The journey to London.
To London Shakespeare naturally drifted, doubtless trudging thither on foot during 1586, by way of Oxford and High Wycombe. [31a] Tradition points to that as Shakespeare’s favoured route, rather than to the road by Banbury and Aylesbury. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon near Oxford, ‘he happened to take the humour of the constable in “Midsummer Night’s Dream”’—by which he meant, we may suppose, ‘Much Ado about Nothing’—but there were watchmen of the Dogberry type all over England, and probably at Stratford itself. The Crown Inn, (formerly 3 Cornmarket Street) near Carfax, at Oxford, was long pointed out as one of his resting-places.
Richard Field, his townsman.
To only one resident in London is Shakespeare likely to have been known previously. [31b] Richard
Field, a native of Stratford, and son of a friend of Shakespeare’s father, had left Stratford in 1579 to serve an apprenticeship with Thomas Vautrollier, the London printer. Shakespeare and Field, who was made free of the Stationers’ Company in 1587, were soon associated as author and publisher; but the theory that Field found work for Shakespeare in Vautrollier’s printing-office is fanciful. [32a] No more can be said for the attempt to prove that he obtained employment as a lawyer’s clerk. In view of his general quickness of apprehension, Shakespeare’s accurate use of legal terms, which deserves all the attention that has been paid it, may be attributable in part to his observation of the many legal processes in which his father was involved, and in part to early intercourse with members of the Inns of Court. [32b]
Theatrical employment.
Tradition and common-sense alike point to one of the only two theatres (The Theatre or The Curtain) that existed in London at the date of his arrival as an early scene of his regular occupation. The compiler of ‘Lives of the Poets’ (1753) [32c] was the first to relate the story that
his original connection with the playhouse was as holder of the horses of visitors outside the doors. According to the same compiler, the story was related by D’Avenant to Betterton; but Rowe, to whom Betterton communicated it, made no use of it. The two regular theatres of the time were both reached on horseback by men of fashion, and the owner of The Theatre, James Burbage, kept a livery stable at Smithfield. There is no inherent improbability in the tale. Dr. Johnson’s amplified version, in which Shakespeare was represented as organising a service of boys for the purpose of tending visitors’ horses, sounds apocryphal.
A playhouse servitor.
There is every indication that Shakespeare was speedily offered employment inside the playhouse. In 1587 the two chief companies of actors, claiming respectively the nominal patronage of the Queen and Lord Leicester, returned to London from a provincial tour, during which they visited Stratford. Two subordinate companies, one of which claimed the patronage of the Earl of Essex and the other that of Lord Stafford, also performed in the town during the same year. Shakespeare’s friends may have called the attention of the strolling players to the homeless youth, rumours of whose search for employment about the London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford. From such incidents seems to have sprung the opportunity which offered Shakespeare fame and fortune. According to Rowe’s vague statement, ‘he was received into the company then in being at first in a very mean rank.’