The Poet Finds a Patron

Abstract

The decisive period in Shakespeare’s life and career, in the development of his art with the opportunities opening before him, came with his finding a patron in 1591 and the intense, inspiring and inspired three years that followed. Things would have taken a very different course if it had not been for this providential good fortune. There might have been disaster, as with those other poets who perished in these years with their work unfinished: Greene himself, Watson, Kyd, Peele, Marlowe. For plague struck the theatre-folk and exposed writers a cruel blow in 1592; this was dangerous enough in itself, but things took an even more serious turn in 1593 when the visitation, quite exceptionally, raged for a second year in succession.