William Shakespeare by S.L. Bensusan — Read

At this point in Shakespeare's career he lost his first royal patron. Queen Elizabeth, whose long and fateful reign drew to its appointed close on March 24, 1603. The poet gave to the world no expression of grief at her loss. Perhaps he could not do so in loyalty to his first and well-beloved patron, Henry Wriothesley, who still languished in prison for his complicity in the Essex rising of two years before. There had been times in his career when, through no fault of his own, Shakespeare had been looked upon with suspicion, and it may have been that the path to royal patronage had been at times a thorny and difficult one. In any case Elizabeth's generosity had been limited; she had not intervened to check the attack upon the theatres by the "unco guid" of London in 1601, when, but for the supineness of the Surrey and Middlesex magistrates, the poet's financial prosperity might have met with a serious set-back. Here, as in so many other places, we are too far from the time to see the truth clearly, and those who seek to fill in the shadowy outline of the poet's life must rely upon such conjecture as may have been put forward in good faith by the people who were nearer to him. King James loved the theatre; Queen Elizabeth tolerated it; nor must it be forgotten that in the days when the poet's star was in the ascendant his royal mistress had seen the greater glories of her reign and was entering upon her declining years, not without many troubles and much sorrow to mark the last milestones of the road.

One of the first acts of King James's reign was to confer special rights upon the Lord Chamberlain's company, of which the poet was a prominent member. Henceforward he was one of "The King's Servants," and the King took a special interest in Shakespeare's plays, which were often performed before him. Unhappily the plague drove the Court from London in the autumn of 1603 to the Earl of Pembroke's seat at Wilton; but in 1604, when the Court returned to London, Shakespeare was first of the nine actors who walked in the royal procession, and received a gift of scarlet cloth for the making of a cloak worthy the occasion. Many other honours followed. Great State occasions called for plays; Shakespeare's were chosen, and his company acted them. The scenic art began to receive a rather belated attention -- in short, there was all the requisite stimulus for a man of genius, and the poet responded to it nobly.