Roaring Boys by Judith Cook

such a situation might well have afforded him the opportunity of a lifetime, the chance to learn his new trade on the road for he, like George Peele, was an actor as well as a playwright. There was also another link with the Knell-Towne fight. Shortly before his death, Knell had married a Rebecca Edwards who, a year later, after a decent interval, then married the actor John Hemings, one of Shakespeare’s closest friends as well as a colleague. Whatever the real truth of the matter, whether on his own on foot or on horseback, or as part of the company of the Queen’s Men, Shakespeare was almost certainly in town to see one of the early performances of
Tamburlaine
.
    While their original backgrounds might have been very alike, the characters and personalities of the two young men could hardly have been more dissimilar. Throughout his short life Marlowe was flamboyant, outrageous in his behaviour and opinions, given to outbursts of violence, and courting danger; it was as if from the first he was programmed to self-destruct. Shakespeare, on the other hand, was cautious and hardworking, carefully investing the money he made in property both in London and Stratford, given to romantic attachments and, politically, keeping his head down. But both gave us some of the most wonderful verse ever written.
    So, by one means or another, all our first wave of dramatists and their associates, the poets, essayists and pamphleteers, were ensconced in London by Armada year, objects of both envy and antipathy. There are plenty of examples today of how sudden recognition and fame affects those previously unused to either. To be shot from the obscurity of a distant town or village or the backstreets of London and find your name on every poster or billboard as the writer of the play about which everyone is talking is heady stuff – not to mention that with such fame or notoriety come all the trappings, from fans plying you with drink every time you set foot in a tavern and would-be poets hanging on your every word, to women from all walks of life throwing themselves at you. The nearest analogy today is that of the star footballer or pop idol. It is hardly surprising therefore that there were those who would be destroyed by it.

THREE
A Theatre for the People
    All the world’s a stage
And all the men and women merely players . . .
    As You Like It
, II, vii
    T he new breed of playwrights was to produce a new breed of actor. We know very little of the actors who played in the early companies unless, like Knell and Towne, they brought attention on themselves for reasons other than by their performances, but with the emergence of more professional companies based in the playhouses and using the services of professional writers, there emerged the actors whose names have come down to us through the centuries, the two greatest of which in their day were Edward Alleyn and Richard Burbage.
    Alleyn was born on 1 September 1566 to a Bishopsgate publican who died when Alleyn was four. Shortly afterwards his mother remarried, his new stepfather being a haberdasher. Obviously neither trade appealed to him and what attracted him to the acting profession is not known, but by the time he was sixteen young Edward was touring in Leicestershire with the Earl of Worcester’s Company, possibly having joined them first as an apprentice. We know he was in Leicester at this time because he was hauled up with the rest of the players before the local Justices as the company claimed to have lost or mislaid its vital Licence to Perform, which also set out the details of its patron. They had been brought to court because, in spite of this and in defiance of the Lord Mayor of Leicester who presumably had demanded to see it, they went ahead and performed their plays anyway. Afterwards, when they had been suitably admonished, they apologised to his worship and begged him not to tell their patron. 1
    Richard Burbage was born about a year later into the first truly theatrical