The world of the theater was fluid. Scripts of plays were seldom printed or saved, so that we have records of hundreds of play titles but no idea what they were about because the texts have been lost. In the same way no records were usually kept of which actors played which parts. Shakespeare seems to have been associated with several acting companies in the period between 1588 and 1592, including the Lord Admiral's Men and Lord Strange's Men. (Acting companies sought noble patrons as a way of providing some protection from overzealous local officials seeking to shut down the theaters.) During this period Shakespeare established his reputation as a playwright because in 1592 he was attacked for his plays.

Robert Greene was a university-trained playwright and hack writer. Just before his death in 1592 he wrote a scathing attack on some of his fellow writers. He heaped his bitterest scorn on an "upstart crow" whom he accused of stealing material from his intellectual superiors. (Crows were notorious for stealing from other birds' nests and were associated with the countryside where Shakespeare had come from.) Greene made fun of this amateur writer, calling him a "Johannes Factotum," a jack-of-all-trades. The thing about this "Shakes-scene" which offended Greene the most was that he was a mere actor who presumed to be a writer. Using a parody of a famous line from one of Shakespeare's plays about King Henry VI, Greene referred to his unknown target as a "tiger wrapped in the hide of an actor." For a university wit like Greene it was unthinkable that an actor would cross the line into literary creativity. Thus Shakespeare's first review was a personal attack upon his intellectual pretensions. He had to prove himself in a craft where he was considered an inferior.

Just as his fledgling career was getting off the ground, Shakespeare and his theater suffered a setback. An outbreak of the bubonic plague caused authorities to close the public theaters for about a year. As we see in this illustration the plague could be devastating, especially in crowded cities. During the time the theaters were closed. Shakespeare turned his energies to writing sophisticated love poetry. "The Rape of Lucrece" is a powerful account of the attack on a virtuous Roman matron by a lecherous tyrant. Suicide is the only way Lucrece can restore her honor. "Venus and Adonis" shows how a young good-looking man attracts the attention of an older, sexually experienced woman. During his lifetime Shakespeare was well known for these two long narrative poems and was called "Sweet Mister Shakespeare" for the quality of his lyric poetry in these works. He may also have started writing his sonnets during this hiatus from the theater.