Shakespeare: A Life

by Park Honan

  14 Cited in ME65. One of the best studies of these events is still J. W. Gray Shakespeare's Marriage ( 1905), ch. 2, which has a photo-facsimile of the licence with its squeezed, poorly written 'whateley'.

  15 Most transcripts of the bond are inaccurate; Gray, Shakespeare's Marriage, facing p. 9, offers a facsimile.

  16 ME66.

  17 Nicholas Rowe, Some Account of the Life, &c. of Mr. William Shakespear', in Shakespeare, Works, ed. Rowe, 6 vols. ( 1709), i. iv.

  18 Cf. E. I. Fripp, Shakespeare: Man and Artist, 2 vols. ( Oxford, 1964.), i. 193.

  19 Works, ed. Rowe, i. pp. iv-v. Lewis Theobald, "The Preface'", in Shakespeare, Works, ed. Theobald, 7 vols. ( 1733), i. vi.

  20 MS SBTRO, BRU 2/1 ( 11 Jan. 1584).

  21 Surrey, "A complaint by night'", line 10; Spenser, "'October'", lines 112-18

  22 Worcs.: Index to Worcester Wills, ii. 130, no. 104., Inventory of Lewis Hiccox, 9 July 1627; Jeanne E. Jones, "Lewis Hiccox and Shakespeare's Birthplace'", Notes and Queries, 239 ( 1994), 497-502.

  23 EKC, Stage, ii. 118-21.

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  7. To London -- and the Amphitheatre Players

  1. Urban historians have advanced our knowledge of Tudor and Jacobean London in detail; many former views are no longer tenable. On the capital, I have found especially useful D. M. Palliser, "London and the Towns" in his The Age of Elizabeth ( 1983); Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London ( Cambridge, 1991); Jeremy Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society: A London Suburb in the Seventeenth Century ( Cambridge, 1987); and A. L. Beier and Roger Finlay (eds.), London 1500-1700 ( 1986). Despite their datedness, T. F. Ordish Shakespeare's London ( 2nd edn., 1904) and H. T. Stephenson Shakespeare's London ( NewYork, 1905) are helpful on urban allusions in the plays, as is I. L. Matus The Living Record ( Basingstoke, 1991). For Stow's invaluable texts, of 1598 and 1603, I have, as a rule, used John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. C. L. Kngsford, 2 Vols. ( Oxford, 1971).

  2. M&A iii. 43. Strange's troupe were at Stratford on 11 Feb. 1579.

  3. Ibid. 83. This was for a visit late in 1579 or in 1580.

  4. MS Bodleian, Arch. F. c. 37. That WS once 'happened to lye' near a main route at Grendon is not improbable, but Aubrey's details are confused.

  5. Stow, Survey, ii. 34; John Hales, Essays and Notes ( 1882), 1-24; and SS, DL118-19 and 123.

  6. For these aspects of the urban Populace, see Roger Finlay, Population and Metropolis ( Cambridge, 1981) and A. L. Beier, Masterless Men ( 1985).

  7. I draw on the studies by Lucien Wolf and by Roger Prior, in Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society England, II ( 1928), 1-91, and 31 ( 1988-go), 137-52.

  8. Reavley Gair, The Children of Paul's ( Cambridge, 1982), 5.

  9. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability, 11.

  10. PRO KB27/1229 m. 30.

  11. John Orrell, The Human Stage ( Cambridge, 1988), 31-4.

  12. EKC, Stage, ii. 387.

  13. Ibid. 384-92.

  14. Cf. 'Curtaine plaudeties', in John Marston, The Scourge of Villainy ( 1598), sig. G7v.

  15. The liberties of Paris Garden and of the Clink (in which the Rose and later the Globe and the Hope were built) were those of the City of London, but civil jurisdiction in these liberties south of the Thames had passed chiefly to Surrey authorities; even so, there were several levels of civil control. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction was also important. From 1540 to 1670, Southwark had four parishes. The Bankside theatres lay in the parish of St Saviour's, within the deanery of Southwark, a part of the archdeaconry of Surrey, which was in the diocese of Winchester, in the province of Canterbury. London's control of Southwark declined even further in the 17th century; Boulton, Neighbourhood and Society, 9-12, 62 n.

  16. EKC, Stage, ii. 406.

  17. Diary, 3.

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  18. Diary, 21.

  19. John Orrell and Andrew Gurr, in TLS, 9 June 1989; M. C. Bradbrook, "The Rose Theatre", in Murray Biggset al. (eds.), The Arts of Performance ( Edinburgh, 1991), 200-10.

  20 . Alan C. Dessen, Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters ( Cambridge, 1984), 30-41; John Peter, in Sunday Times, 28 May 1989, C7.

  21. Dulwich College MS, IX ( 1617-22), by permission of the Governors of Dulwich College, London.

  22. Documents of the Rose Playhouse, ed. C. C. Rutter ( Manchester, 1984), 66; EKC, Stage, ii. 405.

  23. Merchant, I. i. 19.

  24. G. E. Bentley, The Profession of Player in Shakespeare's Time 1590- 1642 ( Princeton, NJ, 1984), 53-7; Meredith Anne Skura, Shakespeare the Actor and the Purposes of Playing ( Chicago, 1993), 35-46.

  25. EKC, Stage, ii. 119.

  26. They were distinct from the 'Quenes Players' who had visited Stratford during John Shakespeare's tenure as bailiff.

  27. Cf. P. H. Parry, "The Boyhood of Shakespeare's Heroines", Shakespeare Survey, 42 ( 1990), 99-109.

  28. A. Gurr, "Theaters and the Dramatic Profession", in J. F. Andrews (ed.), Shakespeare, 3 vols. ( New York, 1985), I, 107-28. R. L. Knutson, "The Repertory", in J. D. Cox and D. S. Kastan (eds.), A New History of Early English Drama ( New York, 1997), 461-80, esp. 465.

  29. See Scott McMillin, "Casting for Pembroke's Men", Shakespeare Quarterly, 23 ( 1972), 151; Lost Years, 59. So far, there is little sign of a director for the early stagings, though the book-keeper could fix doubling, props and the entrances and exits, and see that actors were ready on cue. Teamwork by experienced actors was of the essence; see Andrew Gurr, "Directing Productions", in his The Shakespearean Stage 1574-1642 ( Cambridge, 1980; 3rd edn., 1992), 208-II. For an argument that actors received 'instructions' from the playwright or a directing figure, see Skura, Shakespeare the Actor, ch. 2. Both modern Globe companies, in the summer of 1997, agreed that a director is essential.

  30. MS Bodleian, Arch. F. c. 37.

  31. In Playes Confuted in five Actions [ 1582].

  32. From an anonymous letter of 25 Jan. 1587 to Walsingham, cited by EKC, Stage, iv. 304. The hostile writer echoes S. Gosson in The Schoole of Abuse on hirelings who 'iet under Gentlemens noses in sutes of silke' ( 2nd edn., 1587), sig. D2; the numbers sound rhetorical.

  33. Midas, ed. A. B. Lancashire ( 1970), I. ii. 39-41, 73-87.

  34. A. R. Braunmuller, George Peele ( Boston, 1983), 46-65.

  35. Knutson, 'The Repertory', 468.

  36. Documents of the Rose, ed. Rutter, 128.

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  37. In his commendatory verses for John Fletcher The Faithful Shepherdesse, c. 1608-9.

  38. Peter W. M. Blayney, "The Publication of Playbooks"', in J. D. Cox and D. S. Kastan (eds.), A New History of Early English Drama ( New York, 1997), 383-422, esp. 384-8.

  39. Cf. S. Wells, Shakespeare and Revision ( 1988), 20. Few scholars doubt that WS revised, but the extent and purposes are at issue; Grace Ioppolo argues a more extreme case for the poet as rewriter in Revising Shakespeare ( Cambridge, Mass., 1991).

  40. George Peele, The Old Wife's Tale, ed. Charles Whitworth ( 1996), lines 868-74.

  41. "The Failure of The Two Gentlemen of Verona", Shakespeare-Jahrbuch, 99 ( 1963), 161-73. Yet in the same year Harold Brooks argued for its 'structural parallels', in Essays and Studies, 16 ( 1963), 91-100. Praise of its stageworthiness, from modern actors and directors, is not lacking.

  8. Attitudes

  1. He had a share (at least) in writing a few plays excluded from the 1623 Folio. E. Sams, in a polemical edition ( 1985), argues for the heroic Edmond Ironside as an apprentice drama by WS, but it perhaps dates from c. 1593-6; it exists in MS BL Egerton 1994 (fos. 96-118), which suggests that the play's early title was 'A trew Cronicle History called Warr hath made all freindes.

  2. Nashe, Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 5 vols. ( Oxford, 1966), i. 212.

  3. John Stow, A Survey of London, ed. C. C. Kingsford, 2 Vols. ( Oxford, 1971), ii. 73-4. EKC, Stage, ii. 302, and Facts, ii. 252.

  4. Stow, Survey, ii. 368-9 nn.

  5. See EKC, Facts, ii. 252.

 
6. Quoted in T. Dabbs, Reforming Marlowe (Lewisburg, Pa., 1991), app. B, 'The Baines Note'.

  7. William Gager, Ulysses Redux ( Oxford, 1592), sig. F5v. J. W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. The Latin Writings of the Age ( Leeds, 1990), 350.

  8. Diary, 21.

  9. Minute of the Privy Council, 12 Nov. 1589.

  10. Titus Andronicus, Arden edn., ed. J. Bate (Routledge, 1995), 39-43; G. Ungerer, "An Unrecorded Elizabethan Performance of Titus Andronicus", Shakespeare Survey, 14 ( 1961), 102-9.

  11. MS Folger, V. b. 35 (Halliwell-Phillipps's copy). Titus Andronicus, ed. E. M. Waith ( Oxford, 1990), 4. and 204-7.

  12. I It is not necessary to assume that WS was at Stratford when the suit was initiated in 1587. His mother's brother-in-law, Edmund Lambert, was buried at Barton that

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  April. Edmund's son John ('filio et herede') is cited in the Shakespeares' bill of complaint before the Queen's Bench late in 1588 to recover their former Wilmcote holdings; they tried again in the Chancery suit brought against the heir in 1597.

  13. EKC, Facts, i. 42. A. Gurr, The Shakespearean Stage, 1574- 1642 ( Cambridge, 2nd edn., 1985), 38-40.

  14. On irony and implied authorial attitudes in Henry VI's episodic structure, see David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning ( Cambridge, Mass., 1968), and G. K. Hunter, "Truth and Art in The History Plays", Shakespeare Survey, 42 ( 1990), 15-24.

  15. Lois Potter, "Nobody's Perfect: Actors' Memories and Shakespeare's Plays of the 1590"s', Shakespeare Survey, 42 ( 1990), 85-97, esp. 91.

  16. Perhaps one less time, if it is not the 'harey' of 16 Mar.; Diary, 16-19.

  17. Janet Clare, 'Art made tongue-tied by authority ( Manchester, 1990), ch. 2; 2 Henry VI, ed. Michael Hattaway ( Cambridge, 1991), 232.

  9. The City in September

  1. Anon., Ratseis Ghost (SR, 31 May 1605), sig. A3v.

  2. D. A. Williams, in Guildhall Miscellany, 2 (Sept. 1960), 24-8.

  3. Playes Confuted in five Actions [ 1582], sig. AIv.

  4. Cf. Jean-Noël Biraben, Les Hommes et la peste, 2 Vols. ( Paris, 1975), i. 15; L. Barroll, Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theater (Ithaca, NY, 1991), 98-9.

  5. Worcs.: Index to Worcester Wills, ii. 130, no. 104, Inventory of Lewis Hiccox, 9 July 1627.

  6. Diary, 283-4. ( Dulwich College MS, c. 1592-4).

  7. Ibid. 276 ( Dulwich College MS, c.1 Aug. 1593) .

  8. Ibid. 277 ( Dulwich College MS, c. Aug. 1593) .

  9. Nashe, Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 5 vols. ( Oxford, 1966), i. 212.

  10. Ibid. i. 20; iii. 311, 315-16.

  11. MS Oxford, A. 5. 6. ( Oxford's chamberlains, unlike the keykeepers, ended accounts at Michaelmas, and items for 1592-3 are in order; Strange's troupe were paid on 6 Oct. 1592 -- not, as has been said, in Oct. '1593'.)

  12. 'Polyhymnia', lines 38-40, on the jousts of Nov. 1590.

  13. Nashe, Works, ed. McKerrow, i. 287-8; Henry Chettle, Kind-Harts Dreame. Conteining five Apparitions, with Invectives against abuses raigning (SR, 8 Dec. 1592).

  14. Greene, Works, ed. A. B. Grosart, 15 vols. ( 1881-6), vii. 231.

  15. Ibid. viii. 132.

  16. Greenes Groats-worth of witte ( 1592), sigs. D4r-v, E1, F1r-v. For a contemporary report of Greene's supposed contrition and moral reform, as well as his last evening and death, see The Repentance of Robert Greene Maister of Artes ( 1592), sigs. D1v-D2.

  17. Groats-worth of witte, sig. F2v.

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  18. Nashe, Works, ed. McKerrow, i. 154.

  19. J. Rees, "Shakespeare and Edward Pudsey's Booke, 1600", Notes and Queries, 237 ( 1992), 330-1.

  20. The Second Part of King Henry VI, Arden edn., ed. A. S. Cairncross (Methuen, 1985), xliv and 106 n.

  21. Kind-Harts Dreame (SR, 8 Dec. 1592), sig. A4.

  22. Thomas Dekker, Jests to make you Merie ( 1607) in The Non-Dramatic Works of Dekker, ed. A. B. Grosart, 5 vols. ( 1884-6), ii. 352.

  23. Gesta Grayorum: or, The History of the High and Mighty Prince Henry Prince of Purpoole . . . ( 1688), ed. D. S. Bland (Liverpool, 1968), 64, 31-2.

  24. Diary, 19.

  25. See Jonathan Bate, "Ovid and the Sonnets; or, Did Shakespeare Feel the Anxiety of Influence"?, Shakespeare Survey, 42 ( 1990), 70.

  26. Nashe, Works, ed. McKerrow, ii. 182.

  10. A Patron, Poems, and Company Work

  1. The Raigne of King Edward the third: As it hath bin sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London ( 1596), repr. in Apocrypha, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke ( Oxford, 1918), II. i. 449-51.

  2. This chronology remains conjectural; the stylistic evidence alone, surely, is too ambiguous to indicate dates of composition. It is not unlikely that Venus was completed not long before it was licensed ( 18 Apr. 1593), and that Munday and 'Hand D', in turn, worked on More before the end of 1593; see Scott McMillin, The Elizabethan Theatre and The Book of Sir Thomas More (Ithaca, NY, 1987), ch. 3, and the viewpoints in T. H. Howard-Hill (ed.), Shakespeare and 'Sir Thomas More' ( Cambridge, 1989). An early date for Munday's work on More, however, rests mainly on the assumption that he responds to the city's alien crisis, which became acute in 1592. Until the middle of the 20th century, one objection to an early date rested on a plain misreading of Munday's hand. 'The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore' was bound up with Munday's MS "The Book of John A Kent & John a Cumber" ( Huntington Library MS HM 500) which itself is dated 'Decembris 1590', and not ' 1595' or ' 1596', as I. A. Shapiro has shown in "The Significance of a Date", Shakespeare Survey, 8 ( 1955), 101-5.

  3. King John, ed. L. A. Beaurline ( Cambridge, 1990), 185.

  4. MS BL Harleian 7368, fo. 9r.

  5. Ibid., fo. 3r.

  6. MSS Folger Z. c 39 (7), and Z. c. 9 (144, 150).

  7. Ovid, Amores I. 15. 35-6.

  8. He is 'Willm Shakp', 'William Shakspe', 'Wm Shaksper', 'William Shakspere', 'Willim Shakspere', and 'William Shakspeare' in his six autographs. See Anthony

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  G. Petti's transcriptions and his remarks on the rapid Elizabethan secretary hand, in English Literary Hands from Chaucer to Dryden ( Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 86-7, and the comments in EKC, Facts, i. 504-6. Variants in the six signatures have less to do with the playwright's psyche than with the age's lax spelling. On the printing of his name, see Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass, "The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text", Shakespeare Quarterly, 44 ( 1993), 255-83.

  9. Katherine Duncan-Jones, "Much Ado with Red and White: The Earliest Readers of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis (1593)", Review of English Studies, 44 ( 1993), 479-501.

  10. MS Folger, L. b. 338.

  11. G. P. V. Akrigg, Shakespeare and the Earl of Southampton ( 1968), 39.

  12. MS BL M/485/41.

  13. E. E. Duncan-Jones, in London Review of Books, 7 Oct. 1993. Legge died in 1607.

  14. Willobie His Avisa, ed. G. B. Harrison ( Edinburgh, 1966), 218; TLS, 17 Sept. 1925.

  15. Hallett Smith, "Poems", in J. F. Andrews (ed.), Shakespeare, 3 vols. ( New York, 1985), ii. 447-9.

  16. Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and P. and E. Simpson, II vols. ( Oxford, 1925-52), i. 142.

  17. Palladis Tamia. Wits Treasury Being the Second part of Wits Commonwealth ( 1598), sigs. OoIv-Oo2.

  18. See M. G. Brennan, "The Literary Patronage of the Herbert Family, Earls of Pembroke, 1550-1640" (D.Phil., Oxford, 1982).

  19. Simon Callow, Being an Actor ( 1985), 27-8.

  20. The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint, ed. John Kerrigan (Harmondsworth, 1986), 441-4.

  21. See Patricia Fumerton's instructive essay on sonnet practices, ' "Secret" Arts: Elizabethan Miniatures and Sonnets' (in S. Greenblatt (ed.), Representing the English Renaissance ( Berkeley, Ca., 1988), 93-133), and the dedicatory epistles in sonnet sequences such as Samuel Daniel Delia ( 1592), William Percy Coelia ( 1594), and Robert Tofte Laura ( 1597).

  22. Works, ed. R. B. McKerrow, 5 vols. ( Oxford, 1966), iii. 329.

  23. Samuel Dani
el, Poems and a Defence of Ryme, ed. A. C. Sprague ( 1950): Sonnet 47 ( 1594), lines 9-10, and Sonnet 46 ( 1592), lines 6-8.

  24. I. B. [ John Benson], "To the Reader", in Poems. Written by Wil. Shake-speare, Gent. ( 1640).

  25. George Gascoigne, The Posies, ed. J. W. Cunliffe ( Cambridge, 1907), 471-2.