Good Morning!

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Welcome to The Coffee Shop, just for you early risers on Monday mornings. This is an Open Thread forum, so if you have an off-topic opinion burning a hole in your brainpan, feel free to add a comment.
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Pleasure and action make the hours seem short.
— William Shakespeare, Othello, Act II, scene 3

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Timelines fascinate me, as much for what they leave out as for what they include. And any timelines for William Shakespeare have significant gaps. There are lots of theories about those gaps, but not a lot in the way of actual evidence.

Very little is known about Shakespeare’s “Lost Years” from 1585 to 1592. In considering Shakespeare’s sonnets, we have even less to go on than there is for his plays, which at least have “first known performance dates” so we can be certain they were written before those dates.

It’s generally believed that most, but not all, of Shakespeare’s sonnets were written before 1599. We can know for certain that all of them were written by 1609, the year they were published, and also the year Shakespeare turned 45. In those times, if you were lucky enough to live through all the diseases that killed so many infants and children, you might make it to your early sixties, but Shakespeare would only last another seven years. He was either already semi-retired to Stratford, or about to leave London. In 1610, he wrote this, for Prospero’s final speech in The Tempest:  

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s mine own,
Which is most faint.

Looking at several timelines, I came across this gem:

1590 — Shakespeare’s writing career begins ^{(age 26)}

Which falls between:

1585 —  Twins Hamnet and Judith are born (likely named for Shakespeare’s friends Hamnet and Judith Sadler, possibly the children’s godparents) ^{(age 21)}

and

circa 1590-1596 — Writes King Richard III ^{(age 26-32)}

Could even Shakespeare have suddenly picked up a pen at age 26 and started work as a writer with Richard III?

“Shakespeare’s writing career begins” is almost comparable to “Athena sprang full-grown and in full armor from Zeus’ skull.”

Especially since the next entry is:

1591-1593 — Writes King Henry V  ^{(age 27-29)}

followed by:

1592 — The earliest known record of Shakespeare’s residency in London; in a critical piece included in a posthumous collection of the writings of Robert Greene, Groat’s-worth of Wit, there is an allusion to Shakespeare’s theatrical and literary career ^{(age 28)}

and:

1593 — London’s theatres are closed down for a period of about 2 years, due to plague ^{(age 29-31)}

but which is somewhat contradicted by the next entry:

1594 — The Chamberlain’s Men (later the King’s Men), Shakespeare’s first known company, is formed to give performances at the Theatre in Shoreditch (built in 1576) ^{(age 30)}

I’m convinced that the bard of the sonnets must have tried his hand at love poems long before age 26. By age 18, he had at least a sexual relationship with Anne Hathaway which led to a hasty wedding and the birth of daughter Susanna six months later.

While a household with three young children might not be an ideal place to begin a writing career, that has certainly been overcome by a number of women authors. But was Shakespeare still in Stratford-Upon-Avon in 1590, or had he already left?

Sonnet 129 The expense of spirit is a waste of shame

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action: and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad.
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
. . . All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
. . . To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Of course, there’s no way to know, but I think Shakespeare left home some time before his “writing career begins” in 1590. He needed time to acquire experiences that would fuel his imagination. Was he a soldier, as he seems to have such understanding of a soldier’s thoughts before battle in Henry V ? Or perhaps he was a tutor in some minor noble’s household, which would account for his having some knowledge about genteel society, but not so much about its upper-most echelons?

Or am I right, and he made his way to London, and became Christopher  Marlowe’s ghostly apprentice? Marlowe could certainly have introduced a newly arrived young man to London’s homosexual society, which might account for the “fair youth” sonnets.

Yet the very first sonnet presents a problem with that possibility. If Shakespeare were involved in a homosexual affair, would he be urging his lover to have sex with a woman in order to father a child to pass on his beauty?  Especially when Shakespeare himself had left behind his wife and children?

Sonnet 1 From fairest creatures we desire increase

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So the mystery of Shakespeare’s offstage life and loves remains. And who did
get his best bed?

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Visuals

• Possible portrait of Anne Hathaway Shakespeare
• View of London from Southwark in the 1600s
• Miniature of a young man, possibly Sir Philip Sydney
• Flora, goddess of spring, first century Italian fresco from Villa di Arianna