Caludon Castle: Did Shakespeare perform here for ‘Henry the Harmless’?

It’s June 1593, and a group of actors – possibly including Shakespeare himself - are about to perform for a 16th century Lord of the Manor with a reputation for enjoying the high life.

In fact, Lord Henry Berkeley is so wrapped up with the business of enjoying himself from his adopted home of Caludon Castle near Coventry, that his reputation among the movers and shakers of his day at the London court was to lead to him being branded 'Lord Henry the Harmless'.

Inside Berkeley Castle (Credit: Berkeley Castle)

Lord Berkeley paid a considerable sum of 40 shillings to the Earl of Pembroke’s players as a reward for performing at the castle

It may sound like an episode from the BBC Children’s TV series Horrible Histories, but we know for a fact that on June 21 1593, Lord Berkeley paid a considerable sum of 40 shillings to the Earl of Pembroke’s players as a reward for performing at the castle.

This particular troupe of actors had several Shakespeare plays in their repertory at the time: Titus Andronicus, versions 2 and 3 of Henry VI and The Taming of the Shrew. The company had performed at court during the previous Christmas season but had taken to the road when the plague closed the London playhouses in February 1593… a tour which has since become known as Shakespeare’s 'Plague Tour'.

Their itinerary ranged from Rye to York but focused where their patron, the Earl of Pembroke, had greatest influence through his position as Lord President of the Council in parts of Wales: Shrewsbury, Ludlow, Bewdley, Coventry and Caludon.

We don’t know for certain which play or plays Pembroke’s Men performed for Henry Berkeley, but the Shakespeare plays were certainly more likely choices than another play in their repertory, Marlowe’s Edward II.

Marlowe’s play concludes with the imprisonment and brutal murder of King Edward II at… Berkeley Castle. One cannot imagine that Lord Henry would have enjoyed being reminded of that particular episode in his family’s history.

Lord Henry Berkeley received Pembroke’s players at Caludon Castle because the title to his family’s ancestral home at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire had been in dispute since the early fifteenth century.

The Crown controlled the estate until James I finally restored it to Henry Berkeley in 1609. Caludon Castle came into the Berkeley's possession by marriage in the fifteenth century, and in the 1590s, perhaps discouraged about ever returning to Berkeley, Lord Henry was rebuilding Caludon as a residence fit for a noble of his stature.

That stature was not, however, so great as Henry thought it was. Although in the 1560s he had been one of the richest men in England, by 1593 he had spent a sizeable part of his fortune on legal proceedings to regain ownership of Berkeley Castle and squandered much of the rest.

According to his own estate manager and biographer, John Smyth of Nibley, Henry Berkeley "tooke too great a delight’ in music, hunting, and gambling on ‘bowles tenis Cockpit Shufgrote cards and dice" (Smyth ii, 362-4).

He never wielded much influence at court, leading Smyth to nickname him ‘Lord Henry the Harmelesse.’

Peter Greenfield, REED editor of Gloucestershire and Hampshire