Small towns big on Shakespeare

New Romney’s population around William Shakespeare’s time is only thought to have been around 200-300 people. Yet Shakespeare’s company visited this tiny place at least three times between 1609 and 1615.

The fact that the town already had already hosted a series of large-scale passion plays in Elizabethan times had established its reputation for having a fine taste in historical drama.

If Shakespeare himself had been travelling with his troupe on its final visit to New Romney around 1615/16, it would have been a rare and late chance to see him before his death in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1616.

Town records show that Shakespeare’s Company visited New Romney as The King’s Men in 1609 (when the town authorities paid them £1), 1612 (when they were paid another £1) and 1615-16 (when 2 shillings 8 pence was spent on entertaining them).

We do not know where the players performed, but they were rewarded by the city authorities, so there is a good chance that they gave at least one performance before the local mayor and freemen of the town, perhaps at the old town or market house (now lost).

In other communities it was usual for local people to be invited to see the ‘mayor’s play’. This may have happened in New Romney, too, in which case The King’s Men’s performance could have been seen by a large part of this small community.

The records don’t tell us which plays Shakespeare’s company performed, but in 1609 their touring repertory probably included his latest plays Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale, plays that reflect Shakespeare’s new interest in the genre of romance or tragicomedy – a genre that was also currently fashionable on the stages of London.

In 1611 we know that Shakespeare’s company performed Macbeth, Cymbeline and The Winter’s Tale at the Globe Theatre in London (as astrologist-cum-quack physician Simon Forman has left us descriptions of the performances he witnessed of these plays); and the company performed The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale at Court (1611-12).

This could mean that these plays were also in the touring repertory and available for performance in New Romney in 1612, while in 1615-16 the company would have had the option of performing any of Shakespeare’s plays, as all of them had been written by this time.

By Alan Somerset, Professor Emeritus, University of Western Ontario

Bans on travelling players didn't happen frequently, but they did happen.

Professor Alan Somerset

We see it happening in Hythe in Kent, but it took place too in other parts of the country, even in Shakespeare’s home town of Stratford-upon-Avon!

Sometimes there were blanket bans - playing was simply forbidden anyplace in a town. Word would get around among the travelling troupes who would simply go elsewhere, somewhere where there would be a welcome.

Sometimes a restriction would be put on playing in, say, the town hall, or a prohibition against any town funds being spent on playing. Then the players could play in another venue, such as an inn.

At Stratford they banned the use of town funds, and any part of the Guildhall buildings or grounds - this would not prevent players from setting up in an inn. What is remarkable at Stratford is the hysterical tone of the second ban, and the HUGE fine that was to be levied - this was rethought a few months later when saner heads prevailed.

Why did these bans occur, in whatever form we find them? There are a number of ostensible reasons, such as town poverty or fear of the spread of plague, but behind many of them was an unspoken motive: Puritanism. This was behind events in Stratford (which had, at different times, markedly Puritan clergy) and Hythe.

The other thing about these bans was that they were by definition impermanent - a council, in any year, was free to amend or undo the decrees of a predecessor council. But in practice there was great continuity of personnel on councils from year to year, so changes might come about only slowly. Or a council might decide to make an exception.

It is also apparent that hostility to players became more widespread as time went on and Puritan sentiment became more widespread. Then came the Civil Wars, when Parliament banned playing altogether, everywhere.

Dr James Gibson, REED editor of Kent:

On June 26 1610 a fight broke out in a Tonbridge playhouse and a man called Edward Calverley received a fatal stab wound to the head.

Tonbridge Castle (Image courtesy of Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council)

The question of who committed the killing was resolved in a court of law a year later. But for historians, another mystery was why a small town such as Tonbridge should afford itself a playhouse, a rare thing outside of London at the time.

More tantalisingly perhaps: was it in fact Shakespeare’s troupe The King’s Men who were performing when the fatal assault took place?

We know that Tonbridge had a close connection with two powerful barons who also supported Elizabethan players and playhouses. These two men, Henry and George Carey, together sponsored Shakespeare’s company The Lord Chamberlain’s Men.

The town was also granted, by royal consent, permissions to hold three annual fairs in Tonbridge – events which drew large crowds from surrounding villages, and guaranteed an audience at the playhouse for touring troupes such as Shakespeare’s.

We also know from records that Shakespeare’s men were touring Kent during 1610, so were they visiting Tonbridge at this time of the midsummer fair, when as the inquest report noted there was a fatal stabbing in “a certain house called a playhouse”.

Unfortunately the town did not have a mayor at the time and did not keep annual accounts and records of payments, so the evidence remains circumstantial.