Let me tell you about Shakespeare. In 1585, Shakespeare is
somewhat fucked. Not yet twenty one, he finds himself the husband of a woman
eight years his senior and the father of three children, with little money and
resources to speak of, seemingly destined to carry on in the family trade of
glove-making and live out his days as yet another provincial tradesman and
domestic provider. Which is not to say that such a life is a particularly
tragic one; but, see, Shakespeare doesn't want to be a glove-maker. He wants to
write plays. So the very fact that, in 1592, we find him living in London
having established himself as a young playwright of some repute seems, in light
of his situation seven years prior, something of a miracle.
How Shakespeare achieved this trick – how he managed to
shrug off the strictures of a steady career and his obligations as head of a
household to emerge, unencumbered, as a major player on London’s theatrical
scene – is a question that has puzzled scholars for decades. It’s puzzling to
me even now. How did he convince his wife and kids? Did he call a family
meeting (possibly in one of those obscure Elizabethan rooms they don’t have any
more, like the buttery or the dysentery closet) and declare his intention to
abandon them?
“Well, err, so, I know
the apprenticeship has been coming along nicely, and we’re just about able to make ends meet as it
is, but, you see, I’ve been having a think about it, and I’ve decided the best
thing for all of us is if I move down to London for a while and do my acting
and writing and things. What do we all think?”
“Would we come too Dad?”
“Umm, well, no actually,
I think it would be best if you all stayed up here in Stratford, and I went down and then sent you back money
when I earned any. Of course, I can’t exactly say when that will be, so I suppose you’ll just have to
cross your fingers and hope for the best in the meantime.”
“But Will dear, do you really
think you’ll make enough to support the whole family?”
“Oh, I would imagine so. Besides, Hamnet’s clearly not going
to last much longer, so we shan’t have to set aside much for him. Look at him.
He’s all peaky.”
There are no extant documents from the period that account
for Shakespeare’s situation or whereabouts in the years between 1585 and 1592,
and thus these years are commonly referred to as ‘the lost years’. They have
been the subject of considerable academic study and speculation, and are, at
the moment, a major source of fascination for me personally since, being not
yet twenty one and similarly living in the vain hope of moving to London and
becoming a playwright, I’m desperate to know how the jammy bastard pulled it
off.
True, Shakespeare was faced with several hurdles that I’m
lucky enough to have avoided. I don’t have the wife and kids to worry about, and
no matter how pessimistic you might chose to be about Britain’s transport
system, it’s plainly much quicker and easier to make it down south via Virgin
Pendolino that it is on the back of, say, a malnourished mare (even if the latter
might offer you more legroom. Ho ho ho). Still, Shakespeare never had to endure
twenty plus years of cultural conditioning in concepts such as ‘employability’
and ‘financial security’, and so the decision to up sticks and leave a steady
job behind to try to make a living scribbling poetry was probably more tenable than
it seems today. Put it this way; if getting stabbed to death in a tavern brawl
or developing plague are realistic, day-to-day concerns, you probably don’t
feel as much need to worry about whether you’ve got enough names on your CV for
‘Plan B’.
But as inconceivable as Shakespeare’s career trajectory seems
to modern eyes, it gives me hope to think that, as he reached a position of some security, and from which the remainder of his progression through
life seemed mapped and certain, he instead chose to become perhaps the least
typical human being in British history. I find comfort in the notion that, as
he stood at his workbench practising how to thread a welt through the seam of a
fourchette, with the clamour of his wife and children ringing in his ears, his
mind was not fixated on the burden of responsibility he shouldered, or on the many long
identical years of labour he faced, but instead was bristling with ideas and
poetic constructions; ‘a rose by any other name’, ‘to be or not to be’, all
that jazz.
In this spirit, having left the prolonged gestation period more commonly known as higher education, I’ve decided to dub the forthcoming years of
my existence ‘the lost years’. Partly to render any seeming setbacks or disappointments
as somehow excusable, or even beneficial (‘Hey, it doesn’t matter that I’m twenty
five and living in my parent’s basement, I’m in my lost years), and partly to convince/delude
myself that, in all my aimlessness, I’m heading towards some eventual goal.
Whatever it might be.
In the meantime, I’ve decided to give the blog a bit of a
reboot, and will hopefully be updating it much more frequently than it has been
in the past few months. If you’re a fan of this sort of thing, keep an eye out.
And if you fancy supporting me in my lost years, you could do
a lot worse than to come and see the Edinburgh fringe show I’ve written (https://www.edfringe.com/whats-on/theatre/gabe-day), on from
the 2nd to the 17th of August, which promises to be, at
the very least, charmingly shambolic. Failing that, a ticket to Euston on a
Virgin Pendolino would suit me just fine.
