William Shakeseare
Shakespeare the man
LIFE
Although the amount of factual knowledge available about Shakespeare is
surprisingly large for one of his station in life, many find it a little
disappointing, for it is mostly gleaned from documents of an official
character. Dates of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and burials; wills,
conveyances, legal processes, and payments by the court--these are the
dusty details. There are, however, a fair number of contemporary
allusions to him as a writer, and these add a reasonable amount of flesh
and blood to the biographical skeleton.
Early life in Stratford
The parish register of Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon,
Warwickshire, shows that he was baptized there on April 26, 1564; his
birthday is traditionally celebrated on April 23. His father, John
Shakespeare, was a burgess of the borough, who in 1565 was chosen an
alderman and in 1568 bailiff (the position corresponding to mayor, before
the grant of a further charter to Stratford in 1664). He was engaged in
various kinds of trade and appears to have suffered some fluctuations in
prosperity. His wife, Mary Arden, of Wilmcote, Warwickshire, came from an
ancient family and was the heiress to some land. (Given the somewhat
rigid social distinctions of the 16th century, this marriage must have
been a step up the social scale for John Shakespeare.)
Stratford enjoyed a grammar school of good quality, and the education
there was free, the schoolmaster's salary being paid by the borough. No
lists of the pupils who were at the school in the 16th century have
survived, but it would be absurd to suppose the bailiff of the town did
not send his son there. The boy's education would consist mostly of Latin
studies--learning to read, write, and speak the language fairly well and
studying some of the classical historians, moralists, and poets.
Shakespeare did not go on to the university, and indeed it is unlikely
that the tedious round of logic, rhetoric, and other studies then
followed there would have interested him.
Instead, at the age of 18 he married. Where and exactly when are not
known, but the episcopal registry at Worcester preserves a bond dated
November 28, 1582, and executed by two yeomen of Stratford, named
Sandells and Richardson, as a security to the bishop for the issue of a
license for the marriage of William Shakespeare and "Anne Hathaway of
Stratford," upon the consent of her friends and upon once asking of the
banns. (Anne died in 1623, seven years after Shakespeare. There is good
evidence to associate her with a family of Hathaways who inhabited a
beautiful farmhouse, now much visited, two miles from Stratford.) The
next date of interest is found in the records of the Stratford church,
where a daughter, named Susanna, born to William Shakespeare, was
baptized on May 26, 1583. On February 2, 1585, twins were baptized,
Hamnet and Judith. (The boy Hamnet, Shakespeare's only son, died 11 years
later.)
How Shakespeare spent the next eight years or so, until his name begins
to appear in London theatre records, is not known. There are stories--
given currency long after his death--of stealing deer and getting into
trouble with a local magnate, Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, near
Stratford; of earning his living as a schoolmaster in the country; of
going to London and gaining entry to the world of theatre by minding the
horses of theatregoers; it has also been conjectured that Shakespeare
spent some time as a member of a great household and that he was a
soldier, perhaps in the Low Countries. In lieu of external evidence, such
extrapolations about Shakespeare's life have often been made from the
internal "evidence" of his writings. But this method is unsatisfactory:
one cannot conclude, for example, from his allusions to the law that
Shakespeare was a lawyer; for he was clearly a writer, who without
difficulty could get whatever knowledge he needed for the composition of
his plays.
Career in the theatre
The first reference to Shakespeare in the literary world of London comes
in 1592, when a fellow dramatist, Robert Greene, declared in a pamphlet
written on his deathbed:
There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his
Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide supposes he is as well able to
bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute
Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a
country.
It is difficult to be certain what these words mean; but it is clear that
they are insulting and that Shakespeare is the object of the sarcasms.
When the book in which they appear (Greenes groats-worth of witte, bought
with a million of repentance, 1592) was published after Greene's death, a
mutual acquaintance wrote a preface offering an apology to Shakespeare
and testifying to his worth. This preface also indicates that Shakespeare
was by then making important friends. For, although the puritanical city
of London was generally hostile to the theatre, many of the nobility were
good patrons of the drama and friends of actors. Shakespeare seems to
have attracted the attention of the young Henry Wriothesley, the 3rd earl
of Southampton; and to this nobleman were dedicated his first published
poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece.
One striking piece of evidence that Shakespeare began to prosper early
and tried to retrieve the family fortunes and establish its gentility is
the fact that a coat of arms was granted to John Shakespeare in 1596.
Rough drafts of this grant have been preserved in the College of Arms,
London, though the final document, which must have been handed to the
Shakespeares, has not survived. It can scarcely be doubted that it was
William who took the initiative and paid the fees. The coat of arms
appears on Shakespeare's monument (constructed before 1623) in the
Stratford church. Equally interesting as evidence of Shakespeare's
worldly success was his purchase in 1597 of New Place, a large house in
Stratford, which as a boy he must have passed every day in walking to
school.
It is not clear how his career in the theatre began; but from about 1594
onward he was an important member of the company of players known as the
Lord Chamberlain’s Men (called the King's Men after the accession of
James I in 1603). They had the best actor, Richard Burbage; they had the
best theatre, the Globe; they had the best dramatist, Shakespeare. It is
no wonder that the company prospered. Shakespeare became a full-time
professional man of his own theatre, sharing in a cooperative enterprise
and intimately concerned with the financial success of the plays he
wrote.
Unfortunately, written records give little indication of the way in which
Shakespeare's professional life molded his marvellous artistry. All that
can be deduced is that for 20 years Shakespeare devoted himself
assiduously to his art, writing more than a million words of poetic drama
of the highest quality.
Private life
Shakespeare had little contact with officialdom, apart from walking--
dressed in the royal livery as a member of the King's Men--at the
coronation of King James I in 1604. He continued to look after his
financial interests. He bought properties in London and in Stratford. In
1605 he purchased a share (about one-fifth) of the Stratford tithes--a
fact that explains why he was eventually buried in the chancel of its
parish church. For some time he lodged with a French Huguenot family
called Mountjoy, who lived near St. Olave's Church, Cripplegate, London.
The records of a lawsuit in May 1612, due to a Mountjoy family quarrel,
show Shakespeare as giving evidence in a genial way (though unable to
remember certain important facts that would have decided the case) and as
interesting himself generally in the family's affairs.
No letters written by Shakespeare have survived, but a private letter to
him happened to get caught up with some official transactions of the town
of Stratford and so has been preserved in the borough archives. It was
written by one Richard Quiney and addressed by him from the Bell Inn in
Carter Lane, London, whither he had gone from Stratford upon business. On
one side of the paper is inscribed: "To my loving good friend and
countryman, Mr. Wm. Shakespeare, deliver these." Apparently Quiney
thought his fellow Stratfordian a person to whom he could apply for the
loan of 30--a large sum in Elizabethan money. Nothing further is known
about the transaction, but, because so few opportunities of seeing into
Shakespeare's private life present themselves, this begging letter
becomes a touching document. It is of some interest, moreover, that 18
years later Quiney's son Thomas became the husband of Judith,
Shakespeare's second daughter.
Shakespeare's will (made on March 25, 1616) is a long and detailed
document. It entailed his quite ample property on the male heirs of his
elder daughter, Susanna. (Both his daughters were then married, one to
the aforementioned Thomas Quiney and the other to John Hall, a respected
physician of Stratford.) As an afterthought, he bequeathed his "second-
best bed" to his wife; but no one can be certain what this notorious
legacy means. The testator's signatures to the will are apparently in a
shaky hand. Perhaps Shakespeare was already ill. He died on April 23,
1616. No name was inscribed on his gravestone in the chancel of the
