‘A curse o’ these pickled herring!’ – Will Kemp as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night

This article challenges the prevailing belief that Shakespeare’s famous shareholder clown, Will Kemp, left the Chamberlain’s Men in 1599 due to animosity; arguing that Kemp continued performing with Shakespeare’s company as a ‘hireling’ clown and was the performer who first played Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night (1601). Drawing on financial records, biographical evidence, and textual analysis, this article suggests Kemp’s departure in 1599 was driven by financial instability, perhaps linked to his gambling. It shows how Kemp seemed to remain on good terms with the Chamberlain’s Men, and when Kemp returned to London from travelling Europe in September 1601, this placed him in the right place at the right time to help Shakespeare develop his new comedy Twelfth Night. The article identifies several intertextual parallels between Sir Toby’s lines and Kemp’s personal vocabulary as additional evidence that supports this, and notes that Sir Toby’s mysterious early exit from the final scene of Twelfth Night matches the structure of six other plays where Kemp was required to prepare for dancing the raucous jig in the postlude; a professional requirement that may in turn have required the inclusion of the otherwise superfluous character of Fabian.