first brought together so much talent and put it on the stage. For it is a simple fact that just about every playwright of any note wrote first for Henslowe, many having their plays performed by the Lord Admiral’s Men, the company with which he was most closely associated. Among these was the young William Shakespeare with the
Henry VI
trilogy, in the writing of which it is thought he was assisted by others including Marlowe; also
Titus Andronicus
which is entirely his own work. Both were written before he moved on rapidly to become Burbage’s house playwright, a position he was to hold for over twenty years, making him a unique figure in the dramatic world of his day.
Of the two sober dramatists outside the circle of Wits, Chapman and Kyd, Chapman did not begin to write seriously for the theatre until the mid-1590s, partly because he needed to earn money elsewhere since, careful and industrious as he was, he had somehow ended up in the clutches of a notorious money-lender, John Wolfall, and was to spend the next twenty years desperately trying to pay off the debt. It was left, ironically, to the hard-working, self-effacing, mocked ‘little scrivener’, Thomas Kyd, to invent a whole, new and exciting genre. His
Spanish Tragedy
, first performed in 1591 and one of Henslowe’s biggest hits, ushered in the popular genre now known as the Revenge Plays, establishing a formula which most follow, beginning with either the ghost of a victim, or a relation or lover associated with him, explaining to the audience the events, which have resulted in his becoming a ‘revenger’. The scene is set therefore, as in a Greek tragedy, for a predictable set of events at the end of which the villain or villains pay the price for their crime. En route to the denouement the audience is treated to more murders and sudden deaths, often devised in highly ingenious ways.
The Spanish Tragedy
opens with the ghost of Andrea, recently killed in Spain’s war with Portugal, complaining to the Spirit of Revenge that it has so far done nothing to bring to book those who have murdered his son. After further discussion, the chosen revenger is Hieronimo (or Jeronimo), Marshal of Spain, thus setting him on a course of bloodshed and mayhem which ends with the popular device of a play within a play revealing all. Hieronimo bites off his tongue in order to keep silent as to his motive, although he kindly explains to the audience before doing so. Grand Guignol it might be, but it was wildly popular with audiences and the character of Hieronimo made sufficient impact for the character to be referred to in subsequent plays well after Kyd’s death. He is also generally given the credit for writing an early version of
Hamlet
, known as the
Urr-Hamlet
. Nashe, writing of Kyd in his usual disparaging manner, notes: ‘Yet the English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as “blood is a beggar”, and so forth: and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches . . .’. 3 Other commentators describe the play opening with a ghost, robed in a white sheet and clanking with chains, calling out ‘revenge, revenge!’ However, since the text is long since lost there is no way of knowing how much Shakespeare took from it.
The point should be made that virtually none of the early professional playwrights would have arrived at the Rose or The Theatre clutching the synopsis, or ‘plot’, of a truly original play in their hands. The vast majority of the drama of the day was taken from a wide variety of sources, many of them well known at least to those who were literate. From their grammar schools they would have been familiar with the comic works of Plautus, the tragedies of Seneca, with Ovid and Greek drama, all read in the original. They could also draw on the historian Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles
, the source for so many history plays, which was first published in
Henry VI
trilogy, in the writing of which it is thought he was assisted by others including Marlowe; also
Titus Andronicus
which is entirely his own work. Both were written before he moved on rapidly to become Burbage’s house playwright, a position he was to hold for over twenty years, making him a unique figure in the dramatic world of his day.
Of the two sober dramatists outside the circle of Wits, Chapman and Kyd, Chapman did not begin to write seriously for the theatre until the mid-1590s, partly because he needed to earn money elsewhere since, careful and industrious as he was, he had somehow ended up in the clutches of a notorious money-lender, John Wolfall, and was to spend the next twenty years desperately trying to pay off the debt. It was left, ironically, to the hard-working, self-effacing, mocked ‘little scrivener’, Thomas Kyd, to invent a whole, new and exciting genre. His
Spanish Tragedy
, first performed in 1591 and one of Henslowe’s biggest hits, ushered in the popular genre now known as the Revenge Plays, establishing a formula which most follow, beginning with either the ghost of a victim, or a relation or lover associated with him, explaining to the audience the events, which have resulted in his becoming a ‘revenger’. The scene is set therefore, as in a Greek tragedy, for a predictable set of events at the end of which the villain or villains pay the price for their crime. En route to the denouement the audience is treated to more murders and sudden deaths, often devised in highly ingenious ways.
The Spanish Tragedy
opens with the ghost of Andrea, recently killed in Spain’s war with Portugal, complaining to the Spirit of Revenge that it has so far done nothing to bring to book those who have murdered his son. After further discussion, the chosen revenger is Hieronimo (or Jeronimo), Marshal of Spain, thus setting him on a course of bloodshed and mayhem which ends with the popular device of a play within a play revealing all. Hieronimo bites off his tongue in order to keep silent as to his motive, although he kindly explains to the audience before doing so. Grand Guignol it might be, but it was wildly popular with audiences and the character of Hieronimo made sufficient impact for the character to be referred to in subsequent plays well after Kyd’s death. He is also generally given the credit for writing an early version of
Hamlet
, known as the
Urr-Hamlet
. Nashe, writing of Kyd in his usual disparaging manner, notes: ‘Yet the English Seneca, read by candlelight, yields many good sentences, as “blood is a beggar”, and so forth: and if you entreat him fair in a frosty morning, he will afford you whole Hamlets, I should say handfuls of tragical speeches . . .’. 3 Other commentators describe the play opening with a ghost, robed in a white sheet and clanking with chains, calling out ‘revenge, revenge!’ However, since the text is long since lost there is no way of knowing how much Shakespeare took from it.
The point should be made that virtually none of the early professional playwrights would have arrived at the Rose or The Theatre clutching the synopsis, or ‘plot’, of a truly original play in their hands. The vast majority of the drama of the day was taken from a wide variety of sources, many of them well known at least to those who were literate. From their grammar schools they would have been familiar with the comic works of Plautus, the tragedies of Seneca, with Ovid and Greek drama, all read in the original. They could also draw on the historian Raphael Holinshed’s
Chronicles
, the source for so many history plays, which was first published in
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