William Shakespeare: History in an Hour

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Setting the Scene

The Childhood Years

The Family Years

The Jack-of-All-Trades

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men

The King’s Men

The Wooden O

The Works

The Autobiographical Author?

The Affluent Years

Shuffling Off This Mortal Coil

The Contested Will

Quartos, Folios and the Missing Plays

The Authorship Debate

Becoming the Bard

Appendix 1: Key Players

Appendix 2: Timeline of William Shakespeare 1564–1616

Appendix 3: An Approximate Timeline of the Complete Works c. 1590–1613

Got Another Hour?

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

Of all the writers this world has ever produced, William Shakespeare is among the very few who scarcely need an introduction. Widely thought to be the greatest dramatist of all time, he is also considered one of our finest poets.

With a writing career that spanned twenty-five years during the creatively febrile late Elizabethan and early Jacobean periods, Shakespeare produced an awe-inspiring oeuvre which heavily influenced the development of the English language. Indeed, thanks in large part to the emotional intelligence of his work and his innate understanding of the human condition, the Shakespearean canon has transcended time, literary fashion, even national identity. Although he will always be associated with England, William Shakespeare has become an integral part of world culture. Little wonder then, that his writing has endured for almost 450 years.

But despite the ubiquity of his work, and his continuing influence, very little is known about Shakespeare the man – a fact which inspires fascination and frustration in equal measure.

This, in an hour, is the history of William Shakespeare.

Setting the Scene

To understand the man, you must know what was happening in the world when he was twenty.

While this maxim, thought to be coined by the French political and military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, can be applied to the study of almost any historical figure, it is especially true when considering the life and work of England’s revered national poet, William Shakespeare. The world into which Shakespeare was born was one characterized by unprecedented political, religious and cultural upheaval, all of which would have a profound impact on the man and the poetic and dramatic canon he would produce.

Just eighteen months before Shakespeare’s birth, England’s political system had been plunged into turmoil when Elizabeth I, who had been on the throne for just over four years, contracted smallpox. Although she survived, and would go on to reign for a further forty years, England’s political future at this stage seemed far from secure. The queen’s unmarried status and childlessness compounded matters. Although ultimately she would choose to remain unfettered by matrimonial ties, throughout the 1560s and 1570s fears abounded that English sovereignty would be jeopardized should she choose to marry a suitor from the French or Spanish royal families. This bred an atmosphere of strident patriotism mixed with a suspicious fascination about the workings of foreign courts.

Elizabeth’s ascension to the English throne in 1558 also precipitated a return to the Protestant Reformation, which had first been introduced to the country by her father, Henry VIII, and which had been briefly interrupted during the short-lived reign of Elizabeth’s predecessor and half-sister, the staunchly Catholic Mary I. This swinging of the religious pendulum from Protestantism to Catholicism and back again had inevitably caused grievous and injurious hostility between the two faiths. Tensions escalated still further when Elizabeth’s Parliament passed the ‘Act to Retain the Queen’s Majesty’s Subjects in their due Obedience’ in 1581 declaring the practice of Catholicism to be a treasonable, and therefore capital, offence. The central Christian tenet of ‘love thy neighbour’, common to both Catholicism and Protestantism, was all but forgotten as an insidious atmosphere of mutual suspicion and mistrust took hold across the land.

The sixteenth century, the world which greeted Shakespeare, was also notable for being a time of unparalleled discovery and invention which brought about an unprecedented expansion of horizons, both literally and figuratively. The previous century had seen the discovery of the Americas by Spanish explorers and the first circumnavigation of the globe by a Portuguese, Ferdinand Magellan. By the time of Shakespeare’s birth, the English were striving to emulate the successes of their European counterparts, efforts which would culminate in Sir Francis Drake successfully completing the second circumnavigation of the world on his galleon, The Golden Hind, in 1580. These discoveries and explorations had shattered many long-held ‘certainties’, including the belief that we lived in a flat world which was dominated by the European landmass, thus marking a profound shift in mankind’s knowledge and understanding of the world.

Elizabeth I c. 1588

It makes sense that this expansion of human consciousness would not remain confined to the realms of geography and science. It would ultimately spill over into the arts, ushering in a period of hitherto unmatched creativity, which became known as the English Renaissance. Music, architecture and the visual arts would all benefit from this explosion of innovation, but by far the most important developments would be seen in the literary – and especially the dramatic – arts.

Once the preserve of the royal court and aristocratic houses, the early Elizabethan era saw the democratization of drama, which would bring plays to the masses for the first time. Initially staged in the inns and bear-baiting arenas of London’s liberties, demand for this new form of entertainment was such that a purpose-built theatre called The Red Lion (the first to be constructed in London since Roman times) was soon completed in 1567. This was followed by The Theatre in 1576 and The Curtain a year later. Soon, aspiring playwrights were flocking to London in the hope of taking advantage of this revolution in mass entertainment. Thus, the stage was set for the emergence of the greatest English dramatist of them all, William Shakespeare.

The Childhood Years

The works of William Shakespeare are, without doubt, the most studied and admired in the English language. Indeed, they have inspired such a level of acclaim that, in 1901, George Bernard Shaw came up with the term ‘bardolatry’ in an attempt to describe our collective tendency to heap acclaim on our beloved verse-maker.

Despite this, and the fact that he has been the subject of innumerable scholarly researches and biographies, we actually know surprisingly little about the man himself. In fact, William Shakespeare made only four appearances on various official records before he turned up in London in the 1580s: at the time of his birth, his marriage, and the birth of his children. This was not unusual for the time – lower levels of literacy meant that there was less emphasis on record-keeping and bureaucracy while, in many cases, those documents that did exist have subsequently been lost to the passage of time. Another reason for this paucity of biographical information lies in the fact that the fashion for diary-keeping and memoir-writing (and the reading of these writings) only began to emerge in the mid-seventeenth century, some forty years after Shakespeare’s death. And even then, no one had the foresight to record for posterity the reminiscences of his last surviving daughter, Judith, before her own demise in 1662. As a consequence, William Shakespeare remains a ghost-like presence in his own story, a shadow that remains tantalizingly opaque. The first puzzling biographical detail we encounter is the question of his date of birth.

It has long been agreed that William Shakespeare was born on or close to 23 April 1564. There is pleasing synchronicity in this, considering he died fifty-two years later on the same date. The poetic resonance of this anniversary is further amplified when one realizes that England’s national poet shares his birthday with the feast day of England’s patron saint, St George. The coincidence is certainly compelling – or it would be, if it were true. Unfortunately, much like many other aspects of Shakespeare’s life, we simply cannot be sure of the veracity of this famous birth date.

The problem can be traced to the sixteenth-century preference for recording baptismal dates instead of birth dates. The recently born William Shakespeare makes his first official appearance in the baptismal records of The Holy Trinity Church in the Warwickshire parish of Stratford-upon-Avon, on 26 April 1565. Due to high infant mortality rates, and considering the prevalent belief that a child who died unbaptized could not enter heaven, it was thought imperative to get newborns to the baptismal font as soon as possible, usually between two and four days after the birth. In Shakespeare’s case, this would put his birthday somewhere between 22 and 24 April.

But the controversy does not end there. If we adjust this date range to reflect the fact that Shakespeare was born under the Julian Calendar (the Gregorian Calendar was not introduced until 1582), we find that his birth date falls somewhere in the first week of May. So the choice of 23 April, it would seem, is completely arbitrary – and, in all likelihood, incorrect.

Luckily, there is no such uncertainty surrounding the identity of Shakespeare’s parents. His father, John Shakespeare, a maker of gloves and other soft leather goods, originally hailed from the neighbouring village of Snitterfield. He relocated to Henley Street in Stratford in 1556 or 1557, a move which coincided with his marriage to Mary Arden, the daughter of a relatively wealthy local farmer. William was the third of eight children, and the first to survive infancy. Indeed, the very fact that he lived to see his schooldays was something of an achievement – quite aside from the usual diseases like measles, smallpox and dysentery, an outbreak of plague hit Stratford when William was just three months old which carried away one fifth of the town’s population.

William Shakespeare’s birthplace, Henley Street, Stratford

Assuming his parents followed the conventions of the day, young William would have been sent to school around the age of seven. No educational records survive, but it is likely he would have attended the local grammar school, King’s New School, which accepted any boy from the town, provided he had rudimentary reading and writing skills. By this stage, Shakespeare’s father was fast becoming a respected member of the Stratford community, taking on a series of municipal jobs which would eventually see him rise to the post of chief alderman of the town. The increasing stature of the Shakespeare family makes it even more probable that King’s New School would have opened its doors to William.

Aside from its famous alumnus, King’s New School is remarkable for having a very highly paid headmaster – the records show that he drew a salary of £20 per annum, a significant sum for the time, and, it is believed, more than the remuneration received by the headmaster at Eton. This suggests that King’s New School was a decent educational establishment, and the instruction the boy received was likely to have been better than average.

The sixteenth-century curriculum was very unlike its equivalent today. The core subject was Latin, and students would have spent most of the twelve-hour school day learning to write, read and speak this ancient language. There was little or no emphasis on other subjects – history and geography were both neglected, as was English, which could account for the infuriating lack of uniformity of spelling in Elizabethan literature.

If we continue with the assumption that young Shakespeare followed the custom of the time, he would have left formal education – furnished with fluent Latin but not much else – by the age of 15. At this point, c. 1579, he disappeared from the records completely for three years. We know he did not attend university like most of his fellow playwrights; a fact which Ben Jonson highlighted when he commented, somewhat derogatorily, that Shakespeare had ‘small Latin and less Greek’. So, what was his occupation during this time? Did he remain in Stratford, or move to London? Or did he travel even further afield? Unfortunately, we have no idea, as there is little evidence to support any speculations to the contrary.

The Family Years

When we next meet William Shakespeare, he is 18 years old and (presumably) in love. It is November 1582, and he has travelled the thirty miles to the town of Worcester to apply for a marriage licence. The register lists his intended bride as one Anne Whateley, a detail which has caused no small confusion among historians, because the wife he ended up with was called Anne Hathaway. This discrepancy probably should not necessarily be taken as proof that William was fickle in his affections, casting off one Anne in favour of another in a matter of weeks. The far more likely explanation is that the clerk at Worcester simply made an error while recording the bride’s surname.

The (probably incorrect) entry in the Worcester register

The next reference to the impending nuptials can be found in the marriage bond, in which Anne Hathaway now appears correctly as herself. The existence of this document is particularly interesting. Usually, weddings could only take place after the marriage banns were read aloud at the local church on each of the three preceding Sundays. This practice allowed time for interested parties to raise objections should they have any. But a marriage bond, usually issued by the bishop and at considerable cost to the applicant, granted permission for a couple to by-pass this convoluted process and marry as soon as they wished. Given that Shakespeare paid £40 to receive this licence, it would seem that he was in quite a hurry to get himself wed. Sure enough, the nuptials took place that same month after just one reading of the banns. Six months later, Anne gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter called Susanna.

There has been much speculation about the nature of Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway. It has often been attested that Shakespeare was, on account of Anne’s pregnancy, forced to marry against his will, and that the union was therefore an unhappy one. Anne’s age – at 26 she was a full eight years her husband’s senior – is also seen as significant by those who believe that the young Shakespeare was coerced into matrimony by an older woman, desperate to avoid a life of spinsterhood. Some 20 per cent of women in Elizabethan England would go to their graves without marrying, so such a proportion would have intensified competition for men. On the other hand, this also means that a 26-year-old single woman would not have been rare or any great social shame. In any case, while such an age difference was unusual for the time, neither was it unheard of.

In reality, the only thing we can know for certain about the workings of the Shakespeare–Hathaway marriage is that we know nothing for certain. While their parents appear to have been acquaintances since the 1550s, we do not know how long the couple had known each other, or if they had had a longer engagement than their hurried marriage seems to suggest. Neither do we know anything about the dispositions and personalities of husband and wife, nor have we any insight into their attitude to the institution of marriage. And while the fact that Shakespeare would ultimately spend much of their married life living and working in London is indicative of a certain mutual independence, it should not necessarily be taken as evidence of an emotional estrangement. At any rate, relations must have continued to some degree in the first years of their marriage as, in late January or early February 1585, Anne gave birth to twins, Judith and Hamnet.

The Jack-of-All-Trades

Following the birth of the twins, we once again lose sight of William Shakespeare, this time for a period of seven years. When he next makes an appearance in his own story, it is 1592 and, at 28 years of age, he is no longer living in Warwickshire but in London. Again, we have no idea how the young father occupied his time during these so-called ‘lost years’, but nonetheless there have been various attempts to fill this gap in our knowledge. If the numerous theories are to be believed, Shakespeare was a highly adaptable polymath who was at once a schoolteacher, a poacher, a soldier, a traveller and a lawyer. There is scant evidence to support any of these suppositions, although recent investigations suggest the schoolteacher hypothesis is by far the most credible.

Nor do we have any insight into what influenced his decision to abandon his country roots and head for the overcrowded capital city. Perhaps it was the pressures of providing for his growing family, or simply a desire to make a name for himself beyond the provincial town of his birth. Whatever the reason, turn up in London he did, and by 1592 he was already ruffling some feathers in the theatre world, as evinced by a pamphlet published that same year by a man named Robert Greene.

In addition to being a poet and a keen pamphleteer, Greene was a leading light in the University Wits, a group of late-sixteenth-century Oxbridge-educated writers whose number also included the likes of Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe, John Lyly and George Peele. He was also close to death, and very ill-tempered. So ill-tempered, in fact, he took advantage of his impending demise to issue two pamphlets which were ostensibly a collection of his observations on life, but which were in reality nothing more than barely disguised potshots at his fellow writers.

The first pamphlet, which was called Greene’s Groat’s-Worth of Wit, contains little of interest to the common modern reader – with the exception, that is, of this one sentence hidden away in a forest of purple Elizabethan prose:

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 Iohannes fac totum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

This rather catty comment is clearly taking a swipe at some ‘upstart’ actor (or ‘player’), who, despite being nothing more than a jack-of-all-trades (‘Johannes fac totum’), believes himself to be a better poet than his university-educated counterparts. But how do we know this jibe was aimed at Shakespeare? Apart from the obvious allusion to ‘Shake-scene’, the ‘tygers heart wrapt in a players hide’ is a direct reference to Henry VI, Part III, which includes the line, ‘O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!’

This is important in a number of ways. Not only is it the first time we come across William Shakespeare in London, it is also evidence that by 1592 he was quite well established there, having worked as both an actor and a playwright. It also proves the Henry VI plays were among the first of the Shakespearean canon to be written. And so, quite unwittingly, the cantankerous Greene has done the ‘upstart’ a great favour – without his splenetic death-bed ravings, our knowledge of Shakespeare’s movements during the early 1590s would be much the poorer.

Frontispiece of Greene’s pamphlet

But just as the man from Stratford had begun to garner attention for his theatre work, his dramatic career was brought to a rather abrupt halt. In June 1592, a particularly virulent outbreak of plague hit London. As was common practice at the time, the city authorities ordered the closure of all theatres in an attempt to prevent the contagion spreading among the already beleaguered population, an order which remained in place until June 1594.

During this enforced two-year sabbatical, Shakespeare turned his attention to poetry, writing his two long narrative poems, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. While this foray into poetry may well have been a welcome creative outlet for him, the poems also served a more practical purpose – in the absence of income from the theatres they earned the writer some much-needed money. These poems, both commercially successful, were dedicated to Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, which suggests that, for the first and only time in his twenty-five year writing career, Shakespeare sought (and presumably received) aristocratic patronage.

The Lord Chamberlain’s Men

Despite the demise of a number of acting troupes during the plague years (and the death of the country’s leading playwright, Christopher Marlowe, in 1593), the re-opening of the playhouses in 1594 heralded a golden age of theatre.

One of the driving forces behind this explosively creative and innovative period in theatrical history was a players’ company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. This troupe was established in 1594 under the patronage of Henry Carey, the Lord Chamberlain. Aside from a retinue of part-time actors, carpenters, seamstresses and other hired hands, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had a core of eight ‘sharing’ members, who would receive a share of any profits earned, while also remaining liable for any debts incurred. Their number included the leading actor of the day, Richard Burbage; his father, and the actor-manager of The Theatre playhouse, James Burbage; William Kemp, the company clown who would play most of the comedic parts; and the up-and-coming playwright, William Shakespeare. The latter’s inclusion in the company was highly unusual for the time – normally, the sharers would be made up of actors only, while playwrights tended to work on a freelance basis, writing for any company who wished to buy their services.

That Shakespeare was accepted, at 30 years of age, as one of the eight founding ‘householders’ was a testament to the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues. It was also a savvy business decision on their part. Thanks to the talents of their in-house dramatist, whose works would henceforth be staged almost exclusively by them, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men not only succeeded, but flourished. The plays of William Shakespeare were popular and attracted large audiences – sometimes up to 2,000 paying customers per day, a figure which equated to about 1 per cent of the city’s total population.