Source: ForeignAffairs4
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Siobhan Keenan, Professor of Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, De Montfort University
How did Shakespeare become the world’s greatest playwright? It’s a question that has long fascinated scholars and fans alike. My latest research suggests that one answer lies in the Bard’s close collaboration with his leading man, Richard Burbage.
Their partnership lasted more than 25 years, and as my new book, Richard Burbage and the Shakespearean Stage, reveals, the creative chemistry between writer and actor transformed their art and elevated their respective profiles – a bit like an Elizabethan Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro.
Shakespeare and Burbage’s careers likely started in the 1580s. But the first time we hear of them being members of the same acting company is in 1595.
In March that year, the pair was paid £20 (about £8k today) alongside the famous Elizabethan clown, Will Kemp, for performing two plays at court before Queen Elizabeth I with a troupe known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men (named after the lord chamberlain, Henry Carey). At this stage, Shakespeare and Burbage were newcomers on the flourishing Elizabethan theatrical scene. But they soon made their mark.
By the turn of the century the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had moved to the legendary Globe theatre, and the pair had become famous. Shakespeare was being praised by contemporaries as “the most excellent” writer of comedies and tragedies in English, while Burbage had become the Elizabethan stage’s newest star, with a breakout performance as Shakespeare’s witty and wicked tragic hero, Richard III.
One fan apparently admired Burbage’s Richard III so much that she even arranged a secret off-stage rendezvous with him, only for Shakespeare to get there first, sending word to Burbage that William the Conqueror was before Richard III – or so claimed gossipy lawyer John Manningham in 1602.
There aren’t any contemporary reviews of Burbage’s Richard III, or his other early performances, but we know that he was especially admired for his versatility and the authenticity of his acting.
This included an ability to portray powerful emotions convincingly and to immerse himself in his roles completely, “putting off himself with his Clothes” as contemporary Richard Flecknoe put it in 1664 – like an early modern Daniel Day-Lewis. These qualities were to prove a source of powerful inspiration to Burbage’s fellow actor and company playwright, Shakespeare.
Writing for Burbage
When Shakespeare became a member of the Lord Chamberlain’s players, it marked a significant new phase in his career as an actor and writer. For perhaps the first time, he found himself writing regularly for the same group of players – a position he would enjoy for the rest of his career.
It’s not surprising that he started to tailor his plays for the men and boys he knew would act in them. Sometimes he even mistakenly wrote their names instead of their characters’ names in his scripts.
But in Burbage’s case the collaboration proved an especially rich and enduring one, the mutual talents of writer and actor inspiring the creation of a series of memorably complex and believable tragic heroes of a kind not seen not known before on the English stage.
These range from tragic kings, such as King Lear and Macbeth, to murderously jealous husbands, such as Othello and Leontes (A Winter’s Tale). They also include roles shaped by another of Burbage’s talents – the ability to feign madness convincingly. The most famous example of this is Hamlet.
The story was not new when Shakespeare created his updated Hamlet play around 1601, probably a star vehicle for Burbage. The role is famously demanding in length – 1,338 lines in the edition published in 1604. It also requires incredible versatility in its performer, who must play several roles in one: grieving son, bereft lover and revenger.
Perhaps most memorably of all, Hamlet must put on an “antic” or mad disposition, as he seeks to conceal his plans of revenge from Claudius, the uncle who murdered his father and married his mother.
Hamlet’s feigned madness can be found in Shakespeare’s source, but Shakespeare’s late Elizabethan reworking of the play gives more room to Hamlet’s performance of madness – including his sudden changes in speech and behaviour – and it creates more uncertainty about whether the madness remains a performance or becomes the real thing in the character.
Implicitly, Shakespeare made these changes influenced by his experience of working with Burbage and to give his star more room to show off his versatility and his aptitude for playing men who had gone mad. The result was a hit for both: Hamlet became one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays and its hero one of Burbage’s most memorable roles.
For many years, the conversation about Shakespeare’s authorship has focused on his work with other playwrights. But Burbage also helped shape Shakespeare’s plays, and his role in the Bard’s creative process deserves more recognition.
Siobhan Keenan received funding from the Society for Theatre Research.
– ref. Richard Burbage: the Elizabethan De Niro to Shakespeare’s Scorsese – https://theconversation.com/richard-burbage-the-elizabethan-de-niro-to-shakespeares-scorsese-263962