Kempe would often perform his own “routines” during the course of the play, and thus temporarily bring the action to a halt. Hamlet complains of the habit in his directions to the players, when he instructs them to “let those that play your clownes speake no more then is set downe for them, for there be of them that wil themselues laugh, to set on some quantitie of barraine spectators to laugh to”(1767–9). This was a direct hit against Kempe, who had just left the Lord Chamberlain’s Men after some disagreement with his fellows. The quarrel may have been over just such a matter of comic performance. It is possible that in an earlier version of Hamlet Kempe “gagged” too often in his role as the clown and gravedigger; there would be a certain poetical justice in reprimanding him in a later version of the same play.
At an earlier date, however, other playwrights welcomed his dances and improvisations. It saved them the labour of invention. There are even indications that they would mark Kempe’s entry in the playbooks, and then leave the rest to him. In one version of Hamlet (in this play, as in so many others, there is evidence of continual revision) Shakespeare even quotes some of Kempe’s catchphrases—” cannot you stay till I eat my porridge?” as well as “My coat wants a cullisen [scutcheon]” and “Your beer is sour,” the last line no doubt delivered with the mouth famously “awry.” There is no doubt, too, that when they first worked together Shakespeare fashioned parts specifically for Kempe. In a similar spirit of professionalism Mozart wrote operatic roles for specific singers, and often would not write an aria until he had heard the voice of the singer who would take the part. So when Grumio saws cheese with a dagger, or when Cade dances a morris or laps up drink from the earth, Shakespeare had Kempe’s drolleries very much in mind. Kempe played Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing. He played Falstaff in the two parts of Henry IV. In the second play there is a stage direction, “Enter Will,” a few lines before Falstaff begins singing a ballad “When Arthur first in court …” So Kempe was cued to enter, no doubt to the delight of the audience, a minute or two before breaking into song. At the end of the play Kempe appeared upon the stage, still dressed as Falstaff, and asks the audience: “If my tongue cannot intreate you to acquite mee, will you commaund me to vse my legges?” This is the cue for a jig, in which the rest of the players are likely to have joined. Shakespeare would have danced with him, too, and in that “merry moment”—to use an Elizabethan expression — we gain an authentic glimpse of the Elizabethan theatre.
In this same epilogue Shakespeare promises a further episode in the story “with Sir Iohn in it.” But in the succeeding play, Henry V, Falstaff mysteriously disappears and his death off-stage is merely described. There have been many critical and artistic interpretations for this absence, but the true reason may be more prosaic. In the interval between Henry IV, Part Two and Henry V, Will Kempe had left the company. Without the star comic player, there was no point in bringing back Falstaff. There was no one to play him. It is best to remember that the plays of Shakespeare are dependent upon theatrical circumstance. It may go against the current grain of interpretation to see Falstaff as a wholly comic character, complete with dances and extemporal quips; but, again, it is part of the more strident nature of the Elizabethan theatre. Falstaff’s wooden stick, red face and great belly would have immediately reminded the audience of the stock figure of the clown; anachronistically, Falstaff has more than a trace of Punch about him. But the clown was also a theatrical version of the Lord of Misrule, and what better description could there be of Falstaff himself?
When Kempe left the Lord Chamberlain’s Men he performed a “wonder” by dancing all the way from London to Norwich, and described himself in a pamphlet as “Caualiero Kempe, head-master of Morrice-dauncers, high Head-borough of heighs, and onely tricker of your Trill-lilles and best bel-shangles betweene Sion and mount Surrey”2—a sentence suggesting that some elements of English humour have been lost for ever. If he had indeed left after a disagreement with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men it gives added resonance to his address to “My notable Shakerags” in the same pamphlet, by which name he subsumes all of his enemies or “witles beetles-heads” and “block-headships” who had been spreading rumours and slanders about him. In the same place he refers to “a penny Poet whose first making was the miserable stolne story of Macdoel, or Macdobeth, or Macsomewhat: for I am sure a Mac it was.” It is generally assumed that he is not referring to Shakespeare’s Macbeth but, rather, to a ballad on the same subject. Nevertheless it is an interesting allusion.
In the company of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men there were some sixteen actors, including five or six boys who played the female parts. Although there was no guild of actors in sixteenth-century London these boys served an unofficial “apprenticeship”; their training was not fixed at the seven years required in other trades, and its length seems to have varied from three years to twelve years. The boys had a “master” in one of the older actors, with whom they lodged and by whom they were instructed. One contract reveals that the boy, or in fact the boy’s parents, paid a specified sum of £8 so that he could be taken into service; the master then promised to pay his charge 4 pence a day and to teach him “in playinge of interludes and plaies.” The ambition of these stripling players was to rise into the profession by degrees, and if possible become an integral part of the company with whom they were trained. As the wills and estates of Shakespeare’s fellow actors prove, it was about to become a very lucrative employment indeed. The boys were generally treated as part of the master actor’s family, and were often held in great affection by their theatrical parents. Edward Alleyn’s wife wrote to her husband, when he was on tour, asking if “Nicke and Jeames be well & commend them.” Shakespeare could not have had an apprentice because, unlike some of his colleagues, he belonged to no guild.
It is generally believed that only boys played the female roles on the Elizabethan stage, but there is some cause to doubt that assumption. Young adult males possibly took on the mature role of Cleopatra, for example, where the resources of even the most skilful boy might prove ineffectual. That there were very accomplished child actors is not in doubt. In Shakespeare’s company we know that there was a tall fair one and a short dark-haired one, simply because there are references in the texts to that effect. There is a remarkable sequence of comedies in which two girls vie for theatrical attention — Helena and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Portia and Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice, Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing, Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It, Olivia and Viola in Twelfth Night. It seems likely that the same gifted pair of boys played all of these parts, providing further evidence of the extent to which Shakespeare’s art was defined by the potential of his company.