building up the support cast

I learnt to value timelines when I was a student at Sheffield University studying physical geography.  A grasp of geological ages was essential.  Eventually, I moved from the university to the Central of School of Speech and Drama in London. I found I was better at acting than I was at writing academic accounts. It was the writing that I found so difficult, not my lack of interest in rocks, crystals and old maps.

(apropos of nothing very much here is a picture)

Time lines next became important to me when I trained to be a psychological counsellor.  This was in Cambridge, after my wife, Marianne, had died. My partner, a psychologist, had suggested that such a course would help me understand the process of grief, and maybe lead to a new profession.  The process of acting on stage with Marianne who had had no more than a few months to live had put me off theatre for a while.  During counselling exercises I found that to make notes of important events in ‘clients’’ lives helped define the moment of the initial trauma.  A timeline of my own life had proved helpful.

It was when I was well on the way to becoming a registered counsellor that I realised that my previous life in the theatre was returning and making inappropriate demands – I dropped counselling like a hot brick.  Holding a prime interest in drama can seriously endanger the outcome of any psychological intervention. However, what skills remained with me added to my understanding of what Shakespeare may well have experienced after losing his one and only son. 

Because so little is known about William Shakespeare I looked to get fun out of imagining what those near to him, and about whom we do have information, might have had to say about him.  My first attempt was to jot down imaginary conversations between Sir Robert Cecil, Minister of State, and Edmund Tilney, Master of the Queen’s Revels, both of whom would have had dealing with my hero.  It wasn’t long before other men and women of the time crept into my head and demanded a say.

A structure was required on which to hang these jottings, now fast becoming stories.  Not surprisingly, I turned to creating a timeline.  It began several years before William was born and stopped several years after he had died.  I filled it up with detailed information about international and national events, the lives of people in Court and, of course, of plays and players.