James Shapiro, 1599: A Year in
the Life of William Shakespeare (2005) Chapter 9 The Invisible Armada By late July, political events began to overtake Julius Caesar.
Brutus's castigation of Cassius for denying him "gold to pay my
legions" (4.3.77), may have induced a grimace among playgoers after word got out of "a mutiny threatened among the soldiers in
Ireland, for want of pay and scarcity of
victuals." Hopes for a speedy and decisive victory in Ireland had been dashed: "The Irish wars go
slowly," Sir Anthony Paulett wrote as spring gave way to summer,
"and will not so soon be ended as was thought." Never before
under Elizabeth had the authorities cracked down so hard on what could be said or written, or had they been so willing to silence those who
overstepped. George Fenner 173 explained to news-hungry friends abroad that "it is forbidden,
on pain of death, to write or speak of Irish
affairs." Francis Cordale similarly apologized that he could "send no news of the Irish wars, all
advertisements thence being prohibited and such news as comes to Council carefully concealed." Nonetheless, he confided
that "our part has had little success, lost many captains and whole companies, and
has little hopes of prevailing." Fresh recruits were conscripted to replace those killed or wounded: "3,000 men are to go ... from Westchester this week, and 2,000
more are levying." "It is muttered at
court," Fenner added, that Essex "and the Queen have each threatened the other's
head." With their best troops in the Low Countries and Ireland, the English knew how vulnerable they were to invasion. So did their Spanish foes.
Current events began to take on the contours of Shakespearean history: "The furious humour of
the ... Hotspurs of Spain," Thomas Phillips writes, "may lead the
Spanish king into action, whereunto the absence of the most and best of our
soldiers, as they conceive, and the scarceness of sea provisions this year may give encouragement." These were more than paranoid musings. Reports were arriving with disturbing frequency from spies, escaped prisoners, and
merchants that the Spanish were outfitting another
armada to sail against England. By mid-July English spies reported home that the Spanish were ready
to attack: the "whole force will be about 22 galleys and 35
galleons and ships out of Andalusia .... They report greater sea
forces and 25,000 landing soldiers, and that he goes for England, hoping with this sudden
exploit to take the shipping. They go forward in their
old vanity of 1588." The Spanish were coming, eager to avenge the humiliating defeat of the Great Armada eleven years earlier. A two-pronged assault was feared, with the Spanish attacking at some point along the southern coast
while simultaneously sailing up the Thames, their land forces sacking and
pillaging London as they had notoriously done to Antwerp. Even as plasterers, thatchers, and painters were attending to
the final touches on the Globe, Shakespeare had to contemplate the prospect that the gleaming playhouse might soon be reduced to ashes-along with the artistic and
financial capital he had poured into it. The Privy Council began requisitioning some of England' s best ships 174 to protect the coast, and the queen postponed her summer progress (no doubt a relief, since she had extended the one she had planned after
hearing that her "giving over of long voyages
was noted to be a sign of age"). Hoping to raise morale, and seeing the obvious similarities to the
threat of the Great Armada, the Archbishop of Canterbury suggested to Cecil that the special prayers that "were used in the year 1588 are
also fit for this present occasion and cannot be
bettered." By late July (the time when the Spanish had planned to land on the English coast in 1588),
anxiety was running high. On the night of July 25,
Lieutenant Edward Dodington, one of the defenders at Plymouth, dispatched a messenger to London with the news that "a fleet at this instant coming in upon us,
the wind at north-west, and in all likelihood it is the
enemy." The letter's endorsement conveys his great sense of urgency, spurring on the messenger's race from one post-horse to the next to let the Privy Council know
the invasion had begun: "For Her Majesty's special use; haste, post haste for life; haste, haste, post haste for
life." It was a false alarm, the first of many. John Chamberlain, who had excellent sources at court, wasn't sure of
the true nature of the threat: he writes from London to Dudley Carleton
on August I that "upon what ground or good intelligence I know not
but we are all here in a hurle as though the enemy were at our doors." There was considerable skepticism both at home and abroad that the defensive preparations were intended solely
to fend off a Spanish attack. The word on the Continent was that "the Queen is dead." The
same was suspected in England. Henry Wake informed
Cecil that it is "secretly spread and whispered that her Majesty should be either dead or very dangerously sick." Rumors were piled on
rumors. One correspondent reported that "the King of Scotland has taken arms against the
Queen," that "the Earl of Essex, viceroy, is wounded, and his soldiers
leave him," and that "in England there is tumult and fear, and many fly into
the southern parts. Some say the Queen is dead;
it is certain that there is great mourning at Court." John Billot, an English prisoner in Spain,
escaped and returned home with a smuggled Spanish proclamation, written in English, hidden in
his boot. It revealed that King Philip III had
commanded his forces to reduce England to "the obedience of the Catholic Church." And it
instructed all 175 Catholics in England to join forces with the Spanish invaders and
take up arms against the English
"heretics." Those who because of the "tyranny" of English Protestants were too scared to change sides openly were urged to defect during "some skirmish or
battle" or "fly before ... the last encounter." The Spanish threat was now coupled with a fear of disloyal English Catholics rising and joining forces with the invaders. To ensure that the dying embers of religious strife did not get blown into a
civil war that would engulf the nation, the English
government acted forcefully. On July 20 the Privy Council directed the Archbishop of Canterbury to round up leading recusants-those who remained committed enough to Catholicism to pay fines for refusing to participate in mandatory
Protestant worship-and imprison them. In addition,
orders were given "to sequester all the able horses of the recusants."
If Catholic gentry were to join forces with the Spanish, they would
have to walk. Some felt that these moves didn't go far enough. Sir Arthur
Throckmorton warned that Protestant men with Catholic wives were even more dangerous than professed recusants and should be restrained and disarmed. William Resould reported to Cecil that the
Spanish planned to replace Elizabeth with an English Catholic, and though he wasn't prepared to name names, "there is some great personage" in England
prepared to claim the throne. Catholic treachery was feared
in the city as well. The lord mayor of London warned the Privy Council on August 9 that
"there are lately crept into this city diverse recusants, who in their
opinions and secret affections being averse from the present state, may prove very dangerous to the state and city, if any
opportunity should offer itself." Everywhere one turned, it seemed, there were signs of Catholic
plotting. A pair of illiterate London bricklayers stumbled upon what they
thought was a handkerchief but turned out to be a
letter. They dutifully took it to a scrivener, who directed them to a constable, who in turn alerted a
local justice, who wrote to Cecil. The intercepted
letter was from the Catholic Irishman, the Earl of Desmond, and was intended for the King of
Spain. It urged "the recovery of Christ's Catholic religion" in
England, and justified such action on the grounds that Elizabeth was a tyrant ("Nero
was far inferior to the Queen's cruelty").
Who dropped or planted this letter on the streets of London is anyone's guess. 176 The imagined threat didn't stop with the Spanish troops and their
recusant supporters. A letter to Cecil about what the
English now feared is worth quoting at length: I thought it my
duty to advertise you of the strange rumors and abundance
of news spread abroad in the city, and so flying into the
country, as there cannot be laid a more dangerous plot to amaze
and discourage our people, and to advance the strength and
mighty power of the Spaniard, working doubts in the better
sort, fear in the poorer sort, and a great distraction in all, in
performance of their service, to no small encouragement of our enemies
abroad, and of bad subjects at home; as that the
Spaniard's fleet is I50 sail of ships and 70 galleys; that they bring
30,000 soldiers with them, and shall have 20,000 from the
Cardinal; that the King of Denmark sends to aid them 100
sail of ships; that the King of Scots is in arms with 40,000 men
to invade England, and the Spaniard comes to settle the King of Scots in this realm. London preachers fanned the flames, including one who "in his
prayer before his sermon, prayed to be delivered from the mighty forces of
the Spaniard, the Scots and the Danes." Nobody was sure what to
believe: "Tuesday at night last, it went for certain the Spaniards were
landed at Southampton and that the Queen came at ten of the clock at night to
St. James's all in post; and upon Wednesday, it was said the Spanish army was broken, and no purpose of their coming hither: with a hundred other strange and fearful rumors, as much amazing the people as [if]
the invasion were made." Such anxious and
conflicting accounts of the destination and size of the enemy fleet would be echoed a few years later in the opening act of Shakespeare's Othello,
where Venice's leaders argue over intelligence reports: "My letters say a hundred and seven
galleys," says one; "Mine, a hundred forty," says another; "And
mine," adds a third, "two hundred ... yet do they all confirm / A Turkish
fleet, and bearing up to Cyprus," a consensus immediately contradicted when news arrives that the "Turkish
preparation makes for Rhodes." This 177 lat est
intelligence is quickly dismissed: "'Tis a
pageant / To keep us in false gaze" (1.3.4-21). As Shakespeare
recognized, such crises were rich in drama. By the first week of August, defensive preparations around London, at sea, and along the coast, had
intensified. Rowland Whyte reported to Sir Robert Sidney, who was with English forces in the Low Countries, that in London "there is nothing but
alarms and arming for defense." From every ward in London, he added, ten or a dozen men were
conscripted to man her Majesty's fleet. John Chamberlain
provides additional details: London "is commanded to furnish out sixteen of their
best ships to defend the river and 10,000 men, whereof 6,000" are
"to be trained presently and every man else to have
his arms ready." Letters were sent to the bishops and noblemen ordering them to "prepare
horses and all other furniture as if the enemy were expected within fifteen days." The national mobilization was
extraordinary. The objective was to mass upward of twenty-five thousand men in and around London to repel the invaders. The historian John Stow,
who lived through it, believed that "the like had not been seen in England since Queen
Elizabeth came to the crown." Sir Francis Vere was ordered to send home two thousand of his
best troops from the Low Countries. Messengers were sent to fifteen counties with instructions to send cavalry and
rendezvous at prearranged sites around London. Orders
also went out to twelve counties to provide thousands of foot
soldiers. Earls and barons were told to gather forces, repair to the court, and
protect the queen herself. The Earl of Cumberland was put in charge of the defense of the Thames, Lord Thomas the high seas, and the lord admiral the southern front. As forces began to crowd London and its suburbs, great precautions were taken in the jittery capital. On
Sunday, August 8, by royal command, Stow writes, "Chains were drawn athwart the streets and lanes of the city, and lanterns with lights, of candles (eight in the pound)
hanged out at every man's door, there to burn all the night, and so from
night to night, upon pain of death, and great watches
kept in the streets." The danger of a sneak attack under cover of darkness outweighed even that
of fire in a city containing so much
combustible timber and thatch. The next day, Chamberlain writes, panic struck upon "news (yet
false) that 178 the Spaniards were landed in the Isle of Wight, which bred such a
fear and consternation in this town as I would little have looked for,
with such a cry of women, chaining of streets and shutting of the gates as
though the enemy had been at Blackwell. Our
weakness and nakedness disgrace us, both with friends and foes."
Military leaders like Sir Ferdinand Gorges worried that civilian defenders weren't up to the task,
"for when things are done upon a sudden, and especially amongst people unenured to the business, they are amazed and discouraged." The Thames remained a weak link and a major concern. Initially, the Earl of Cumberland intended "to make a bridge somewhat on this
side Gravesend, after an apish imitation to that of Antwerp." Given
the failure of such a defense in Antwerp-it hadn't stopped the Spanish troops who laid waste to that city in IS88 -it was
probably not the best plan. Still, Cumberland swore that "with I,5OO musketeers he would defend
that bridge or lose his life upon it." This
plan was soon succeeded by another: a shipwright named Ayde suggested blockading
the river by sinking ships at a narrow point in the Thames, near
Barking Shelf. The privy councillors were so taken with his idea that they instructed the lord mayor to put it into effect. It was an indication of
just how desperate things were, for if the Spanish didn't destroy London's commerce, Ayde's plan surely would. The mayor and alderman begged the councillors to forgo this desperate measure and rely instead on a score of highly maneuverable boats to "annoy the enemy and impeach his
passage." They had done the math and it had frightened them: Ayde proposed
sinking eighty-three ships, their value roughly twenty-five thousand
pounds. Once sunk, these ships would flood the adjoining marshland, causing forty thousand pounds worth of damage. Recovering the sunken
hulks-and it wasn't at all clear that it would prove possible to do so-would cost twenty thousand
pounds more. If they failed to, the "Thames
will be choked and spoiled, and the trade of the city wholly overthrown."
To the great relief of London's merchants, the Privy Council was prevailed
upon and Ayde' s plan abandoned. The call to arms was heeded in the city by both rich and poor. This wasn't Ireland; they were defending their families, their homes,
their queen, and country. John Chamberlain
declared that "though I were 179 never professed soldier, to offer myself in defense of my country ...
is the best service I can do it." After
casting a horoscope to learn whether the Spanish would attack, the enthusiastic astrologer Simon Forman went overboard, purchasing "much harness and weapons for war, swords,
daggers, muskets, corslet, and furniture, staves,
halberds, gauntlets, mails, &c." A contemporary survey of the mustering of the
"armed and trained companies in London" in 1599 gives a
vivid impression of its citizen army. Many of the captains leading their neighbors had served in a similar
capacity in 1588.John Megges, draper merchant, led
125 men from Queenhyth Ward while 250 men of Cripple gate Ward followed merchant tailor John Swynerton, and so on, throughout the
various wards. All told, this London muster lists fifteen captains leading 3,375 men from
twenty-five wards. And what about Shakespeare? As a servant of the lord chamberlain, did he join up with those who wore the privy counsellor's
livery and attend upon the queen herself at Nonsuch? And, if so, did his new status as a gentleman lead him to acquire a horse? Or
did he decide instead to ride out of town against the sea of defenders heading south, heading back home to Stratford-upon-Avon, convincing himself that at this time of crisis it was best to be by his family's side and out of immediate
harm's way? The answer to this would tell us a
great deal about what kind of person Shakespeare was. But we don't have a
clue what he did. The best guess is that, like others in the theater, he stayed in London,
followed events closely, and kept performing and
writing. There's no indication that the authorities banned playgoing at
this time, and there's a likelihood that, with thousands of volunteers in town milling about with nothing
to do but drill and wait for the invaders to land, the theaters may have
done a brisk business-and from the government's perspective proved a helpful distraction, keeping the armed and idle
forces preoccupied. Henslowe's Diary certainly
shows no sign of interruption in the regular routine of commissioning and writing plays
through this crisis. Chapman, Dekker, and Jonson were particularly busy.
At the end of July, Chapman was at work on a "pastoral ending in a tragedy,"
for which he received forty shillings on July 27. Dekker
was caught up in a frenzy of playwriting, taking payment on August I for Bear a Brain and nine days 180 later sharing an advance with Ben Jonson for Page of Plymouth, a tragedy that they finished in three weeks. The two
teamed up again at the beginning of September along with Henry Chettle
"and other gentlemen" on another lost tragedy, Robert
the Second, King of Scots (capitalizing on the current of anti-Scottish sentiment, for Robert II, James's lineal
ancestor, was one of the weakest monarchs ever to rule
in that kingdom). If any of London's playwrights could be expected to bear arms, it would have
been Jonson, a native of the city who had seen military service in the Low Countries (and bragged about killing an enemy soldier there in solo
combat). Yet even he was devoting this time to writing-not just collaborative work for the Admiral's Men but also a solo-authored sequel to Every Man in His Humour that he hoped to sell to
the Chamberlain's Men. Henry Chettle and Thomas Haughton were also paid
for plays at the height of the armada scare, the former for The
Stepmother's Tragedy, and the latter for The
Poor Man's Paradise. And if Michael Drayton, Wilson, Hathaway, and Anthony Munday were to complete the First Part of Sir John Oldcastle and begin its sequel by mid-October, it's likely that they were
already collaborating in August on the first part.
Finally, John Chamberlain's allusion to the collapse of a house on St. John's Street where a puppet show was being staged in mid-August offers further evidence that, armada
or not, London's entertainment industry did not come to a halt. Two plays in the Chamberlain's Men's repertory were particularly well suited to the moment. One was Henry the Fifth, celebrating as it did English military greatness (though, in light of doubts raised about
Essex's Irish campaign and rumors that this mobilization had something to do with him, the play's allusion to our "General" returning
from Ireland "with rebellion broached on his sword" would surely have
been dropped). Shakespeare's company would
probably have dusted off another timely play in their repertory, Alarum
for London: Or, the Siege of Antwerp, published not long after. The opening
of the play graphically recounts how Antwerp was overrun when its citizens ignored the
Spanish threat and put self-interest ahead of the common good: The citizens (were they but politic, Careful and studious to preserve their peace) Might at an hour's warning, fill their streets, With forty thousand well appointed
soldiers. 181 It wasn't a particularly good play-and it gives a sense of how uneven
the offerings of Shakespeare's company could
be-but it got its point across. Spectators would have looked on in horror as a family of four,
including a blind father, is butchered. An Englishman in
the wrong place at the wrong time is tortured, literally strappadoed
onstage-yanked up and down by a rope by his arms, which are
pinioned behind him. Virgins and matrons are attacked and threatened with rape, and the libidinous Spaniards even begin to strip one of their victims onstage. It was
the Elizabethans' worst nightmare, all the more powerful if revived at this time, for playgoers knew that the same treacherous enemy was heading their way. Unlike their negligent fellow
Protestants in Antwerp, though, Londoners were armed and ready. As August dragged on there was still no sign of the Spanish. The more time passed, the wilder the speculation
about what was really happening. Chamberlain writes: The vulgar sort
cannot be persuaded but that there was some great mystery
in the assembling of these forces, and because they cannot
find the reason ofit, make many wild conjectures, and cast beyond
the moon, as sometimes that the Queen was dangerously
sick, otherwhile that it was to show to some that are absent,
that others can be followed as well as they, and that if occasion be,
military services can be as well and readily ordered and directed as
if they were present with many other as vain and frivolous imaginations as these. The forces in
the west country
are not yet dismissed, for there, if anywhere, may be some doubt of danger. His cryptic allusions to those that "are absent" and to the
"danger" expected by the defensive forces in the "west country" both point to
Essex, suggesting that there were fears that he might abandon Ireland, land
with a military force in Wales, and march against
his adversaries at court. 182 By the third week of August, the strain, both psychological and
financial, was enormous. The Privy Council continued to
receive conflicting reports about Spanish plans and didn't know what to believe. Unscrupulous tradesmen were overcharging the gathered troops and the lord admiral had to publish a decree
outlawing profiteering. The treasury, already drained by the Irish campaign, was nearly dry, yet somehow had to cover the enormous expense of supporting all these soldiers and sailors. By mid-August Elizabeth made a point
of asking Thomas Windebank to remind Cecil to keep a closer
eye on the skyrocketing costs of the mobilization: "Yester evening," he wrote the
secretary of state, "at her Majesty's going to horse, she called me to her," and
"willed me write unto you these few words: 'that there should not be too much taken
out of an emptied purse, for therein was no charity.'" In addition, the
vast numbers of laborers drawn from their fields during harvest could lead to large-scale rioting or rebellion. After a
string of crop failures from 1594 to 1597 due to terrible weather, the government couldn't afford to
induce yet another bad harvest because of misguided
policy. On August 17, the defenders in the south-the Earl of Bath, Sir Ferdinand Gorges, and
others- dismissed those gathered to defend the coast, justifying their
decision on the ground that they "received this day credible intelligence
that no part of the enemy's fleet is at Brest or Conquet." For the troops, it was not a moment too soon: "Their estate had been most pitiful if
they had not been sent home to help in their harvest, for by reason of the
foul weather and want of help, their corn was almost utterly lost." By August 20, Elizabeth had had enough and told the lord admiral to "dismiss our loving subjects assembled together by virtue of our
former commandment." He thought it a mistake
but not an order he could refuse. So the city began to empty again,
the danger thought to be past. On August 23, a much relieved John Chamberlain wrote cheerfully that "the storm that seemed to look so black
[is] almost quite blown over. ... Our land forces are daily discharged little and little, and this day
I think will be quite dissolved." Yet even as Chamberlain sent off his letter, new and terrifying
reports arrived at court. One, from Plymouth,
reported that the Spanish were about to "land in some part of England 15,000 men, and
assure 183 themselves of another 15,000 English papists ready to assist them at
their landing." Their likely destination:
Milford Haven. By Saturday the twenty-fifth there was no longer any doubt, and the Privy Council
informed the lord mayor and the Earl of Cumberland that the Spanish "must needs be on the coast of England
by this time." The troops so recently dismissed had to be recalled, "the armed force of the city"
put "in readiness," and the Thames defended "to impeach the coming
up of the [Spanish] galleys." It was "now high time," the councillors added, "for every subject to show his duty and affection
to their sovereign and country." The following days were tense and spectacular. On August 26, three thousand citizen soldiers "were all in armor in the streets,
attending on their captains till past seven of the clock, at which time, being
thoroughly wet by a great shower of rain," they
"were sent home again for that day." The following morning "the other 3,000 citizens, householders
and subsidy men, showed on the Mile's End, where they trained all that day. The drilling and martial display continued unabated through September 4. Whatever the threat had been, by then, the danger really had passed, and an exhausted country did its
best to return to normal. Elizabeth quietly removed to Hampton Court where, according to one report, she was seen through the windows of the palace, "none being with
her but my Lady Warwick "-dancing 'The Spanish Panic'" to pipe
and tabor. The tune was aptly named. Elizabeth
had a right to high step it: she had nimbly dodged disaster yet again.
The crisis was over. What had caused it remained disputed. The well-placed
Francis Bacon refused to accept the official version. The claim that
the Spanish were coming, he wrote, was "a tale ... given out by which even the wiser sort
might well be taken in." Perhaps if he had access
to all the intelligence reports and intercepts in Cecil's possession he might
have thought differently. Perhaps not. Cecil himself, who knew for certain of
Spanish preparations (though against whom was the sticking point) admitted in the midst of the crisis that he overreacted, but defended himself on the grounds
that the "world is ever apt to cry crucifige
[crucify him] upon me, as they have done on my father before me, whensoever I do dissuade these preparations." Bacon later maintained that "all this was done to the end that
Essex, 184 hearing that the kingdom was in arms, might be deterred from any
attempt to bring the Irish army over into
England." It was as good a theory as any. Why else had the queen forbidden
Essex from returning to England without her permission? To the English
farmers called away from their fields, the false alarm was an
embittering experience. They had seen the effects of dearth, and some had buried kin and neighbors who died of famine or famine-related disease. A
year before the armada threat of l599 a Kentish laborer had been brought up on charges for saying
that the real war to be fought was between the rich and the poor, and that
"he hoped to see such a war in this realm to afflict the rich men of this
country to requite their hardness of heart against
the poor." Francis Bacon also remembered the people "muttering that if the Council had
celebrated this kind of May game in the beginning of May, it might have been thought more suitable, but to call the people away from the harvest
for it (for it was now full autumn) was too serious
a jest." Bacon saw that the English people were shrewd enough to see through their government's story, "insomuch that they forbore not from scoffs, saying that
in the year '88 Spain had sent an Invincible Armada against us and now she had
sent an Invisible Armada." The difference was clear. The two armada threats framed the closing years of Elizabeth's reign and the
comparison was not a flattering one. In 1588, the queen had girded herself for battle and, according to a
later report, reassured her subjects as they gathered in defense of the realm at Tilbury that she was "resolved in the
midst and heat of the battle to live and die amongst you all, to lay down for my God and for my kingdom
and for my people mine honor and my blood even
in the dust." They were words that rivaled the stirring speeches of Henry V to his
outnumbered troops at Agincourt. This time around she
did not appear in public; like a queen bee she stayed hidden in her hive, protected by thousands who swarmed to her defense. She must have sensed
that propagandistic speeches or even a royal appearance would no
longer be effective. Her people were now too suspicious, their skepticism fed by seemingly
endless conscription, faction at court, and uncertainty about political and
religious succession. It was also nurtured by the
historical drama of Shakespeare and his fellow playwrights, who over the past decade had 185 taught them, among other things, to be wary
of the motives of rulers. Censorship over what could be said about Ireland or royal succession
and the control over royal images, satire, and history couldn't stop the
muttering and certainly couldn't bring back that sense of promise and
Providence that had followed the victory over the
"Invincible Armada" of1588. Politically and artistically, there was no going back. London’s dramatists responded to the Armada threat of 1599 in markedly different ways. For some, like John
Marston, it offered a chance for a throwaway line and a sardonic laugh- "The Spanish are
coming!" in his Histriomastix, probably performed by Paul's Boys later
that autumn. Others worked the threat into the fabric of plays in progress, most notably Thomas Heywood, whose two-part Edward the Fourth, entered in the Stationers' Register on August 28, and rushed into print before
the end of the year, must have been revised with
the crisis in mind. Playgoers attending a performance of Heywood's play at the Boar's Head Inn during the armada scare would have had the uncanny experience of watching their ancestors confront a threat
nearly identical to their own. The third scene of the play, which opens with the Mayor leading his
fellow citizen-defenders-"whole companies / Of mercers , grocers,
drapers, and the rest"-explicitly collapses the
distance between past and present. The Mayor asks, "Have ye commanded that in every street / They
hang forth lights as soon as night comes
on?" We soon learn that London's "streets are chained, / The bridge well
manned, and every place prepared." Heywood even has his historical Mayor wonder, anachronistically, "What if we stop the passage of the Thames / With such provision as we have of ships?" The analogy is
far more complicated, though, for in Edward the Fourth Londoners
defend their city not against foreign invaders but against an English army, led by Falconbridge, intent on freeing the deposed King Henry VI from the Tower.
And Heywood quietly suppresses the fact that the Earl of Essex' s ancestor had come to
the aid of London's citizens. As the political winds kept shifting this year,
so, too, did the meaning of Heywood's play. Other playwrights made no pretense of masking current events in past histories. In October, for example, an
anonymous and now lost play- 186 whether it was staged publicly or privately is unclear-celebrated the
recent victory of English troops over Spanish forces at Turnhout
in the Low Countries. The actors were deliberately made up to resemble
English leaders down to their distinctive beards and doublet and hose:
"This afternoon I saw The Overthrow
of Turnhold played," writes Rowland Whyte, "and saw Sir Robert Sidney and Sir Francis Vere upon the stage, killing, slaying, and overthrowing the Spaniard." It took some time for Shakespeare to digest what was happening around him and turn it into art. Before 1599
was over, he would hit upon how his next tragedy would begin-with jittery soldiers, at night,
standing guard. One of them isn't even sure what he's
guarding against and wonders if anyone can tell him the reason for the frenzied military preparation going on around him: Why this same strict and most observant watch So nightly toils the subject of the land, And with such daily cost of brazen cannon And foreign mart for implements of war, Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task Does not divide the Sunday from the week? (Hamlet, 1.1.71-76) The time is out of joint, the mood dark, the threats multiple and
uncertain. For many Londoners, recalling their experience of the past August, the opening scene of Hamlet would have brought a shudder of recognition. But this is getting ahead of our story. 187 |