How would such a man fare in the world of London in 1587? It was a wild and wilful age; eager English spirits were beginning to take a part in the opening up of the new world; the old, limiting horizons were gone; men dared to think for themselves and act boldly; ten years before Drake had sailed round the world—the adventurer was the characteristic product of the time. In ordinary company a word led to a blow, and the fight was often brought to a fatal conclusion with dagger or sword or both. In those rough days actors were almost outlaws; Ben Jonson is known to have killed two or three men; Marlowe died in a tavern brawl. Courage has always been highly esteemed in England, like gentility and a university training. Shakespeare possessed none of these passports to public favour. He could not shoulder his way through the throng. The wild adventurous life of the time was not to his liking, even in early manhood; from the beginning he preferred “the life removed” and his books; all given over to the “bettering of his mind” he could only have been appreciated at any time by the finer spirits.

Entering the theatre as a servitor he no doubt made such acquaintances as offered themselves, and spent a good deal of his leisure perforce with second-rate actors and writers in common taverns and studied his Bardolph and Pistol, and especially his Falstaff at first hand. Perhaps Marlowe was one of his ciceroni in rough company. Shakespeare had almost certainly met Marlowe very early in his career, for he worked with him in the “Third Part of Henry VI.,” and his “Richard III.” is a conscious imitation of Marlowe, and Marlowe was dissipated enough and wild enough to have shown him the wildest side of life in London in the '80's. It was the very best thing that could have happened to delicate Shakespeare, to come poor and unknown to London, and be soused in common rowdy life like this against his will by sheer necessity; for if left to his own devices he would probably have grown up a bookish poet—a second Coleridge. Fate takes care of her favourites.

It was all in his favour that he should have been forced at first to win his spurs as an actor. He must have been too intelligent, one would think, ever to have brought it far as a mummer; he looked upon the half-art of acting with disdain and disgust, as he tells us in the sonnets, and if in Hamlet he condescends to give advice to actors, it is to admonish them not to outrage the decencies of nature by tearing a passion to tatters. He had at hand a surer ladder to fame than the mummer's art. As soon as he felt his feet in London he set to work adapting plays, and writing plays, while reading his own poetry to all and sundry who would listen, and I have no doubt that patrons of the stage, who were also men of rank, were willing to listen to Shakespeare from the beginning. He was of those who require no introductions.

In 1592, four or five years after his arrival in London, he had already come to the front as a dramatist, or at least as an adapter of plays, for Robert Greene, a scholar and playwright, attacked him in his “Groatsworth of Wit” in this fashion:

“There is an upstart Crow, beautified in our feathers
that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes
he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as
the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes fac
totum, is, in his own conceit, the only Shakescene in a
country. Oh, that I might intreat your rare wits to be
employed in more profitable courses, and let these apes
imitate your past excellence, and never more acquaint
them with your admired inventions.”

It is plain from this weird appeal that Shakespeare had already made his mark.

There are further proofs of his rapid success. One of Chettle's references to Shakespeare (I take Chettle to be the original of Falstaff) throws light upon the poet's position in London in these early days. Shortly after Greene had insulted Shakespeare as “Shake-scene” Chettle apologized for the insult in these terms:

“I am as sorry,” Chettle wrote, “as if the original
fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seen his
(i.e., Shakespeare's) demeanour no less civill than he (is)
exelent in the qualitie he professes. Besides, divers of
worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, which
argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing that
aprooves his art.”

In 1592, then, Shakespeare was most “civill in demeanour,” and had won golden opinions from people of importance.

Actors and poets of that time could not help knowing a good many of the young nobles who came to the theatre and sat round the stage listening to the performances. And Shakespeare, with his aristocratic sympathies and charming sweetness of nature, must have made friends with the greatest ease. Chettle's apology proves that early in his career he had the art or luck to win distinguished patrons who spoke well of him. While still new to town he came to know Lord Southampton, to whom he dedicated “Venus and Adonis”; the fulsome dedication of “Lucrece” to the same nobleman two years later shows that deference had rapidly ripened into affectionate devotion; no wonder Rowe noticed the “too great sweetness in his manners.” Thinking of his intimacy with Southampton on the one hand and Bardolph on the other, one is constrained to say of Shakespeare what Apemantus says of Timon: