From Stratford to London

Shakespeare and London

In this course Professor Duncan Salkeld (University of Chichester) takes us on a tour of Shakespeare’s London, with particular attention paid to the ‘Agas’ map of 1567. In the first lecture we think about Shakespeare’s decision to move from Stratford-upon-Avon to London in c. 1590, including his first and later impressions of the city. In the five lectures that follow, we use the ‘Agas’ map to explore five distinct areas of London and their special relevant to Shakespeare and his art: the City of Westminster; Shoreditch and Clerkenwell; the South Bank; the Tower of London; and Blackfriars.

From Stratford to London

In this lecture we think about Shakespeare’s connections with Stratford and London, and how his attitude to London seems to have changed over the course of his career, focusing in particular on: (i) the connections that one would need to forge a career as a successful playwright in early modern London – e.g. actors, directors, theatre-workers, etc.; (ii) Shakespeare’s arrival in London in c. 1590, and the extent to which he was an ‘upstart crow’ (as he was described by a rival playwright, Richard Greene, in 1592); (iii) the length of Shakespeare’s career, from c. 1590 to c. 1612/13, and the two monarchs that he wrote under: Elizabeth I and James I; (iv) the other dramatists in London when Shakespeare arrived in c. 1590, including Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe; (v) the importance of Stratford-upon-Avon at this time, including the figure of Hugh Clopton (c. 1440-96), a Stratfordian who went on to become Lord Mayor of London; (vi) Shakespeare’s potential connections to London, including possible connections with the Quiney family and to the dramatist George Peele (b. 1556); (vii) the extent to which Shakespeare’s attitude to visiting London can be discerned from the attitudes of his characters in his plays (e.g. Proteus’ excitement at Valentine’s visit to Milan in Two Gentlemen of Verona: ‘Think on thy Proteus when thou haply seest some rare noteworthy object in thy travel’, 1.1.12-13); (viii) the sense of exclusion embodied by London, and particularly the city gates (e.g. Newgate, Bishopsgate) at which the heads and/or bodies of executed criminals would be displayed; (ix) the frequency of the theme of banishment from the city in Shakespeare’s later plays, e.g. the banishment of Cordelia in King Lear, Timon’s self-banishment in Timon of Athens, the banishment of Prospero in The Tempest, etc.; (x) the dangers represented by life in London at this time, including disease (especially plague), violent crime, and political factionalism; and (xi) Shakespeare’s proximity to political power, including Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (dedicatee of his early poems, the Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis) and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex.