Shakespeare, Her Majesty’s Players and Pembroke’s Men

Summary

The history of the Queen’s Men spans the years 1583–92. After that date the remnants of what was for a time the first acting company in the land are like the down-at-heels players in Histrio-mastix ‘that travel with pumps full of gravell’ carrying their few props and costumes, and performing ‘base-brown-paper-stuffe’. The decade in which the Queen’s Men were most influential coincides so exactly with the most obscure period of William Shakespeare’s life that the possibility of Shakespeare’s having received his introduction to the theater as a trainee with them is worthy of close scrutiny.

Shakespeare probably joined a troupe of actors sometime shortly after leaving Stratford about the mid 1580s; in any case, his talent and success were sufficiently recognized by 1592 for him to be attacked in print as an upstart, 'the onely Shakescene in a country'. But what company did he join and in what capacity? J. Q. Adams suggests that Shakespeare received his training with Pembroke's Men as a hireling, first cast in minor roles - this, at least, would parallel the careers of such actor-playwrights as Thomas Heywood and Samuel Rowley. A. F. Pollard claimed Shakespeare was a member of Leicester's company about 1587; T. W. Baldwin, interpreting the 'Shakescene' passage, finds it an attack on Shakespeare and his company, Strange's Men.