One version of William Shakespeare’s
story begins with a murder. The year is 1587, William is 23, a glover’s
son in an unremarkable town in the middle of England, unhappily
married, three small children mewling and puking around him. He longs
to escape but the means of doing so evade him. Then opportunity
strikes: The Queen’s Men, a company of players, arrive in Stratford
short of an actor and William joins them, traveling to London and from
there into history. And why are the Queen’s Men shy of a full company
in 1587? Because on 15 June that year, one of their number, William
Knel, attacked another of the company, John Towne. The short fight
ended when Towne struck Knel in the neck with a sword of iron costing,
we are told, five shillings.
Unfortunately for this version of Shakespeare’s story there is no
evidence of the Queen’s Men being in or near Stratford Upon Avon in
1587, but then there is little that is certain about Shakespeare’s
life. Nothing is known about his life between the baptism of his twin
children in February 1585 and his first appearance on the London theatre
scene in 1592. Yet it seems likely that whatever happened in those
seven lost years involved adventure and more than a little danger. At
least, it seems likely judging by Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
Take Robert Greene, the author of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
among other plays, and the man whose place in history is assured by
having been the first to mention Shakespeare as a playwright. Greene
insults Shakespeare’s lack of learning when compared to the University
Wits like Greene, Marlowe and Nashe. In his Groats-Worth of Wit, Greene
called Shakespeare “an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers.” A
mild insult by Greene’s standards for, as well as plays, Greene was a
writer of scandalous books of scurrilous gossip and boasted of his own
vile behavior. He had abandoned his wife and child to take up with a
notorious bawd and brothel keeper. Greene was not worried about the
vengeance of those he insulted. He employed as a bodyguard his
mistress’s brother, a notorious criminal who would later be hanged for
murder and who reveled in the nickname, “Cutting Ball.” History does
not relate what deed earned him this title.
Greene may well have needed a bodyguard.
These were violent times. The murder rate in Elizabethan England was
about 1 in 10,000; by comparison it is now 1 in 100,000. More
significantly, murder today is often by someone known to the victim:
assault by strangers was far more prevalent then. People went armed and
did not fear to use their weapons, actors and playwrights among them.
We think of the theatre in modern times as filled with delicate flowers
but it was not always so. In Elizabethan times they were at the margins
of society, vagabonds, rogues, dangerous men. Indeed, it is rare to
learn of a playwright in Elizabethan times that has not killed a man. ... [mehr] https://crimereads.com/the-murderous-playwrights-of-elizabethan-england/
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