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CATZ RESEARCH
Bart van Es Fellow & Tutor in English
Earlier this term, Bart van Es marked the
publication of his latest book, Shakespeare
in Company, with a launch in the College’s
Mary Sunley Building. Based on research
into hundreds of manuscripts and plays by
Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the
book seeks to address how Shakespeare’s
working conditions affected his artistic
development.
Bart van Es’s new book examines the way
that Shakespeare’s plays were shaped by
the influence of his contemporaries. It tells
the story of how the playwright’s work was
transformed by his decision in 1594 to become
a shareholder in an acting company, a decision
that would make him wealthier than any other
playwright and would also give him a new
kind of artistic control. Bart argues that it was
above all the events of 1594 that separated
Shakespeare from the literary mainstream.
Close contact over many years with the
same set of actors allowed the dramatist
to develop what the book terms ‘relational’
drama, in which a large group of characters
retain consistent physical distinctiveness plus
a ‘memory’ of what other characters have
done. This kind of drama differed from that
of Shakespeare’s contemporaries and had not
been written before.
Bart van Es’s book splits the playwright’s
career into four phases. The first looks at
Shakespeare’s life and work before he became
a sharer. It argues that in early compositions
like Titus Andronicus, the Henry VI plays, or
The Rape of Lucrece Shakespeare’s style was
very close to that of his contemporaries, such
as Christopher Marlowe and George Peele.
Using surviving letters and other manuscripts,
Bart sets out the nature of everyday working
practice in the early modern theatre. During
this period Shakespeare collaborated closely
with his fellow playwrights, often producing
co-written plays.
After 1594 Shakespeare’s working practice
became very different, but the exact makeup
of the acting company did not stay the
same. The rest of the book charts these
developments, showing how the arrival of
new actors and the purchase of the Globe
playhouse had a direct impact on the way
Shakespeare wrote. Rivalry with other acting
companies is also part of this picture. Most
important, there was competition with the
new children’s theatres, which established
themselves in the capital at the start of
the seventeenth century. The child actors,
whom Hamlet calls ‘little eyases’, are directly
addressed in Shakespeare’s drama. The
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