When was shakespeares hidden years

Regardless of what happened during these years, we do know that he found himself an established playwright in London by , as his plays began to be produced. Help keep Shakespeare's story alive. More like this. Go behind the scenes. Theater Expert. Lee Jamieson, M.

He previously served as a theater studies lecturer at Stratford-upon Avon College in the United Kingdom. Featured Video. Cite this Article Format. Jamieson, Lee. Discover the Mysterious Shakespeare Lost Years. A Timeline of William Shakespeare's Life. An Introduction to Shakespearean Sonnets. The Shakespeare Authorship Controversy Continues. New Place, Shakespeare's Final Home. Shakespeare's New Year and Christmas Quotes.

Your Privacy Rights. The theory goes that the group, now down by one man, moved onto Stratford where a certain budding young actor called William Shakespeare was - as John Nettles says - "taken on board to replace the William Knell who'd been murdered, and the company took him with them on the rest of the tour and then back to London". A deliciously scandal-laden theory, certainly, but did it really happen that way? Here's yet another theory: that Shakespeare actually served as a soldier or sailor during the lost years.

This was an era when Protestant England was under threat from Catholic forces, and when the Spanish Armada was launched on its doomed attempt to take the nation. Men were enlisted to defend these shores, so might Shakespeare have been one of them? Some historians point to sections of the plays - particularly the recruitment sequence in Henry IV Part 2 - as "evidence" of his knowledge of the military. Though this could equally have been down to research.

One of the most controversial theories about Shakespeare is that he was a secret Catholic. That would have put him in a very dangerous position in Elizabethan England, but could he have made a religious pilgrimage to Rome itself? As ever, the evidence is far from solid, although there is a 16th Century guestbook in Rome which some believe shows three separate signatures by Shakespeare.

And so many of Shakespeare's plays, from The Merchant of Venice to Romeo and Juliet, have Italian settings, which may be a sign he knew the culture first-hand. Or maybe not.