One more significant change occurred at this time. Either a dispute with his fellows or an irrepressible wanderlust led the leading clown, Will Kempe, to break with the company. Apparently before the stage of the Globe was painted and the spectators admitted, he severed his connection with the Lord Chamberlain’s men, though he had been among the original five who had taken a moiety of the lease on the projected playhouse. After his departure, there followed a period of great stability in the acting company. In the entire decade there were only two replacements, owing to the deaths of actors, and three additions with an expansion from nine to twelve members in 1603.
This nexus of events does not necessarily prove that there was a stylistic or artistic change in 1599. Nor does it imply that little in procedure, tradition, and equipment was carried over from the Theatre and the Curtain to the Globe. But it does indicate that circumstance and planning combined to modify the character of the enterprise, to make it not merely a continuation of the past but the start of a new theatrical endeavor. As such, the opening of the Globe serves as an excellent point of departure for a special study of the company sometimes dubbed “Shakespeare’s” but in this book termed “the Globe.”
In 1608–1609 the King’s men, acquiring the private indoor theater of Blackfriars, brought the distinctive period to a close, for with the leasing of Blackfriars, according to Professor Gerald Bentley, came a change of outlook.[2] He emphasizes two major factors which led to this change. First, the audience at the private theater differed markedly from that at the public playhouse: the former audience was sophisticated and exclusive whereas the latter was rude and representative. The contrast has been fully elaborated by Alfred Harbage in Shakespeare and the Rival Traditions. Secondly, the indoor theater, relatively intimate, lit by candles, required an alteration in style of acting and provided a subtler control of mood. To substantiate the theory that the King’s men faced these differences squarely, Bentley cites the employment of Jonson, skilled in writing for Blackfriars and the Children of the Queen’s Revels; the appearance of a new type of play from the leading playwright, now writing with Blackfriars in mind; and the engagement of Beaumont and Fletcher, neither of whom had previously written for this company. Altogether the events grouped around the move to Blackfriars indicate that then too a new start was made, and Bentley convincingly demonstrates that within a short time Blackfriars became the leading playhouse for the King’s men in point of prestige and profit.
Until now I have alluded rather generally to the building of the Globe in 1599 and to the acquisition of Blackfriars in 1608–1609. Since the assignment of several plays depends upon a more exact dating, there is a need to arrive at more precise limits.
Shortly after the 26th of February, 1599, construction of the Globe commenced under the supervision of Peter Streete, the man with whom Philip Henslowe and Edward Alleyn contracted a year later to erect the Fortune theater along the same lines. From Streete’s building schedule for the Fortune, we can estimate that the Globe took twenty-eight to thirty weeks to complete, and thus the earliest opening date would have been in late August or early September, 1599.[3]
At the Blackfriars playing by the King’s men began sometime between June 24, 1608, when the company took a lease of the premises, and the autumn of 1609, when the decline of a severe plague permitted a resumption of playing. In January, 1609, the players received a reward from His Majesty “for their private practise in the time of infeccon.” Testimony by Richard Burbage and John Heminges in 1612 indicates that playing commenced some time during the winter of 1608–1609. A temporary reduction of plague deaths in February and March, 1609, makes this the likely period during which Shakespeare and his fellows first played at Blackfriars and so terminated the Globe years.[4]
In the main the canon of Shakespeare’s plays produced between 1599 and 1609 is set. Several plays are in dispute, but on the whole, considering the nature of much of the evidence, the degree of unanimity among scholars is amazing.[5]
Of about nine of the plays sufficient external evidence exists to verify their placement between 1599 and 1608. There is general agreement that Platter is referring to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when he describes a performance on September 21, 1599. Its absence from Meres’ list places it after September 7, 1598, and Chambers dates the play 1599–1600. Twelfth Night, first mentioned in connection with a performance at the Middle Temple, February 2, 1602, is variously dated 1599 to 1601. Suggestions of an initial performance at the Middle Temple by Wilson and at Whitehall by Hotson do not affect the assignment of date and need not be discussed here.[6] Despite several attempts to force back the date of the first draft of Hamlet to 1583, the year 1601 is still the accepted date for the play as we know it. In an essay in 1944 Chambers confirmed his dating which appeared in William Shakespeare (1930). Wilson supports this date, and Gray and Kirschbaum have argued against the use of Harvey’s marginalia as evidence of an earlier date.[7]