Shakespeare’s Company visit Leicester

‘At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester’

(Henry VIII, 4.2.17)

By Dr Siobhan Keenan, Reader in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, De Montfort University, Leicester

In the early modern period Leicester was one of the most important cities in the East Midlands and a regular stopping point for touring players on their way to and from London.

Shakespeare’s company came to the city a number of times in the early seventeenth century, but the first evidence we have of a possible visit dates from 1606 when the city’s Chamberlain’s accounts include a deleted payment to the troupe of 40 shillings.

It’s not clear why the payment was crossed out. It could mean that the King’s players did not visit at this time or, simply, that the troupe was not paid by the Chamberlain on this occasion. However, if the King’s Men did come to Leicester in 1606 it would have been the only visit that the troupe is recorded as making to the city during Shakespeare’s lifetime.

It’s not clear if Shakespeare still routinely went on tour with his fellow King’s Men in the early 1600s but if the players were in the city in 1606 there’s a chance that he would have been part of the troupe.

Later records in the city’s accounts confirm that the King’s Men visited the city on several occasions after Shakespeare’s death, including in 1619, when they were rewarded with a gift of one pound.

By this time, Shakespeare had been dead for several years, but there is a strong likelihood that one or more of his plays remained in the touring repertory, just as they remained in the company’s London repertory.

By Dr Siobhan Keenan - Reader in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at De Montfort University, Leicester

If the King’s Men did visit Leicester in 1606 they would have had the option of performing a variety of Shakespeare’s plays before the local people, his newest works including plays such as his dark comedy, All’s Well that Ends Well (c.1604-5) and his historical tragedy, King Lear (1604-5).

John Kemble as Richard III © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

During 1605 we know that the King’s Men performed revivals of The Merchant of Venice and Henry V at court, too, so there’s a chance that these were also in the touring repertory.

By 1619, however, when the players are definitely recorded in the town, they would have had the option of performing any of Shakespeare’s plays.

Had the company wished to appeal to local interests, either in 1606 or during one of their later visits, they might have chosen to revive Shakespeare’s Richard III (1592-3). Already a proven success on-stage and in print, Shakespeare’s early history play was renowned for its memorable dramatization of the rise and fall of the last Plantagenet king; but it was also a play known for its Leicester connection, the historical Richard III having been famously buried beneath the city’s Greyfriars Abbey, after his defeat at the battle of Bosworth (1485).

A revival of Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Guildhall, which stood only a few streets away from the demolished Abbey, might well have had special resonance for the players as well as their civic audiences in Jacobean Leicester.