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Lee's investigations. Despite an infinity of research, the figure of William Shakespeare in London remains very dim. He is reputed to have been a good actor; but Richard Burbage the tragedian and William Kemp the comedian were greater actors than he. He played with them before Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace, in a couple of scenes designed to celebrate Christmas.
How can I leave him go?" "Oh, fie for shame upon the man I took thee for!" cried Heywood. "But, Tom," cried Carew, brokenly, "look it straightly in the face; I am no such player as I was, this reckless life hath done the trick for me, Tom, and here is ruin staring Henslowe and Alleyn in the eye. They cannot keep me master if their luck doth not change soon; and Burbage would not have me as a gift.
I remember once lunching with rare Ben Jonson at the Mermaid Tavern this would be back in Queen Elizabeth's time, when I was beginning to be known in the theatrical world and seeing a young man with a nobby forehead and about three inches of beard doing himself well at a neighboring table at the expense of Burbage the manager. "Ben," I asked my companion, "who is that youth?"
But in the second case, I should most likely pretermit these questionings, and take my place instead in the pit at the Blackfriars, to hear the actor in his favourite part, playing up to Mr. Burbage, and rolling out as I seem to hear him with a ponderous gusto- "Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd." What a pleasant chance, if we could go there in a party I and what a surprise for Mr.
Kemp says to the scholars who are anxious to try their fortunes on the stage: "But be merry, my lads, you have happened upon the most excellent vocation in the world for money; they come north and south to bring it to our playhouse; and for honors, who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kempe; he is not counted a gentleman that knows not Dick Burbage and Will Kempe; there's not a country wench that can dance 'Sellenger's Round, but can talke of Dick Burbage and Will Kempe."
At any rate it is most probable that he saw Burbage in some of his favorite characters, and perhaps made his acquaintance; being first employed as a kind of servant in the theatre, and afterwards as a player of inferior parts. It was not until about 1591-1592, that Shakespeare began to turn his attention seriously to dramatic authorship.
Burbage, esteemed the best Richard until Garrick arose, played the tyrant and usurper with such truth and liveliness, that when the Battle of Bosworth seemed concluded by his death, the ideas of reality and deception were strongly contending in Lord Glenvarloch's imagination, and it required him to rouse himself from his reverie, so strange did the proposal at first sound when his companion declared King Richard should sup with them at the Mermaid.
James Burbage resolutely hired a liberty outside the city, and here, in 1576, on the premises of an ancient Roman Catholic priory, he built the first English playhouse, which he named "The Theatre." In the following year The Theatre gained an ally in "The Curtain," which was built in the same neighborhood, both, of course, causing great indignation among the Puritans.
He could talk of Richard Burbage, the first Romeo; of Armin, famous in Shakespeare's clowns and fools; of Heminge and Condell, who edited the First Folio of Shakespeare, which possibly he himself purchased, fresh from the press; of Joseph Taylor, whom it is said Shakespeare personally instructed how to play Hamlet, and the recollection of whose performance enabled Sir William Davenant to impart to Betterton the example and tradition established by the author a model that has lasted to the present day; of Kempe, the original Dogberry, and of the exuberant, merry Richard Tarleton, after whom that comic genius had fashioned his artistic method; of Alleyne, who kept the bear-garden, and who founded the College and Home at Dulwich where they still flourish; of Gabriel Spencer, and his duel with Ben Jonson, wherein he lost his life at the hands of that burly antagonist; of Marlowe "of the mighty line," and his awful and lamentable death stabbed at Deptford by a drunken drawer in a tavern brawl.
Burbage, the tragic actor, and Kempe, the low-comedy man of Shakespeare's company, are introduced, discussing the possible merits of Cambridge wits as playwrights.
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