Shakespeare: A Life

by Park Honan

  Further, we know more about his milieu and working conditions in London than formerly, as well as about theatres such as the Rose, the Globe, and Blackfriars, and Shakespeare's reactions to the children's companies. In a continuous narrative one has a chance to see what he learned and how he thrived, whom he imitated and at least some of the factors that set him apart as a person. The inner theatre of his development is a deep, wonderful story, of which his colleagues, his rivals, his company, his Ovidian poems, his plays, and even Stratford grain-speculators give us varying glimpses. That development occurred in an England in which communal instincts and divisions of social rank were almost unimaginably stronger than today, and where

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  terms such as 'homosexual' and 'bisexual' and certain other modern categories did not exist. I have tried to sketch briefly the homoerotic world of his patron Southampton's friends, some attitudes expressed in the sonnet vogue, and to say what Shakespeare's sonnets may suggest about him. I include material on Hunsdonand Howard's theatrical plan, also on Shakespeare's access to books, on his reactions to changing modes in plays and to dilemmas of his company, and again on his relations with individual actors, poets, or the Revels Office so far as these can be known.

  The plays

  In a biography one may only touch upon great, textually unstable, works which have elaborate stage histories and critical histories of their own, and which will surely evolve or seem fresh in many new ways in the future. Without distortion, I hope, I have 'used' the plays to suggest, for example, what is known today of Shakespeare's processes of writing: of his imitativeness or response to rivals, his awareness of a troupe's needs at particular times, and his self-mockery, limited satire, and topicality. I offer no separate sections of 'literary criticism', but have not eschewed interpretation. Having read dozens of articles, books, and reviews of the dramas for thirty-five years, I make no plea for my originality, but I criticize in my own right and have tried to signal a debt when I can recall the creditor. I look into Shakespeare's apparent uses of memory and of locales that he knew, his reflection of changing theatrical conditions and of implicit criticisms of his work (as in the Poetomachia, or Poets' War), his varying attitudes to history and to sources, and some of his deepest exploratory interests in life.

  As for the topic of Shakespeare's personality, I have meant it to be the implicit subject of every chapter, and yet he is to be no more fully defined and categorized, finally, than any of his sonnets or plays. At the end of the book I have offered a family tree for central figures appearing in this narrative, a tree for descendants of the poet's sister Joan Hart who are alluded to in Chapter 18, and a sketch of the Shakespeare biographical tradition and useful and relevant sources.

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  The notes and the third appendix will signal my chief debts to persons and sources. Yet notes many times as lengthy could not acknowledge what I have learned from others about Shakespeare. My interest began even before I brashly proposed, fresh out of the army, to write a thesis on his tragedies, decades ago, at University College London. Before a supervisor sent me on to my friend Paul Turner, James Sutherland told me, over sherry, to look into other writers 'first'. Cause and effect in a life are less neatly related than one may think, but, for a few decades, I looked into biographical problems involved with Browning, Arnold, and Jane Austen, and have not regretted that experience, as oddly preparatory as it may seem. Colleagues invited me to lecture at Birmingham,s Shakespeare Institute off and on, over fifteen years, before my teaching in Renaissance literature began at Leeds.

  I owe a large debt to modern Shakespeare scholarship, criticism, and performance. I gladly acknowledge fellowships at the Huntington Library and at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and grants from the Leeds English School and the International Shakespeare Association. I have been especially helped at the Huntington, the Newberry, and the Folger, at the Birthplace Records Office in Stratford, at Worcester, Tewkesbury, and the archives of Birmingham, Edinburgh, Leeds, and at those county record offices mentioned in the notes. Stanley Wells asked to read this work in draft, and I am deeply grateful for his and Ernst Honigmann's comments on the manuscript, and to Martin Banham, Inga-Stina Ewbank, David Hopkinson, and Douglas Jefferson for comments on parts of it. Kathleen Tillotsonand Paul Turnerhelped in many ways; I have turned repeatedly to Andrew Gurr for generous advice and debate, and to Gerald and Moira Habberjam in matters of genealogy and palaeography. I am also glad to acknowledge the help of Robert Bearman, J. W. Binns, Michael Brennan, Susan Brock, Martin Butler, H. Neville Davies, R. A. Foakes, Donald Foster, Levi Fox, G. K. Hunter, Jeanne E. Jones, D. P. Kirby, Sir Ian McKellen, Tom Matheson, Peter Meredith, Richard Pennington, Roger Pringle, Elizabeth Williams, Ian Wilson, and Laetitia Yeandle. The late Fredson Bowers, Kenneth Muir, Lawrence Ragan, and Samuel Schoenbaum advised me more than once, and I am grate-

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  ful for a note from the late A. L. Rowse. None of these persons can be held responsible for any of my blunders. The largest debt is to my family, all of them, including my elder daughter Corinna Honan and my brother W. H. Honan who enhanced my clarity, and my wife Jeannette, who made the task possible over ten years and who encouraged my researches long before.

  P. H.

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  A NOTE ON CONVENTIONS USED IN THE TEXT

  In Shakespeare's time, the year began on 25 March (or Lady Day), but in this book it is assumed that the year starts on I January.

  My citations from Shakespeare are normally to the texts and line numbers in The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells, Gary Taylor, et al. ( Oxford, 1986). In a few cases, I have quoted from the companion volume of Shakespeare, The Complete Works: Original-Spelling Edition ( Oxford, 1986) (O-S).

  It has seemed wise to respect the original spelling of historical documents when the sense of the quoted words is clear; but the older form of a letter (such as 'v' for 'u', or 'i' for 'j') is changed in some instances. Italicized letters within a quoted word ('her majestie') and [bracketed] words signify modern additions, such as a spelling out in full. For clarity, with longer extracts dating from after Shakespeare's early years, I have sometimes used modern spelling.

  I have used Mr and Mrs to signify 'Master' and 'Mistress' as distinct from the modern 'Mr' and 'Mrs'. In Shakespeare's day the rank (or title) of Master usually conveyed a special degree of social distinction or gentlehood.

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  1

  A STRATFORD YOUTH

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  1

  BIRTH

  the cruel times before ( John Foxe)

  Stratford

  Shakespeare's life began near the reflecting, gleaming river Avon, which today flows past Stratford's Church of the Holy Trinity where he lies buried, and past a theatre where his dramas are seen and heard by visitors from all nations. In rare flood times, the river was wild and destructive, sweeping away bridges and much in its path, but normally it was hospitable to truant boys or patient fishermen, and no guttered rocks or congregated sands imperilled any large keel here. The river arises in grassy highland in the east of England near Naseby, and for miles hardly deserves the name Avon, or 'river', which has echoes all over Celtic Europe: the Avon or Aven in Brittany, the Avenza in Italy, and the Avona in Spain. This Avon is at first only a runnel and then a willow-bordered stream, but below the old city of Warwick it is slow and stately as it divides Warwickshire and cuts the middle of England.

  To the north is the Arden region, where the Forest of Arden was more thinly wooded in Shakespeare's day than in medieval times. Here were irregular fields, meadows, moated farmsteads, and groups of cottages, but few villages. South and west lay the Feldon, with new ornamental parks at Clopton and Goldicote, Ettington and Charlecote. Round about were fields cultivated in narrow strips, as well as tithe barns, villages, and black and white half-timbered cottages.

  Stratford-upon-Avon, between Arden and Feldon, was a market town
where goods from the two regions could be exchanged. Protected because it lay in the rain-shadow of Welsh hills to the west, it had a mild climate, Farmers found the Avon valley fertile and took

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  advantage of a bridge built by the town's benefactor Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII to take goods to market. John Leland, the antiquary, saw Stratford's bridge with its fourteen stone arches around 1540, and noted the well-laid-out town. A parish church rose to the south at Old Stratford, and from here one walked north into good streets, partly paved, to see the Pedagogue's House accommodating a grammar school, a range of almshouses, and the Gild hall and Gild chapel. Besides back lanes the town 'hath 2. or 3. very lardge stretes', Leland wrote. 'One of the principall stretes ledithe from est to west, anothar from southe to northe.' Houses of two and three storeys were of timber, and he was struck by the 'right goodly chappcll' in Church Street. 1

  The land on which Stratford was built had belonged to bishops of Worcester after Ethelhard, a Saxon king, granted it to the third bishop ( AD 693-714). From then until fifteen years before Shakespeare's birth Stratford had been a manerium of Worcester bishops. 2 Once the town had been a small group of farms called Straetford, meaning a Roman approach to a ford, and it stood on a Roman road. But in 1196 there had been a change: a bishop purchased the right to hold a weekly market at the Avon, and his plan avoided the existing village. Land north of Straetford, some 109 acres, was laid out into six streets, forming a grid which is still visible in the town's pattern today. Three streets ran roughly parallel to the river, intersected by three more, and the land within this grid was marked into 'burgage' plots, each of which was 12 perches in length and 3½ perches in breadth (198 feet by 57 feet 9 inches). The plots would be subdivided in various ways in the years ahead, but they allowed for ample buildings and convenient neighbourhoods. The Roman road was worked into the grid to form an open area, and hence Bridge Street is wide today. Craftsmen and merchants were attracted to settle in this well-planned town, and the 'Manerium de novo Stratford' began to thrive. It had tall inns and some 240 built-up plots (besides other tenements, shops, and stalls) in the thirteenth century, and would have been no larger in Shakespeare's day.

  The medieval town of Stratford was known for one of its social features, its lay religious Gild. Membership in the Gild of the Holy

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  Cross was open to all men and women -- and the fame of this organization spread beyond the county. Members elected their own aldermen, and a woman's vote counted as equal to a man's; the Gild provided jurors for the manorial courts, looked after the sick and the poor, prayed for the dead (even admitting departed souls to the membership), and founded a school. The Gild nearly absorbed the local government and gave continuity to local life.

  Indeed, the Gild not only linked the generations, and gave common religious and social purposes to the people of Stratford, but it had too the effect of stimulating at least a few men of exceptional talent. Robert de Stratford (taking his surname from the town) probably founded the chapel of the Gild in 1296. John de Stratford, his son, rose to be Bishop of Winchester and three times Chancellor of England, before returning to found, in 1331, a chantry in honour of Thomas a Becket and a college of five priests who were bidden to pray for his family, himself, the bishops of Worcester, and kings of England. When pe ( Shakespeare's most heroic king) confirmed the college, Stratford's church came to be called the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity. 3

  Civic pride -- and the long traditions of the Gild -- were nevertheless affected by a convulsion. Until the sixteenth century, little had unsettled the town's religious life. But new Protestant reforms struck hard at Stratford -- when the College was forced to close. Then after the Gild was dissolved and its properties were confiscated, in 1547, the town government collapsed.

  Worried merchants petitioned the Crown. They received a charter of 28 June 1553, which incorporated the town as a royal borough. Yet no sooner was the Corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon in being than Mary Tudor returned the nation to Roman Catholicism. Under Henry VIII, her father, few people had known from day to day which opinions were orthodox and which heretical; but Queen Mary was clearer. A woman of inflexible honesty with a dim, obstinate mind, she pressed ahead with heresy trials, supported by her bureaucracy. Stratford became the eye of a circle of martyr fires at Coventry, Lichfield, Gloucester, Wotton-under-Edge, Banbury, Oxford, Northampton, and Leicester. Women and tradesmen were burned -- and a baby born

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  in Coventry's fire was thrown back onto the hard, burning faggots. Lest anyone forget these events John Foxe, in his ' Book of Martyrs' or Actes and Monuments, published a year before Shakespeare's birth, was to describe them in lurid detail. One effect was that people living under the reign of Mary's successor were often reticent on points of faith. Shocking and violent as it was, doctrinal controversy had torn at the normal fabric of social connections in the Midlands, and proved bad for trade. As late as the 1590s Stratford's wardens were to be lax or restrained in reporting on non-attendance at church; Shakespeare's father and Shakespeare himself, at different times, were to camouflage their religious commitments and feelings with a caution that seems typical of all but an outspoken few at Stratford. Foxe had meant his martyrs to be remembered -- and had excelled himself in an account of Bishop Hooper, who when burning had cried out to 'Lord Jesus'. When 'blackc in the mouth, and his tonge swollen, that he could not speak' he struck off an arm into the fire and 'knocked still with the other, what time the fat, water, and bloud dropped out at his fingers endes, until by renewing the fire, his strength was gone, and his hand did cleave fast in knocking to the yron on his brest'. 4

  Mary's martyrs, of course, gave immense authority to the Protestant cause, and her marriage with her cousin Philip 11 of Spain led to a ruinous war. When her half-sister, the Lady Elizabeth, came to the throne in 1558, French troops were in Scotland with nothing between them and England but an ill-manned fortess at Berwick. Coinage was debased, and the religious problem festered at Stratford, where a town constable had been assaulted by Alderman Perrott. If blood flew even among the council, merchants might well worry. After the Catholic vicar left in 1558, Stratford's people lived in an odd limbo with no regular vicar at all.

  Master Bretchgirdle's arrival

  When a sound Protestant, John Bretchgirdle, became Stratford's new vicar in 1561, Catholics were then still in the town council and Catholic frescos in the Gild chapel -- but the new vicar waited. A native of Baguley near Manchester with his MA degree from Christ Church, Oxford,

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  Master Bretchgirdle wrote in Latin in the town's registers (whereas the Catholic vicar had used English) and settled down as a bachelor on Church Street, where as 'vicar perpetuall' he unpacked a library.

  Few clergymen -- outside London and the universities -- could have matched it. He had a Horace, a Sallust and a Virgil, Aesop's fables, two or three books by Erasmus, with Acts of the Apostles translated into English Metrel 5 -- and his books took a long view of those forces that helped to form Shakespeare's mind. Once the Roman empire had held sway over Europe, to be replaced by the order of an imperial papacy; now the collapse of the Catholic Church in England was releasing the full effect of the European Renaissance and Reformation, so that gusto, freedom, and energy were in the English air. At the vicar's Oxford, medieval logic had given way to the humanist study of rhetoric, but everywhere an older, calmer temper of life was also passing -- or was locked up in London with the caged wolves', the Marian bishops, six of whom Queen Elizabeth kept imprisoned. People were to know incipient doubt, a loss of calm certainty about human destiny, and sharp changes in the nation's mood. Shakespeare was born when things began to seem badly out of date. Lost with the 'old faith' were Catholic dirges and trentals, or the sets of thirty requiem services, and the De Profundis, shrines, pilgrimages and incense, as well as candles and torches and old ceremonies, extreme unction and purgatory and satisfactory masses. Holy days had been cut in
number from over a hundred to twenty-seven, and a vicar was now exalted. The Catholic priestly function had never depended on the moral worth of the priest. Now, a vicar had to be exemplary as a teacher of God's will, and so a deep change, in each community, was helping to foster a new interest in the person -- in behaviour and character.

  Yet -- at Stratford -- one thing was unchanged. Into the fourth year of a Protestant reign the council had not removed Catholic traces in the Gild chapel; their caution wastin keeping with Elizabeth's wish not to have any 'image in glass windows' broken nor to leave 'the place of prayers desolate' in chapels and churches. 6 Indeed, the Queen wisely avoided enquiry into Catholic consciences -- and Bretchgirdle, in his correct Anglican 'square cap', did not purge the town of papists. He had to placate the council -- and he was more articulate than many

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  clergymen. An outcry was loud in the land against non-residency, pluralism (the holding of two or more benefices at the same time), and the horrors of 'lay patronage' which sent men to pulpits from which they never preached. 7 The power of appointment to five-sixths of the church livings in south Warwickshire was in lay hands -- but Stratford's council were confident of the new vicar. In 1563 they decided at last to expunge the Catholic decor of the old Gild chapel, and in that sense the town's past was to be removed.

  The Chamberlain's first son

  Sitting on Stratford's governing council were trusted local men, including a bailiff or mayor (elected by themselves for a year), thirteen other aldermen, and fourteen capital burgesses. They had many rules to enforce. Bretchgirdle was responsible to the council, but he did not have to desecrate the chapel himself -- or record the deed. The aldermen had other help, and no one helped them more in seven years than John Shakespeare.