Leicester's company under new
patronage.

Lord Leicester's company spent the greater part of the years between
1585-86 and 1589 performing in the provinces. The records of its
provincial visits outnumber all of those recorded for the other three
companies concerned in the reorganisation of 1589. If Shakespeare acted
at all in these early years he must have done so merely incidentally.
When we bear in mind the volume and quality of his literary productions,
between 1591 and 1594, it becomes evident that his novitiate in dramatic
affairs in the dark years, between 1585-86 and 1592, was of a literary
rather than of an histrionic character, though he also acted in those
years. He would have found little time for dramatic composition or study
during these years had he accompanied Lord Leicester's company in their
provincial peregrinations. Bearing in mind his later habit of revising
earlier work it is not unlikely that some of his dramatic work, which
from internal and external evidence we now date between 1591 and 1594,
is rewritten or revised work originally produced before 1591.

It is palpable that Shakespeare had not been previously affiliated with
Lord Strange's acrobats, nor a member of the Lord Admiral's company, and
evident, in view of the above facts and deductions, as well as of his
future close and continuous connection with James Burbage, that his
inceptive years in London were spent in his service, working in various
capacities in his business and dramatic interests. It is apparent that
between 1586-87 and 1588-89 Shakespeare worked for James Burbage as a
bonded and hired servant. In Henslowe's _Diary_ there are several
instances of such bonds with hired servants, and covenant servants,
covering terms of years--usually from two to three--between Henslowe and
men connected with the Lord Admiral's company. It shall be shown later
that Nashe in his preface to Greene's _Menaphon_ alludes to Shakespeare
in this capacity.

The title of _Johannes factotum_, which Greene, in 1592, bestowed upon
Shakespeare, as well as the term "rude groome," which he inferentially
applies to him, when coupled with the tradition collected by Nicholas
Rowe, his earliest biographer, who writes: "He was received into the
company then in being, at first, in a very mean rank, but his admirable
wit, and the natural turn of it to the stage, soon distinguished him,
if not as an extraordinary actor, yet as an excellent writer," all point
to a