He was an actor, as well as the greatest dramatist of all time, but no-one has been able to name with certainty a single role that William Shakespeare performed himself. Now a leading scholar has concluded from linguistic analysis that Shakespeare played an obsessively jealous husband in a 1598 drama by fellow playwright Ben Jonson.
Dr Darren Freebury-Jones, a lecturer in Shakespeare studies at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in Stratford-upon-Avon, has discovered âstriking similaritiesâ between phrases recited by Thorello in Every Man in His Humour and those in Shakespeareâs Othello, Hamlet and Twelfth Night.
He told the Guardian: âWhat Iâve found are some really interesting connections in terms of language, which suggest that Shakespeare was, perhaps unconsciously, remembering his own lines.â
Elizabethan actors generally did not have copies of an entire play. Instead, their scripts were limited to their particular lines and their cues â just the last few words of preceding speeches.
Freebury-Jones said: âPlayers like Shakespeare would therefore need to be alert during performance, relying heavily on their aural understanding. So there was a real emphasis on listening during the period â¦
âThe grammatical patterning and likenesses of thought between his lines and those of Thorello â renamed Kitely in Jonsonâs revision â suggest that Shakespeare was intimately familiar with that role. But Shakespeare, being a genius, takes another dramatistâs feathers and transforms them into a peacock.â
Singling out examples, Freebury-Jones said: âIn Jonsonâs play, youâve got Bianca, unfortunate wife of the jealous Thorello, who suspects sheâs having an affair. She says: âFor Godâs sake, sweetheart, come in out of the air,â to which Thorello responds with an aside: âHow simple and how subtle are her answers?â In Hamlet, Polonius asks: âWill you walk out of the air, my lord?â, to which Hamlet responds: âInto my grave.â Polonius says: âIndeed, that is out oâthâ air.â He then offers an aside: âHow pregnant sometimes his replies are.â The corresponding structures and similarities in context are striking. Is this a case of Shakespeare remembering one of his cue-lines and an aside?â
He added: âShakespeare seems to have recalled another of Thorelloâs asides: âSpite of the devil, how they sting my heart,â for Mariaâs speech in Twelfth Night: âLa you, an you speak ill of the devil, how he takes it at heart.â The grammatical structure is very similar and the unique word string, âof the devil howâ, embraces the noun âheartâ. Are we witnessing Shakespeareâs recall of lines he delivered on stage here?
âShakespeare also remembered Thorelloâs line: âThey would give out, because my wife is fair,â when he depicted Othelloâs destructive jealousy: ââTis not to make me jealous / To say my wife is fair.â Shakespeare inverts Thorelloâs comic jealousy in his similarly named tragic protagonist Othello.â
Freebury-Jones found that other comparative phrases were ânowhere near as contextually interesting as those shared with Thorelloâ.
He observed that scholars had not been certain of any particular roles that Shakespeare took as an actor: âThereâs oral traditions connecting him to the role of the ghost of Hamletâs father and an old man named Adam in As You Like It. We know he acted in his own plays because the 1623 First Folio tells us, but it does not confirm any specific role he took. We also know he acted in two plays by Jonson as a cast list printed in the 1616 Jonson Folio shows that Shakespeare was one of the principal players in Every Man in his Humour and that he was also listed among the principal tragedians in Sejanus. But again the documentary evidence does not specify roles.â
He said: âI canât say that Shakespeare definitely played Thorello, but this is new evidence. No-oneâs ever discovered it before. I think it makes an interesting, quite compelling case. Itâs great to bring attention to Shakespeare as an actor, as well as a playwright. Acting was absolutely crucial to his literary career.â
His discoveries will feature in his forthcoming book, titled Shakespeareâs Borrowed Feathers: How Early Modern Playwrights Shaped the Worldâs Greatest Writer, to be published by Manchester University Press in October. It will explore Shakespeareâs relationships with other playwrights, their influences and collaborations.
The research involved an electronic database called âCollocations and N-gramsâ, which compares the texts of more than 500 plays dating from 1552 to 1657, showing whether particular phrases are rare or unique.
Freebury-Jones established that âout of the air ⦠howâ is, for example, unique to Jonson and Shakespeare in that database.
Modern technology could transport us to the past, perhaps enabling us âto picture Shakespeare treading the boardsâ, he said.