouses within City boundaries was forbidden. The theatres, then, rose up in the neighborhoods more likely to welcome them. Their neighbors were bear baiting arenas, brothels, gaming houses, and taverns. And as he most frequently lived near his work, those were Shakespeare’s neighbors too.

            London was becoming a multi-cultural city toward the end of the 16th century, changing quickly to attract religious refugees, merchants, and immigrants from around the world. Early in his London life, Shakespeare likely lived in Shoreditch near The Theatre. Shoreditch was a place of contrast: young and old, rich and poor, successful merchant and apprentices. The variety of life surrounding Shakespeare in London must have taken his breath away, coming from a small village in Stratford. The voices and language around him helped him create one of his most famous respites, a place away from the troubles of war and politics—Boar’s Head Tavern.

            For Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the tavern represented a place of escape from a harsh reality—fear of war with Spain, disease and plague, violence in the street, a shifting political landscape, uncertainty about the future. Shakespeare captured this and created an escape for the man who would become his hero king: Prince Hal. Although the Henry IV plays were not among those closest to Shakespeare’s own time, it’s in the voices of Boar’s Head that we likely hear the voices of Shakespeare’s London—the voices he might have heard during his time in the tavern.

            The Boar’s Head is Falstaff’s domain, a place full of rowdy, drinking men and a place where the Prince can be a different version of himself. In fact, the world can literally turn upside down at the Boar’s Head, as it does when Falstaff plays the part of the aging King Henry IV, questioning Prince Hal about his dissolute life. Taking a seat (often in production, a stool is placed on a table to give it the appropriate height), Falstaff declares: “This chair shall be my state, this dagger my scepter, and this cushion my crown.” (Henry IV part 1, 2.4). 

            Only in a tavern could such a scene be staged without everyone running for cover as the guards advance. There is safety in the tavern for such a scene, where the monarch is mocked and the audience laughs. And Falstaff, who reigns supreme in this space, takes the notion further to advocate for his ongoing role in the life Prince Hal will play when he leaves the tavern and goes to the royal court:

No, my good lord, banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins, but for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s company. Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world. 

            In other words, Jack Falstaff comes to represent the world of the tavern, of respite and relaxation and a rollicking good time. And it turns out Prince Hal cannot inhabit that world when his time comes to serve his father and then to become the King. To Falstaff in the tavern, Prince Hal warns, “I do, I will.” And at the end of Henry IV part 2, when Prince Hal has evolved into King Henry V, he responds to Falstaff crying out for attention: “I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers.”

            The tavern is many things, but it is not the place of Kings. Shakespeare’s world, on the other hand, contains both Jack Falstaff of the Boar’s Head tavern and Henry V of Westminster.

The Tower

            Perhaps the most omnipresent structure in Shakespeare’s London is the Tower. It represents London’s border on the East, with Westminster as the border on the West. The Tower is a place of imprisonment and death, and while royalty sometimes resides there, it’s certainly more fearful than celebratory. 

            The Tower had become a place of terror in the Tudor dynasty. Henry VIII had sent thousands of people to their deaths. Queen Elizabeth’s own mother, Anne Boleyn, had been executed on the command of her husband within the Tower, as had Elizabeth’s step-mother Katherine Howard. Elizabeth herself had been a prisoner in the Tower during the reign of her half-sister Mary I. The presence of severed heads from traitors executed on Tower Green were frequent sites for anyone near the Tower or London Bridge. The Tower was a constant reminder that favor could be fleeting for anyone, and that falling out of favor with the Queen could have devastating consequences.

            Shakespeare doesn’t directly address the current terrors that reverberated through London and resulted in executions at the Tower. But he does capture the sense of fear that beats through London in his use of the Tower in his plays.

            The Tower literally shapes the life of King Henry VI. After the early death of Henry V, the country finds itself with an infant King. The late King’s brothers and uncle surround his coffin and worry about the future. 

            In an attempt to bring a sense a security to the council and the country, the Duke of Gloucester, the Protector of the young King, states his plans:

I’ll to the Tower, with all the haste I can,

To view the artillery and munition;

And then I will proclaim young Henry King.

            (Henry VI, part 1, 1.1)

            So the Tower is identified the place of strength, the site of the arms and weapons that will allow the men of the council to safely rule in behalf of the infant King. Members of the audience might sense a bit of irony in that view, not only because of the disastrous way Henry VI’s reign progressed but also in the very association of the Tower with royal security. Less than 40 years earlier, Lady Jane Grey had been set up in the Tower with access to all the munitions and the royal army. Her reign had lasted less than two weeks. The Tower was a position of strength, but it did not guarantee success or strength to its inhabitants. Lady Jane was Queen in the Tower, then prisoner, and finally a victim of the executioner. The Tower was dangerous.

            The Tower remained a potent symbol throughout all three parts of Henry VI, and the other history plays as well. Richard Plantagenet, who is the Duke of York, visits his uncle Edmund Mortimer, who is imprisoned in the Tower. It’s there that Richard pledges to fight Henry VI for the crown. Rebel Jack Cade recognizes the importance of the Tower in his desire to topple the government and cries: 

Come, then, let’s to fight with them; but first, go

And set London bridge on fire; and, if you can, burn

Down the Tower too.

            (Henry VI, part 2, 4.6)

            After his defeat at the hands of Edward IV, no-longer-King Henry VI is imprisoned in the Tower. But recognizing that keeping an alternative King around is a serious danger, Richard Duke of Gloucester visits him there. The two men argue, with Henry delivering the famous line, “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” Richard challenges, “Think’st thou I am an executioner?” Henry replies directly:

A persecutor, I am sure, thou art:

If murdering innocents be executing,

Why then thou art an executioner.

            Henry then goes out a long tirade about all the terrors that Richard has caused and will cause, describing the horror of Richard’s misshapen body at birth and prophesying the terrors he will cause.

            Richard responds, “I’ll hear no more—die, prophet, in thy speech” and stabs him. Exulting in the act, Richard stabs him again, saying “down, down to hell,; and say I sent thee thither.” (All these from Henry VI, part 3, 5.6.) So Henry VI’s life ends in the same building where that held the power of his reign at the beginning: the Tower of London.

            Of course, this is all Shakespeare’s telling, and we should remember he was a playwright, not a historian or a documentary maker. His goal was to tell stories that made it past the censors and filled the theatre—that was how he survived and built his career. So if you don’t believe Richard was a bad king and a murderer, you probably don’t like those scenes of Henry VI. And you probably really don’t like the next part of the story, told by Shakespeare in Richard III.

            Henry VI returns from the dead, as do many others, in the final scenes of Richard III to taunt the King before he faces Richmond at the Battle of Bosworth. It’s no surprise that someone writing during the reign of Richmond’s granddaughter would tilt the story in Richmond’s favor, so Richard’s past sins are paraded before him in a litany of rebuke. Henry VI’s rebuke mentions his death in the Tower: “Think on the Tower, and me: despair and die!” (Richard III, 5.3). Also confronting Richard are the two sons of Edward IV that, according to Shakespeare, died at his hand in the Tower. Their ghosts cry haunt him with these words:

Dream on thy cousins

Smother’d in the Tower:

Let us be lead within the bosom, Richard.

And weigh thee down to ruin, shame, and death.

Thy nephews’ souls bid thee despair, and die!

(Richard III, 5.3)

            So the Tower is a place of terror and death, throbbing with power through Shakespeare’s life, Shakespeare’s London, and Shakespeare’s plays.

            London was more than a home for Shakespeare: it was a library, a laboratory, a playground. He lived and worked and watched and listened. And the world of London, as the examples of the Temple, the tavern, and the Tower demonstrate, shape the essence of his plays.

            Thank you for joining me on this journey through Shakespeare’s London as we explored possible sources for his plays. And I can’t wait until next time, when I speak with Michael Blanding about his new book, North by Shakespeare. It offers an entirely new look at Shakespeare as playwright and of the Tudor period.