by Park Honan
As a person of intellectual acuity, he adapted outwardly to those who could not share his interests, as his later relations with the town suggest. In a sense, the security and routines of the day must have been welcome enough, and his imagination and intellect were free to conceive remote, ancient, or courtly pictures of an ampler existence. To judge from his plays and poems, he needed to lose himself in the
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distanced imaginary situation to explore his insights, and perhaps to make use of his experience. What is really new in his view of love is his understanding of its connection with loneliness, and one force that drives many of his stage lovers is misery in the isolatedness of being; some of his young men are convinced that love is a means chiefly of overcoming errors of pride, self-delusion, and presumption that victimize the estranged, misled psyche. In The Comedy of Errors, his Antipholus of Syracuse speaks to Luciana as if she had alighted as a force of sanity from a distant planet:
Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak.
Lay open to my earthy gross conceit,
Smothered in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,
The folded meaning of your words' deceit.
Against my soul's pure truth why labour you
To make it wander in an unknown field?
Are you a god? Would you create me new?
Transform me, then, and to your power I'll yield. (III. ii. 33-40)
Romeo easily and naturally regards Juliet as an exception to the human species, as one who lifts him as in a dream to a new state of being. Such love may accuse domesticity of its failure to satisfy, to enlighten, to make whole. Yet a belief in the gorgeous, ample, transforming possibilities of love does not suggest utter despair over the commonplaces of marriage, and William must have drawn upon sources of strength at home. Ambitious, dissatisfied, and restless as he undoubtedly was with no outlet for the energy of his talents at Henley Street, he was not to behave as a man ensnared by an unsuitable woman; his apparently regular visits to Stratford, his investments and care to establish himself there, do not suggest he found Anne immaterial to his welfare. And it is not irrelevant that his early biographers imply he chose marriage, not that he was trapped: 'in order to settle in the World after a Family manner, he thought fit to marry while he was yet very Young', wrote Rowe in 1709, and Theobald alludes to the poet's 'Force of Inclination' towards matrimony. 19 Certainly his wife and mother were from old county families traditional in their ways; Ardens and Hathaways
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would have connected him more closely with the civic past of Stratford, the Holy Cross Gild, the impassioned intelligence and relative simplicity of the community in its medieval, well-regulated order. The piety of Anne and Mary would have been unlocking and important, but it is useless to suppose that he was deeply contented at Henley Street or that he welcomed Anne's family as intimate friends; he was not to mention any Hathaway in his will, and it is not easy to find more than a handful of local people who can be called his lifelong friends. He was to be wary of certain aldermen; but just after his marriage it is unlikely that he shunned all of his former mates. A week before Anne gave birth the husband of another Hathaway in fact put on the Whitsun show, and later the chamberlains noted,
Payd to Davi Jones and his companye for his pastyme at whitsontyde xiij5 iiijd [13s. 4-d.] 20
Frances Hathaway -- whose father Thomas figures in Anne's father's will -- was evidently a first cousin of Anne's. Richard Hathaway had left to her two youngest sisters the bequest of a sheep apiece, and the two families must have been on fairly intimate terms. In 1579 Frances had wed the young widower David Jones, formerly married to a daughter of Adrian Quiney, and, among entertainers, Davy or 'Davi' Jones rose to local leadership. Shakespeare would have known something of Davy's performers, whose costumes and paraphernalia, on 19 May 1583, surely were as fine as the sum of 13s. could buy. Municipal eloquence and pageantry, strong ale and sports, dancing and rowdiness had taken over Whitsun holidays -- but Whitsun was a time of flowers and gentler celebrations, too, and not every performer was 'o'erparted' as he spoke his lines. 'Come,' says Perdita in The Winter's Tale,
take your flowers.
Methinks I play as I have seen them do
In Whitsun pastorals.
(IV. iv. 132-4)
It is just possible that Shakespeare acted with or otherwise aided the 'companye', and he would have been well acquainted with crafts-
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men's or tradesmen's sons in the performance. He may have found Davy's troupe more laughable than they meant to be. Probably he felt himself drawn in other directions, or towards the possibility of writing acceptably elegant poetry. His literary taste at this time -- in common with England's -- was certainly becoming alert to refinements in the vernacular; he was well attuned, for example, to the music of the Earl of Surrey in the Songes and Sonetts, 'For my swete thoughtes sometyme doe pleasure bring . . .', and, no doubt, even more sensitively responsive to Spenser's delicate effects in The Shepheardes Calendar of 1579, which a generation of new writers accepted as a landmark:
How I could reare the Muse on stately stage,
And teach her tread aloft in bus-kin fine,
With queint Bellona in her equipage.
But ah my corage cooles ere it be warme,
For thy, content vs in thys humble shade:
Where no such troublous tydes han vs assayde,
Here we our slender pipes may safely charme. 21
A week after Davy's troupe performed, William and Anne's child was baptized Susanna Shakespeare on 26 May 1583. Her name had come acceptably into local fashion, and her parents may have named her after a family friend: Sir Thomas Lucy had a sister named Susanna, and Richard Tyler would soon marry his Susanna Woodward -- but the name is interestingly significant for its story. In the Apocrypha, Susanna as the virtuous wife of Joachim lives in accordance with Moses' law. Two lustful judges trap her; her screams of despair bring servants to her rescue, but, at an assembly the next day, the judges cause her to be condemned as an adultress. God, however, sends to her aid the young Daniel, who makes the judges contradict each other so that they are put to death, and Susanna and her family praise the Deity for her deliverance.
There may be a defiant, proud virtue in the name 'Susanna' when parents choose it for a child conceived out of wedlock, and gossip over a sudden wedding might linger. The name asserts its purity and spiritual strength; it had been used by the Catholic Bishop of Ross in a defence of Mary Queen of Scots (he summoned up the biblical Judith,
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t0oo, in describing Mary's virtues); Puritans favoured 'Susanna', and playwrights had not neglected her story. When the Shakespeares' daughter was born the name was a prime one for biblical drama, and more than a dozen Susanna-plays had appeared in Europe before Thomas Garter's grave 'comedy' Susanna was printed in Fleet Street by Hugh Garter, at the sign of St John the Evangelist, in 1578.
Much of the training of a daughter was left to her mother, but, in an age of new literacy, a substantial number of girls benefited from petty school. Brightly alert, mentioned later for her wit and apparently favoured as an eldest child, Susanna was taught household chores. It is likely that she learned to read and write, but it does not necessarily follow that she was prompted to make much use of these skills, or to read for her delight. Had Shakespeare been a conventional father he would not have desired that she should read many books, or wished her to be unlike most other women of the Stratford gentry. He hardly wrote Venus and Adonis or the so-called Dark Lady sonnets for Susanna's pleasure, and it is difficult to believe he would have offered a printed quarto of a comedy to her. Uppermost in Anne Shakespeare's mind would have been her daughter's piety, dutifulness, simple and cheerful amenity, and usefulness.
We shall look further into such evidence about Susanna's life as we have. She was brought up in a busy, and eventually prosperous, household where she saw her grandparents regularly and her father seldom. Soon enough, she had siblings. On th
e Festival of the Purification, Tuesday, 2 February 1585, the Shakespeares had their newborn twins christened Hamnet and Judith, no doubt in deference to their friends Hamnet and Judith Sadler. The boy's name was interchangeable with 'Hamlet' -- in Shakespeare's will in a legal hand his friend would appear as ' Hamlet Sadler' -- and among abundant local variants of the same name were (for example) Amblet, Hamolet, and even Hamletti.
The family home became more crowded, ample as it was. New evidence in the inventory of Lewis Hiccox, who after the playwright's death had a 'lease of the houses in henlye street' once owned by ' William Shakespeare gent', shows that at least six of the rooms where Shakespeare once lived were thought suitable as bed-chambers. 22 In the 'starchead chamber' with its 'green rugg', or even in the best room
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with its feather-bed, red rug, curtains, benches, and solitary table in Hiccox's time in the 1620s, the furnishings seem sparse, and they could hardly have been much more ample in the glover's household. John's business affairs were poor and deteriorating, and as his prospects became worse so the outlook for his son and for Anne's children must have seemed bleaker.
The birth of twins virtually assured that Shakespeare's future would be more problematic, that he would be concerned to make up for lost time in a calling, and would undertake nearly anything required of him to get money. He would also know, surely, the pain of separation for long periods from a substantial and consoling family. At 20 he had known more domestic complexities and responsibilities and probably a more intense emotional life than some people have known at 40, although he had done little to justify his fine grammar-school training and cannot have felt he had much of a chance to earn a fortune. If he lingered in the town as a resigned, respectable Prince Hal, he waited for a crown he did not want -- it is impossible that he would have yearned to take over a glover's shop and debts. Exactly who drew him from Stratford, or when at last he left, we do not know. Since Londonbased troupes did not recruit on the road, it is unlikely that one of them picked him up in Warwickshire, even if he had served in a provincial troupe. What is quite certain is that an expansion of playing companies in the 1580s would have worked in his favour. New hands were needed for all varieties of work in connection with the popular public entertainments; and, again, the capricious Ferdinando, Lord Strange was patron of a troupe of acrobats and players in a position to expand. 23
In responding to any encouragement or offer, Shakespeare hoped to better himself; he could serve his family best by removing himself from Stratford, though theatre work was hard, always uncertain. The profession had little status. He would be far from normal consolations. After his school years, he had married quickly and sired children as if to absorb such emotional nourishment and experience as he could. He must have overcome the results of the scholarly aridity of his grammar-school training to a large extent; regular employment and marriage would have been antidotes to his vanity, and he was
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eager to imitate, to observe, to adapt himself to new demands. His alert impressionable nature, with his energy and agility, would have made him hope to prove his talent as a player.
Influence was then working on his behalf, if at any time 'in the Countrey' he had made a connection that helped him in the mid1580s. A summons to the theatre may have promised little, but he would take advantage of his chances. We cannot be sure that the young Ferdinando, Lord Strange provided those chances, but 'Shakeshafte' had been well recommended to Sir Thomas Hesketh, and the Heskeths were intimate with Ferdinando and the Earl of Derby. At some point in the bewilderingly rapid evolution of the playing companies, Shakespeare contributed to the success of Strange's actors.
His departure was likely to be trying for his family, to judge from his mockery of sentimental farewells in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. His life would be arduous, but he had surely been prepared for workaday London by many reports of it. His father had visited the city, and Stratford and Warwickshire apprentices had hoped to succeed there; a few, no doubt, had set themselves up in urban comfort. He would have known the value of social connections, and perhaps would not be slow to take advantage of countrymen who could help him. In any case, on a day of doubtful promise to himself, he would have bid farewell to his parents, three small children, and Anne, and set out on a road leading to the teeming, colourfal, and oddly dangerous south.
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II
ACTOR AND POET OF THE LONDON STAGE
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7
TO LONDON-- AND THE AMPHITHEATRE PLAYERS
Lyfte up thy heart and corage eke,
be bolde and of good chere;
For fortune most doth favoure those,
that all thynges least do feare. . . .
Great shame it is that vertue shoulde,
for monsters hyde her face:
Go to therefore leave of thy lettes,
and walk the depth apace.
(Barnabe Googe's translation of
Palingenius's 'Taurus' -- an
Elizabethan grammar-school text
in the Latin version, 1560)
It appears, by their bare liveries, that they live by your bare words.
Valentine, The Two Gentlemen of Verona)
Streets and conduits
Elzabethan London deeply impressed or astonished its visitors -even if they knew beforehand of its long rows of shops and four-storey houses, thronged suburbs and magnificently built-up London Bridge, or of its fine, painted theatres and rich waterfront palaces. Foreigners praised the city, and some apprentices knew it as bewildering or lethal. More people died in London than were born there -- but nothing stopped an influx of workers. Taking the city, its suburbs, and
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Westminster together, one found here the nation's largest market and port, the nation's parliaments, great royal palaces and the hub of the Queen's administration, a centre of education in the Inns of Court and of Chancery, a royal mint, and even an ecclesiastical centre at Lambeth Palace and the Court of Arches at St Mary-le-Bow. The capital's many functions assured its growth -- to about 200,000 people by 1600 -- and its educational establishments, booksellers, theatres, and high level of literacy tempted citizens to think of the rest of the nation as a cultural desert. 1
Shakespeare, in his early twenties, was not unprepared to succeed there. Whether or not he had joined an acting troupe, he was ready for work; he had been trained in elocution by a London-born schoolmaster and would be likely to be heard. We cannot doubt his energy. In 'the Countrey' or at home, he must have become practised as a singer or musician -- and he knew that a good player must have versatility. Better groups than the 'companye' of Frances Hathaway's husband had been entertaining his town: Worcester's men had come back to the Gild hall in the 1580s with a swelling reputation, after including in their main troupe Edward Alleyn, a promising tragedian -- and two troupes in Stanley livery had played at Stratford. Under the auspices of the Earl of Derby or of his son Lord Strange, these had been separately paid by bailiff's order, as the chamberlains' accounts show:
Paid to my lord Straunge men the Xjth day of february at the commaundment of Mr Baliffe Vs [5s.] 2
Paid to the Earle of Darbyes players at the commaundement of Mr Baliffe
Viijs, iiijd [8s. 4d.] 3
And there is no need to assume that Shakespeare, on leaving home, imagined that his only chance of success lay in the theatre. He soon had an eye on help outside that of player-patrons, to judge from the courtly tenor of his early writings. He might use a lucky recommendation to a nobleman of wealth, and it is unlikely that he hoped for no eventual future other than a player's.
Slow, jolting carriers' wagons took people south. Whether he walked or rode, there were two main routes from Stratford to London -- and on horseback later he seems to have known both.
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One way led through Oxford and High Wycombe, the other by Banbury and Aylesbury. The shorter rou
te took the traveller from Clopton's bridge over sweeping low hills to Shipston on Stour, then to Long Compton, Chipping Norton, Woodstock -- where schoolmaster Jenkins of the King's New School once lived -- and on through Oxford, High Wycombe, Beaconsfield. For the other route one went from Pillerton Hersey over Edgehill to Banbury; on a side-road just eight miles south of Buckingham lay the village of Grendon Underwood where Shakespeare stayed over on a midsummer night and met a constable who became the model for Dogberry -- but this is to believe a report of John Aubrey that may include wishful gossip. 4 From Buckingham, the way led over a small stone bridge and causeway into Aylesbury, then past the two Chalfonts to Uxbridge.
And here the two routes met, so that one highway took travellers past Shepherd's Bush, the stark Tyburn gallows, the Lord Mayor's banqueting house in Oxford road, and the pleasant rural setting of St Giles-in-the-Fields into the suburb of Holborn. From there, one went to Oldborne Bridge -- and the sight of William Lamb's new, lead-lined water conduit over 2,000 yards in length -- and then past the churches of St Andrew and St Sepulchre to the edge of the historic city at Newgate.
