ABSTRACT
This chapter explains about the Richard Burbage who plays all the lead roles in Shakespeare's company and was at ease and at home. But some playgoers may have recalled some recent events, of deadly seriousness, when the theatre's supposed power to inspire its audience to reflection and then action had been an important element of an attempted coup d'tat aimed at Queen Elizabeth herself, led by Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. They would have recalled a notorious performance earlier that year of Shakespeare's Richard II commissioned by the insurgents as a provocative signal for their rebellion. In Hamlet, the later scene where a company of actors, the Tragedians of the City', perform The Murder of Gonzago at the court of King Claudius of Denmark, is where Shakespeare examines the power of the stage to provoke political violence: the very issue at the heart of the story of Richard II and the Essex Rebellion.
