Shakespeare's early playwriting was interrupted by a bout of the plague in London, in response to which the theatres were closed by the authorities. It was at this point, under the generous and prestigious patronage of Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare wrote his two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and the Rape of Lucrece. However, by 1594 he was back in the world of the theatre, as part of The Lord Chamberlain's Men which had taken on the patronage of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, after the death of Lord Strange, a year earlier. This company performed now at the Theatre at Shoreditch, outside the city wall of London, leaving Philip Henslowe's Rose Theatre to The Admiral's Men, who were to be their main .






