Shakespeare: The Lost Years :: European History Research

Shakespeare: The Lost Years On February 2, 1585, William Shakespeare's twins Hamnet and Judith were baptized in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-Upon-Avon. In 1592 the poet Robert Greene alluded to Shakespeare in his pamphlet "A Groatsworth of Wit Bought With a Million of Repentance." The period between these two dates is known as the "Lost Years" or "The Dark Years" because of the total lack of hard evidence as to what William Shakespeare was doing during this time. Sometime during this period he left home, wife, and three children in Stratford and began his stage career in London. Scholars have long attempted to determine how and why this decision was made, and countless theories have been proposed. It is my hypothesis that Shakespeare, like countless other Englishmen, was caught up in the national crisis caused by the threat of the Spanish Armada during the summer of 1587 and was either drafted into the militia or volunteered for duty to protect his homeland from the threat of foreign invasion. In shor t, he became a soldier, was posted to the London area, and was discharged when the threat was ended. Once the boy had seen the big city, it is hard to send him back to the farm. Before supporting the hypothesis of Shakespeare's possible military activity, it would be useful to briefly look at some of the other theories which have been advanced to account for the lost years. One such is that he had been a schoolmaster during part of this time. The main evidence is based on a statement by a theatrical manager named William Beeston who was unquestionably associated with Shakespeare during his career in London. It is a reasonable and possible hypothesis which could account for part of the seven missing years. A less probable tradition has him as a runaway apprentice, but there is no solid, believable evidence to support this legend. Another widely believed tradition which is almost certainly false is that he left Stratford to avoid prosecution for deer poaching. This theory was broadly based on a rumor involving the Lucy family's deer park. The entire story falls apart because of the simple fact that the Lucys did not have a deer park during the time Shakespeare was in Stratford and indeed did not have one until late in the seventeenth century.