Shakespeare: A Life

by Park Honan

  However, on 19 December the frost had broken. Enclosure of the land began. Out near Welcombe, to prepare for hedge-planting, Combe's men dug a trench which soon extended for 'at least fifty perches', 275 yards.

  That defied the town. In their response, the council, in the warlike tradition of Quiney who had stormed the Bancroft, made the first violent move while the poet was away. To be sure, this was cautious, or a kind of warlike gesture. Two aldermen would fill in the ditches! They needed spades and good luck -- but, first, to be lawful in battle, William Walford and William Chandler bought a lease at Welcombe, so they became tenants with rights of common on 6 January 1615. Unluckily, Combe heard that several of 'the better sort' planned to fill his trenches. 'Oh would they durst!' he told the bailiff angrily.

  Before they picked up their spades, Greene advised the aldermen to 'go in such private manner as that none might see them go, lest others

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  might follow in Companies & so make a riot or a mutiny'. Out at Welcombe, the two men, as Greene put it, 'endeavoured to hinder the malefactors from their unlawful digging'. The result was ludicrous; the two were cursed by the diggers, and while Combe sat on his horse laughing, were thrown to the ground. So the enclosing party humiliated the council -- except they had not reckoned on women. Word, it seems, passed from kitchen to kitchen in the hamlets, as in the town. A small army of women and children came out at night to fill in Combe's and Mainwaring's ditches.

  That female protest deeply annoyed Replingham. He found women, in numbers, difficult because they could not be 'thrown down' as Walford and Chandler were. Replingham also had to confront an irate female, since the one woman in town who represented the anti-closure party at a raucous meeting with him on Thursday, 12 January 1615, was Judith Shakespeare's friend Bess Quiney. As the meeting broke up, Greene noticed, Replingham vowed he would give names to the bailiff 'for doing Justice upon the women diggers'.

  Despite appeals, threats, and petitions to the justices, the crisis lasted. The Corporation obtained an injunction, on 2 April, against Combe, who did not give up. Far from being stopped, he beat his tenants, imprisoned them, impounded livestock, and depopulated the hamlet of Welcombe, except for his own dwelling.

  Back from the city, Shakespeare must have watched developments with interest. In September, Greene made in the diary his most intriguing entry, which seems to hint at Shakespeare's feelings: ' W Shakespeare's telling J. Greene that I was not able to bear the enclosinge of Welcombe'. J. Greene was John, the diarist's brother. Greene started to write 'he', and changed that to the word 'bear'. Why did he bother to jot another person's view of his own feelings? The entry's meaning is still unclear, but it is just possible Greene made no further slip in the pen and used 'bear' in the sense of 'promote' or 'sustain successfully'. Anyway, by the autumn of 1615 Combe had no, chance of success, and the poet may have cared little. Even so, Combe was not finally defeated until around 1617. 12

  The Welcombe affair, though, illustrates Shakespeare's wish to seem impartial without being disloyal to friends, and to protect the

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  value of his assets. His daughter Judith's feelings, in the Welcombe crisis, may have been on the opposer's side, though it is not known that she went out with women to fill ditches. As early as 4 December 1611, Judith had witnessed a deed of sale for Bess Quiney, 13 who unmistakably opposed Replingham, with whom the poet had a covenant. If already out of step with her father, Judith was later to alarm him, perhaps more terribly than she knew.

  But it need not be true that the poet wanted the enclosure to succeed, or that he cared nothing for the council's troubles, or the jobs of field hands. Shakespeare's neutrality was convincing, and he had earned some rest by 1615. The town did not impugn him because he had stayed above the mêlée in the Welcombe affair, and apart from other concerns, he had the future to consider. That is what his legal will and his late friendships suggest.

  Making a will and the struggles of the Harts

  With his friends, obviously, Shakespeare might at times be in that alertly relaxed mood in which Greene found him when calling upon him and the selfless, hard-working, outspoken Mr Hall in London. The poet did not starve or go thirsty; he enjoyed himself, although with caution and with some purpose. What Aubrey called his 'wellshap't' body cannot -- when Shakespeare was 50 or 51 -- have been what it was at 30. His effigy is not that of an athlete nor of a bon vivant, but he put on weight in his late years. That, alone, would not have prevented him from riding. Moreover if he rode between a Midlands town and London, he was perhaps able to ride merely four miles south of Stratford to see his friend Thomas Russell at Alderminster.

  This friend was born in 1570. Raised at Bruton in Somerset, Russell was a charming and generous squire (as his gifts, in late life, show) with a fine house in the city. His good nature accompanied him like a benign star, and he had had some luck: in youth he inherited two manors. He had been to The Queen's College, Oxford, then as a widower had courted and wed a lady worth £12,000, Mrs Anne Digges, widow of Thomas Digges the mathematician. Because her house at Philip Lane, Aldermanbury was not very far from Silver Street, the

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  poet perhaps saw Russell in London and met the latter's stepson, Leonard Digges ( 1558-1635), who wrote two poems about Shakespeare, including memorial verses for the great Folio. 14

  Russell, like Thomas Combe, was a man of some leisure and considerable affluence. Shakespeare enjoyed friends of that stripe, but he also sought out attorneys such as the two Greenes, Thomas Lucas of Gray's Inn, or Francis Collins of Clement's Inn. Lucas lived mainly at Stratford. So did Collins, until (by around 1612) he wrapped up a long, involved law-case for the town and moved out to Warwick.

  One suspects Shakespeare's silhouette on horseback was known, at least, at Alderminster. Whether or not his friends often kept him from home in 1615, he had domestic news at the year's end. His daughter Judith was to marry Mrs Bess Quincy's son Thomas. Even when witnessing a deed for Bess, back in 1611, Judith may perhaps have been betrothed to Thomas Quincy; certainly there are signs of it. The deed, we know, was for the sale of a house in Wood Street which made Quincy independent, and the proceeds seem to have enabled him to take a lease on the Atwood tavern in High Street. It is hard to see why Judith, a young woman in 1611, was called to sign a Quincy deed unless she meant a little to them. At any rate, five years passed before a wedding occurred. On the premises of the Atwood tavern, or nearby, Quincy was to live with Judith after their marriage before taking her to a large, prominent house called The Cage at the corner of High Street and Bridge Street, where he became a vintner and tobacco-seller. He later rose to a few civic offices and became a burgess, constable, and then a town chamberlain who adorned his account (for 1622-3) with a couplet in French from a sixteenthcentury romance by Saint-Gelais. Typically, Quincy made a hash of the French verses, which conveyed a pleasant maxim: 'Happy is he who, to become wise, serves his apprenticeship from other men's troubles'. 15 However, Quincy was an apprentice to his own troubles. As a vintner and town servant, he fell from civic grace. He was fined for swearing, then for allowing 'tippell' at forbidden times. 16 Much worse, he and Judith were to have ill luck with their children. Their first son Shakspeare or 'Shaksper' Quincy died in infancy on 8 May 1617, and two boys followed. Richard was christened on 9 February

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  1618, and Thomas on 23 January 1620. Both sons were to die in 1639, at the ages respectively of 21 and 19.

  The difficulties of Judith's life were hardly foreseeable in the winter of 1615-16, yet Shakespeare cannot have been quite free of doubt about his daughter's partner. The myth that he was stunned later by Quiney's behaviour has no relation to the known facts, and it is most unlikely that he was ignorant of the town's view of his future son-inlaw. At all events, he was confronted by a situation he could not alter. His daughter Judith was 31, and Quiney 27. They were to be married. Wishing to leave her a marriage portion, Shakespeare called in Francis Collins, his
friend and attorney, and sketched out a draft of his will in January 1616. Oddly, the will was not signed and executed in that month.

  If planned earlier, the couple's wedding was slightly postponed. The bride and groom both had birthdays in February, but did not choose the month only for that reason. Quiney's problems were grave, and it seems he made a match with Shakespeare's daughter while he could: he married Judith in the parish church on 10 February 1616. Unfortunately, the wedding fell in the Lenten season which began on 28 January (Septuagesima Sunday) and ended on 7 April (the Sunday after Easter), when a special licence was needed from the Bishop of Worcester. The local vicar, John Rogers, claimed the right to issue licences by himself because of the so-called ' Stratford peculiar', or the town's peculiar jurisdictions affirmed by its corporate charter, but the Bishop of Worcester disputed Rogers's right. Hence through no fault of their own, the couple received a summons from the consistory court at Worcester. The summoning official, Walter Nixon, however, was concerned only with the husband. 'The man cited by Nixon did not appear', reads a Latin entry, and either Quiney, or -- although this is less likely -- he and Judith together, suffered excommunication. So far as the court's main entry is concerned, the excommunication applied only to Thomas.

  Clerks, at the time, wrote with bewildering Latin abbreviations, but a marginal note, to the left of the main entry, shows that Judith was cited at Worcester as the offender's wife:

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  Stratford

  officium domini contra

  Thornam Quynie

  et eius vxorem

  excommunicatio

  emanatur 17

  That is, the clerk had noted: 'The lord's official against Thomas Quynie and his wife, excommunication is issued'. This penalty was soon lifted (the Quineys were able to baptize their first child), but the incident very possibly affected the bride's father. Shakespeare in his will left no money for the church, nor a penny for a memorial sermon; and that coldness may suggest what he thought of clergy who had struck at least indirectly at his daughter.

  It is true, Shakespeare had worse news. Thomas Quincy had taken a lover in Margaret Wheeler, who died in childbirth and was buried with her infant on 15 March. Eleven days later, Quiney was called before Stratford's church court and accused of fornicating or incontinence with the woman who had died ('incontinentia cum quadam Margareta Wheelar'). At first ordered to stand in a white sheet on three Sundays at church, he was quickly allowed instead to give 5s. to the poor of the parish, and told to acknowledge his fault in private, 'in his own clothes', at the chapelry of Bishopton. 'Dimissus', jotted a clerk, 18 and Quincy, in principle, was scot-free.

  The poet may not have dismissed the matter so easily, since Judith was disgraced by Quincy's scandal. Shakespeare was perhaps angry or distressed, but that need not have affected him mortally. This spring, his life did not fall into a neat, unambiguous pattern beloved by popular biographers. For example, he could have had wind of Quincy's troubles as early as January 1616, when the drawing up of the will was unaccountably suspended. ' Quincy's trial and disgrace', one reads in a modern account, 'not only motivated the alterations in the will but also constituted a shock that hastened Shakespeare's end.' 19 But the 'trial' (a heavy word, perhaps, for a young man's quickly accepting a light reprimand at the vicar's court) in fact occurred after the dramatist changed his legal will, so it may not have 'motivated the alterations'.

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  We know that, by around the third week of March, life had become difficult for those at New Place on Chapel Street. The weather was unseasonably warm, and Shakespeare had fallen ill. Evidence of his illness will be postponed for a little, but it is sufficient to say that he was not at his last gasp, or 'a dying man', by 25 March 1616. On that day, he was capable. Amidst the troubles of the sick room, he was perfectly aware that his legal will drawn up in January had not been signed or executed. To execute the will, he now again called in Francis Collins to whom he dictated so many changes that the attorney had to rewrite the will's first page. ' Collins never got around to having a fair copy of the will made', it has been supposed, 'probably because of haste occasioned by the seriousness of the testator's condition.' 20 But fair copies of wills were then not required, and Collins left other work in the same interlined, more or less scrawled-over state. John Combe's will (made by the lawyer long before Combe died) is in the same condition. E. K. Chambers writes sensibly of the minor changes of 25 March that most of Shakespeare's will's 'interlineations and cancellations are such as might naturally be made either in the process of drafting or on reading over a draft will with a view to a final settlement of its terms. They correct slips, make the legal terminology more precise, or incorporate afterthoughts.' 21

  Shakespeare's will begins with a declaration very similar to openings found in some of the 134 wills, made by other theatre people, which still exist from that time for comparison:

  In the name of God Amen. I William Shackspeare of Stratford upon Avon in the county of Warwickshire gent., in perfect health & memory God be praised, do make & ordain this my last will & testament in manner & form following. That is to say first, I commend my Soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping & assuredly believing through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour to be made partaker of life everlasting. And my body to the earth whereof it is made. 22

  A formulaic phrase, of course, is no sign of the testator's 'perfect health'. Generally, the dramatist's will pictures his estate and a few personal items. Shakespeare has only one sword. He has collected bowls of very fine metals, or accumulated several, such as the 'broad silver & gilt bowl' which he leaves to Judith, though his grand-

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  daughter Elizabeth (whom he calls his 'niece') gets the rest of his plate. He does not cite manuscripts or books, as if they did not greatly matter; but they may have been listed in an inventory which has not survived. In contrast as John Barnard of Leeds has shown, one Alexander Cooke, who was also born in 1564, left a will devoted almost exclusively to books. This Cooke, who attended Leeds Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford, was a Puritan polemicist. 23 But poets such as Samuel Daniel, John Marston, and James Shirley all fail to mention books or MSS in their wills.

  As legatees emerge, Shakespeare reminds one of the Duke in Measure for Measure, hoping to control a story that has got out of line. 'Item. I give and bequeath unto my son-in-l[aw]' -- hearing those words or copying them from the early draft, his lawyer stopped, and changed 'son-in-law' to read 'daughter Judyth'. Quiney is humiliated by not being mentioned. Other relatives by marriage, too, are ignored. One scholar thinks that Bartholomew's people were then at Shottery, but, for example, Richard Hathaway, a burgess and constable of his town ward in 1614 and a churchwarden at the poet's death, was living at Fore Bridge Street, not far from New Place. 24 For the testator that man is offstage, or does not exist. Shakespeare is fairly hard even on Judith to whom he leaves £150-far less than he gives to her richer sister -- and conditions are attached even to Judith's main sum. She is allowed £100 as a marriage portion, but the remaining £50 will be hers only if she renounces a claim to a 'copyhold tenement', or the cottage on Chapel Lane. Judith is left a further £150 if she, or any issue of her body, be living after three years; the annual interest earned, not the principal, will then go to her issue, or to Judith if she is still married. Any'such husbond'as she then has will be able to claim the sum only on condition that he settles on his wife lands worth £150.

  In other wills, theatre men can be worried, mean, vindictive, or even madly eccentric. What is unusual is the urgent extent to which Shakespeare goes in order to guide his estate into the far future. He grants land in tail male, to forestall a division of property in future between daughters and wives, and the main legatee Susanna Hall is left nearly everything. Here, he is as generous as Lear is at first with Goneril--

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  All my barns, stables, orchards, gardens, lands, tenements & hereditaments whatsoever, situate, lying and being or to
be had . . . within the towns and hamlets, villages, fields & grounds of Stratford upon Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton & Welcombe . . .

  All of that, including New Place, the Henley Street tenements and London's Blackfriars gatehouse are to be Susanna's 'to have and to hold'. But he is intent on enumerating her non-existing heirs, who are seen as young males to be born from as yet unborn male bodies. After Susanna enjoys his property for the rest of her natural life, all of it is to go, for example,

  to the first son of her body lawfully issuing, and to the heirs males of the body of the said first son . . . [or] second son . . . and for default of such heirs to the third son of the body of the said Susanna lawfully issuing, and of the heirs males of the body of the said third son lawfully issuing. And for default of such issue the same so to be & remain to the fourth son, fifth, sixth, & seventh sons . . . 25

  If these boys are not born, the whole estate is to go to Elizabeth Hall and her theoretical sons, and in default of that to Judith and her boysto-be. Shakespeare, in all this, apparently, feels that his wishes will be challenged, and that Susanna at last can be thwarted. Before listing her many bequests, he adds these words in March, 'for better enabling of her to perform this my will & towards the performance thereof'. For good measure, he makes John Hall her co-executor.

  His famous provision has evoked much comment. 'Item. I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture' (that is, valence, linens, and hangings, etc.). One writer thinks this must be 'exceptional', but parallels exist in non-theatrical wills. Another says of the bed of marital love, 'And who would gainsay the conjugal affection informing the bequest?' 26 But Richard Wilson's and Margaret Spufford's research, nonetheless, brings a special factor to bear, in that English common law did not always guarantee a widow the dower right of one-third of her husband's estate. A central question is this: would Anne, living at Stratford in 1616, be able to get a dower right of one-third of her husband's estate, if we take account of local conditions and Shakespeare's will as we have it? After 1590 in the Vale of Oxford, for example, widows were legally denied the dower right,