BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS AND TRADITIONS
In the time of Shakespeare, the fashion of writing lives of men of
letters had not yet arisen. The art of biography could hardly be said to
be even in its infancy, for the most notable early examples, such as the
lives of Wolsey by Cavendish and of Sir Thomas More by his son-in-law in
the sixteenth century, and Walton's handful in the seventeenth, are far
from what the present age regards as scientific biography. The
preservation of official records makes it possible for the modern
scholar to reconstruct with considerable fullness the careers of public
men; but in the case of Shakespeare, as of others of his profession, we
must needs be content with a few scrappy documents, supplemented by oral
traditions of varying degrees of authenticity. About Shakespeare himself
it must be allowed that we have been able to learn more than about most
of his fellow dramatists and actors.
In a matter which has been the subject of so much controversy, it may
be an aid to clearness if the facts established by contemporary
documents be first related, and the less trustworthy reports added
later. The first indubitable item is trivial and unsavory enough. In
April, 1552, a certain John Shakespeare, residing in Henley Street,
Stratford-on-Avon, in the county of Warwick, was fined twelvepence for
failing to remove a heap of filth from before his door. This John, who
shared his surname with a multitude of other Shakespeares in the England
and especially in the Warwickshire of his time, appears, without
reasonable doubt, to have been the father of the poet. He is described
in later tradition as a glover and as a butcher; the truth seems to be
that he did a miscellaneous business in farm products. For twenty years
or more after this first record he prospered, rising through various
petty municipal offices to the position of bailiff, or mayor, of the
town in 1568. His fortunes must have been notably improved by his
marriage, for the Mary Arden whom he wedded in 1557 was the daughter of
a well-to-do farmer, Robert Arden, who bequeathed her L6 13_s._ 4_d._ in
money and a house with fifty acres of land.
To John and Mary Shakespeare was born a son William, whose baptism was
registered in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Stratford on April 26,
1564. He was their eldest son, two daughters previously born being
already dead. Their other children were Gilbert, Joan, Anna, Richard,
and Edmund. The precise day of William's birth is unknown. The monument
over his grave states that at his death on April 23, 1616, he was
"AEtatis 53," which would seem to indicate that he must have been born at
least as early as April 22; and, since in those days baptism usually
took place within a very few days of birth, there is no reason for
pushing the date farther back.
[Page Heading: Marriage]
Of the education of the poet we have no record. Stratford had a free
grammar school, to which such a boy as the bailiff's son would be sure
to be sent; and the inference that William Shakespeare was a pupil there
and studied the usual Latin authors is entirely reasonable. About 1577
his father began to get into financial difficulties, and it is reported
that about this time the boy was withdrawn from school to help in his
father's business. We know nothing certainly, however, until we learn
from the registry of the Bishop of Worcester that on November 28, 1582,
two husbandmen of Stratford gave bonds "to defend and save harmless" the
bishop and his officers for licensing the marriage of William
Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway. Of the actual marriage there is no
record. Anne is probably to be identified with Agnes or Anne, the
daughter of Richard Hathaway of the neighboring hamlet of Shottery, who
had died in the previous July, and had owned the house of which a part
still survives and is shown to visitors as "Anne Hathaway's cottage."
The date on Anne's tombstone indicates that she was eight years older
than the poet.
A comparison of the bond just mentioned with other documents of the kind
indicates it to be exceptional in the absence of any mention of consent
by the bridegroom's parents, a circumstance rendered still more
remarkable by the fact that he was a minor. The bondsmen were from
Shottery, and this, along with the considerations already advanced, has
naturally led to the inference that the marriage was hurried by the
bride's friends, and to the finding of a motive for their haste in the
birth within six months of "Susanna, daughter to William Shakespere,"
who was baptized on May 26, 1583.
[Page Heading: "The only Shake-scene"]
The record of the baptism of Shakespeare's only other children, the
twins Hamnet and Judith, in February, 1585, practically exhausts the
documentary evidence concerning the poet in Stratford until 1596. It is
conjectured, but not known, that about 1586 he found his way to London
and soon became connected with the theater, according to one tradition,
as call-boy, to another, as holder of the horses of theatergoers. But by
1592 we are assured that he had entered the ranks of the playwrights,
and had achieved enough success to rouse the jealous resentment of a
rival. Robert Greene, who died on the third of September in that year,
left unpublished a pamphlet, _Greenes Groatsworth of Witte: bought with
a Million of Repentaunce_, in which he warned three of his fellows
against certain plagiarists, "those puppits, I meane, that speake from
our mouths, those anticks garnisht in our colours." "Yes, trust them
not," he goes on; "for 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 bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and
being an absolute _Johannes Factotum_, is in his owne conceit the only
Shake-scene in a countrie. O that I might intreate your rare wits to be
imployed in more profitable courses, and let those apes imitate your
past excellence, and never more acquaint them with your admired
inventions! I know the best husband of you all will never prove an
usurer, and the kindest of them all wil never proove a kinde nurse; yet,
whilst you may, seeke you better maisters, for it is pittie men of such
rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes." The
phrase about the "tyger's heart" is an obvious parody on the line,
Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide!
which occurs both in _The True Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke_, and
in the variant of that play which is included in the First Folio as the
third part of _Henry VI_. "The only Shake-scene" has naturally been
taken as an allusion to Shakespeare's name; and it is scarcely possible
to doubt the reference to him throughout the passage. This being so, we
may infer that by this date Shakespeare had written, with whatever else,
his share in the three parts of _Henry VI_, and was successful enough to
seem formidable to the dying Greene. It is noteworthy, too, that thus
early we have allusion to his double profession: as an actor in the
words "player's hide" and "Shake-scene," and as an author in the charge
of plagiarism. That the reference in "beautified with our feathers" is
to literary plagiarism is confirmed by the following lines from
_Greene's Funeralls_, by R. B., 1594, which seem to have been suggested
by Greene's phrase:
Greene is the ground of everie painters die;
Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him.
Nay, more, the men that so eclipst his fame,
_Purloynde his plumes_: can they deny the same?
Somewhat less certain is the allusion in a document closely connected
with the foregoing. _Greenes Groatsworth_ had been prepared for the
press by his friend Henry Chettle, and in the address "To the Gentlemen
Readers" prefixed to his _Kind-Harts Dreame_ (registered December 8,
1592), Chettle regrets that he has not struck out from Greene's book the
passages that have been "offensively by one or two of them taken." "With
neither of them that take offence was I acquainted, and with one of them
I care not if I never be. The other, whome at that time I did not so
much spare as since I wish I had, for that as I have moderated the heate
of living writers, and might have usde my owne discretion,--especially
in such a case, the Author beeing dead,--that I did not, I am as sory,
as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myselfe have seene
his demeanor no lesse civill, than he exelent in the qualitie[1] he
professes: Besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of
dealing, which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in writing,
that aprooves his Art." This characterization so well fits in with the
tone of later contemporary allusions to Shakespeare that it is
regrettable that Chettle did not make its reference to him beyond a
doubt.
[1] _I.e._, profession, used especially at that time of the profession
of acting.
[Page Heading: First Publications]
Within a few months after the disturbance caused by Greene's charges,
Shakespeare appeared in the field of authorship in quite unambiguous
fashion. On April 18, 1593, Richard Field, himself a Stratford man,
entered at Stationers' Hall a book entitled _Venus and Adonis_. The
dedication, which is to the Earl of Southampton, is signed by "William
Shakespeare," and the state of the text confirms the inference that the
poet himself oversaw the publication. The terms of the dedication, read
in the light of contemporary examples of this kind of writing, do not
imply any close relation between poet and patron; and the phrase "the
first heyre of my invention," applied to the poem, need not be taken as
placing its composition earlier than any of the plays, since writing for
the stage was then scarcely regarded as practising the art of letters.
_Lucrece_ was registered May 9, 1594, and appeared likewise without a
name on the title-page, but with Shakespeare's full signature attached
to a dedication, somewhat more warmly personal than before, to the same
nobleman. The frequency of complimentary references to these poems, and
the number of editions issued during the poet's lifetime (seven of
_Venus_, and five of _Lucrece_), indicate that it was through them that
he first obtained literary distinction.
Meanwhile he was gaining a footing as an actor. The accounts of the
Treasurer of the Chamber for March 15, 1594-5, bear record of
Shakespeare's having been summoned, along with Kempe and Burbage, as a
member of the Lord Chamberlain's Company, to present two comedies before
the Queen at Greenwich Palace in the Christmas season of 1594. This is
the earliest mention of the poet as sharing with his company a kind of
recognition as honorable as it was profitable.
The records now take us back to his family. On August 11, 1596, his only
son Hamnet was buried. In the same year John Shakespeare applied to the
College of Heralds for a grant of arms, basing the claim on services of
his ancestors to Henry VII, the continued good reputation of the family,
and John's marriage to "Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Arden, of
Wilmcote, gent." Since there is evidence to show that the financial
difficulties that had beset John Shakespeare before his son went to
London had continued, and since the attempts of actors to obtain
gentility by grants of arms were not uncommon, it is likely that the
poet was the moving force in this matter. Though a draft granting this
request was drawn up, it was not executed; but in 1599 a renewed
application was successful, the heralds giving an exemplification of the
coat which the applicants claimed had been assigned them in 1568, "Gold,
on a bend sable, a spear of the first, and for his crest or cognizance a
falcon, his wings displayed argent, standing on a wreath of his
colours, supporting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid." The motto is
"Non Sans Droit." These arms appear on the monument over Shakespeare's
grave in Trinity Church in Stratford, and, impaled with the Hall arms,
on the tombstone of his daughter Susanna and her husband John Hall.
[Page Heading: The Purchase of New Place]
A more substantial step towards restoring the standing of the family was
taken when the poet bought on May 4, 1597, for sixty pounds, New Place,
the largest house in Stratford. This was only the beginning of a
considerable series of investments of the profits of his professional
life in landed and other property in his native district. On his
father's death in 1601 he inherited the two houses in Henley Street, the
only real property of which the elder Shakespeare had retained
possession; and in one of these the poet's mother lived until her death
in 1608. About a hundred and seven acres of arable land with common
pasture appertaining to it was conveyed to the poet on May 1, 1602, by
William and John Combe, of Warwick and Old Stratford respectively, in
consideration of L320; and twenty acres of pasture land were acquired
from the same owners in 1610. On September 28, 1602, the Court Rolls of
the Manor of Rowington record the transfer to Shakespeare from Walter
Getley of a cottage and garden in Chapel Lane, Stratford. In 1605 he
paid L440 for the thirty-one years remaining of a lease of the Stratford
tithes, a purchase which involved him in a considerable amount of
litigation. It was through this acquisition that he became involved in
the dispute over the attempted inclosure of certain common fields
belonging to the town of Stratford. John Combe, who died in July, 1614,
bequeathing Shakespeare L5, left as heir a son, William, who with Arthur
Mannering, sought to annex to their respective estates the aforesaid
common lands. After having secured a deed safeguarding himself as part
owner of the tithes from any loss that might result from the inclosure,
Shakespeare seems to have lent his influence to Combe, in spite of the
requests of the corporation for aid. The inclosure was not carried out.
His investments were not confined to his native county. A deed of sale
has come down to us concerning the purchase of a house near the
Blackfriars Theater in London, in March, 1613. The price was L140; but
on the following day, March 11, Shakespeare gave the previous owner,
Henry Walker, a mortgage deed for L60, which he never seems to have paid
off. There is evidence of his ownership of other property in Blackfriars
in three documents, recently discovered by Professor C. W. Wallace,
dealing with a suit in Chancery, and dated April 26, May 15, and May 22,
1615, in which Shakespeare and others sought to obtain from one Matthew
Bacon possession of certain deeds pertaining to their property within
the precinct of Blackfriars.
[Page Heading: Litigation]
Other traces of Shakespeare's business transactions suggest that he was
by no means averse to going to law. After his resumption of relations
with Stratford in 1596, we find his parents engaged (November, 1597) in
a lawsuit, the outcome of which does not appear to recover the mortgaged
estate of Asbies, which had formed part of his mother's inheritance. The
years 1600, 1604, 1608, and 1609 all contain records of suits by the
poet to recover small sums of money; and, on the other hand, we find tax
collectors in London seeking payment of taxes incurred on his goods
while he lived in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopgate, in 1593 or
1594. These claims Shakespeare satisfied some years later when he was
living across the river in Southwark. The documents of a law case of
1612, recently discovered by Professor C. W. Wallace in the Public
Record office, include Shakespeare's deposition as a witness and add
some interesting information. It appears that, possibly from 1598 to
1604, he lodged in the house of Christopher Mountjoy, a wigmaker, at the
corner of Muggle and Silver streets near Cripplegate. In 1604 he had
aided in arranging the marriage of Mary Mountjoy to her father's
apprentice, Stephen Bellott. The lawsuit was brought by Bellott against
his father-in-law to secure the dowry and promise of inheritance.
Shakespeare's negotiations in regard to the marriage play an important
part in the various depositions, as the question whether a dowry of L50
had been promised was crucial to the case. Shakespeare himself was
examined on September 11, but the poet failed to remember that a
definite sum had been agreed upon for the dowry.
Further evidence relating to Shakespeare as a man of substance is to be
found in letters in the Stratford archives, written by prominent
townsmen. One, from Abraham Sturley to a relative in London on the
business of the town of Stratford, dated January 24, 1597-8, contains a
reference to "Mr. Shaksper" as "willing to disburse some money upon some
odd yard-land or other at Shottery or near about us," and suggests
urging upon Shakespeare the purchase of the tithes. It seems fairly
certain from other letters of Sturley's that this one was addressed to
Richard Quiney, father of Shakespeare's future son-in-law, Thomas
Quiney. On October 25 of the same year, this Richard Quiney wrote from
the Bell in Carter Lane, London, "to my loving friend and countryman,
Mr. Wm. Shackespere," asking for his help with L30. From a letter from
Abraham Sturley to Richard Quiney on the following fourth of November it
appears that Quiney was seeking an enlargement of the charter of
Stratford, with a view to an increase of revenue. In Sturley's previous
letter reference had been made to an attempt to gain "an ease and
discharge of such taxes and subsidies wherewith our town is like to be
charged, and I assure you I am in great fear and doubt by no means able
to pay." In this extreme condition of affairs Sturley heard with
satisfaction "that our countryman Mr. Wm. Shak. would procure us money,
which I will like of as I shall here when, and where, and how; and I
pray let not go that occasion if it may sort to any indifferent
conditions." The poet is probably referred to in still another letter,
of about the same period, to Richard Quiney, this time from his father
Adrian: "If you bargain with Wm. Sha., or receive money therefor, bring
your money home that you may." All of these documents carry the
unmistakable implication that William Shakespeare in London was regarded
by his fellow-townsmen as a person of resources, likely to be of service
to his friends in financial stress.
[Page Heading: Professional Progress]
If we return now to the evidences of Shakespeare's professional
progress, we shall see whence these resources were derived. Confining
ourselves still to explicit and unambiguous records, we find the year
1598 marking Shakespeare's emergence as actor and dramatist into a
somewhat opener publicity. The quarto editions of _Richard II_ and
_Love's Labour's Lost_, issued that year, are the first plays to exhibit
his name on the title-page; and in the 1616 folio edition of Ben
Jonson's works, attached to _Every Man in His Humour_, is the statement:
"This Comedie was first Acted in the yeere 1598 by the then L.
Chamberleyne his servants. The principal Comedians were Will.
Shakespeare, Aug. Philips, Hen. Condel, Will. Slye, Will. Kempe, Ric.
Burbadge, Joh. Hemings, Tho. Pope, Chr. Beeston, Joh. Dyke." These
evidences of prominence are more than corroborated by the famous passage
in the _Palladis Tamia_ (1598) of Francis Meres, in which he not only
compares the "mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare" with Ovid for
his _Venus and Adonis_, his _Lucrece_, "his sugred sonnets among his
private friends," but with Plautus and Seneca for his excellence "in
both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness his Gentlemen of Verona,
his Errors, his Love Labors Lost, his Love Labours Wonne, his Midsummers
Night Dreame, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the
2, Richard the 3, Henry the 4, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his
Romeo and Juliet." Barnfield in the same year harps on the
"honey-flowing vein" of the author of _Venus_ and _Lucrece_, and
"honey-tongued" is again the opening epithet of John Weever's epigram
"Ad Gulielmum Shakespeare" (1599), in which "_Romeo_" and "_Richard_"
share the praises with the narrative poems. From this time on,
publishers of the plays recognize Shakespeare's reputation by generally
placing his name on the title-page: a form of compliment which the
author probably did not appreciate when it was extended, as in the case
of _The Passionate Pilgrim_ (1599), to pirated works, some of which were
meant to be private, and others were not by him at all.
Reminiscences or references to his works are frequent in contemporary
literature. Among these are several passages in two plays, _The Return
from Parnassus_, acted in St. John's College, Cambridge, about 1601. In
one passage, Kempe, the famous actor, speaks slightingly of the acting
qualities of the plays by university pens and continues, "Why here's our
fellow Shakespeare puts them all down, ay, and Ben Jonson
too,"--another identification of the actor and the dramatist
Shakespeare. Another character in these plays prefers Shakespeare to
Chaucer, Gower, and Spenser. Less enthusiastic though sincerely
appreciative is John Webster, who, in the address to the Reader prefixed
to _The White Devil_, 1612, acknowledges his indebtedness to his
predecessors, Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher and to "the right
happy and copious industry of Master Shakespeare, Master Dekker, and
Master Heywood." Though of widely varying significance and interest, the
numerous allusions to Shakespeare or to his plays give further testimony
to his growing reputation.
[Page Heading: Contemporary Allusions]
While it is probable that the sale of Shakespeare's poems brought him in
some financial return, he is not likely to have profited from the
publication of his plays. The playwright at that time sold his product
to the manager or company, and thereby gave up all rights. To the end of
the sixteenth century managers usually paid from L5 to L11 for a new
play, adding a bonus in the case of success, and sometimes a share of
the proceeds of the second performance. During the first decade of
Shakespeare's activity as a dramatist, then, we may calculate that he
obtained for about twenty-one plays an average of about L10 each, which,
making the usual allowance for the greater purchasing power of money,
would be equivalent to about $400, or an annual income of about $800.
During his second decade the prices for plays had so risen that he may
be estimated to have received about twice as much from this source as
in the early half of his career.
More profitable than playwriting was acting. Lee estimates Shakespeare's
salary as an actor before 1599 at L100 a year at least, exclusive of
special rewards for court performances, and we know that by 1635 an
actor-shareholder, such as Shakespeare latterly was, had a salary of
L180. Besides this, he became about 1599 a sharer, with Heming, Condell,
Philips, and others, in the receipts of the Globe Theater, erected in
1597-8 by Richard and Cuthbert Burbage. The annual income from a single
share was over L200, and Shakespeare may have had more than one. In 1610
he became a sharer also in the smaller Blackfriars Theater, after it had
been acquired by the Burbages.
The evidence thus accumulated of Shakespeare's having acquired a
substantial fortune is corroborated by what we know of the earnings of
other members of his profession, and it leaves no mystery about the
source of the capital which he invested in real property in Stratford
and London.
The death of Elizabeth and the accession of James I improved rather than
impaired Shakespeare's prospects. A patent, dated May 19, 1603,
authorizes the King's servants, "Lawrence Fletcher, William Shakespeare,
Richard Burbage ... and the rest of their associats freely to use and
exercise the arte and faculty of playing comedies, tragedies, histories,
interludes, moralls, pastorals, stage-plaies, and such other like as
they have already studied, or hereafter shall use or studie, as well
for the recreation of our lovinge subjects, as for our solace and
pleasure when we shall thinke good to see them, duringe our pleasure."
By this document the Lord Chamberlain's Company became the King's, and
so remained during the rest of Shakespeare's connection with the stage.
At least a dozen instances are recorded in the Revels Accounts of the
Company's having acted before his Majesty, and on the occasion of a
performance before the court at the Earl of Pembroke's mansion of Wilton
House, L30 was given them "by way of his majesty's reward."
Shakespeare's name stands first in a list of nine actors who walked in a
procession on the occasion of James's entry into London, March 15, 1604,
when each actor was granted four yards and a half of scarlet cloth for
cloaks for the occasion.
[Page Heading: Growing Prosperity]
This recognition by the court is the latest evidence we have of
Shakespeare's belonging to the profession of acting. He is mentioned in
the Jonson Folio of 1616 as playing a part in _Sejanus_ in 1603; but his
name is absent from the list of the King's servants, as his company had
now become, when they performed _Volpone_ in 1605, _The Alchemist_ in
1610, and _Catiline_ in 1611. It would thus seem that he gave up acting
shortly after the death of Elizabeth.
The date of his withdrawal from London to Stratford is less precisely
indicated. The likelihood is that the transference was gradual; for
after 1611, the date usually conjectured for his retirement from the
metropolis, we have indications of at least occasional activities there,
as in the collaboration with Fletcher, now generally admitted, in _Henry
VIII_ and _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, and in the business dealings in
Blackfriars already described. On the other hand, he had disposed of his
shares in the theaters before his death; as we have seen, he appears
frequently in his last years in connection with municipal affairs in
Stratford; and later formal references are usually to "William
Shakespeare, gent., of Stratford-on-Avon." It was during this period
that we find record of the poet serving in a new capacity. There has
recently been discovered in the Household Book at Belvoir Castle the
following entry: "Item 31 Martij (1613) to Mr. Shakspeare in gold about
my Lordes Impreso xiiij s. To Richard Burbadge for paynting and making
yt in gold xliiij s. (Total) iiij^li viij^s." This means that the Earl
of Rutland, who took part in a tournament at Whitehall on March 24,
1613, had the heraldic device for his shield made by Shakespeare and
Burbage,--Burbage, whose skill as painter is well known, being probably
responsible for the design and Shakespeare for the motto. Rutland was a
friend and associate of that Earl of Southampton to whom Shakespeare had
dedicated his two narrative poems.
The remaining documents are chiefly domestic. On June 5, 1607, his elder
daughter Susanna married John Hall, a physician of Stratford, who
succeeded the poet in the occupancy of New Place; and on September 9,
1608, the Stratford Register records the burial of his mother, "Mayry
Shaxspere, wydowe." His younger daughter, Judith, married Thomas Quiney
on February 10, 1616, with such haste and informality as led to the
imposition of a fine by the ecclesiastical court at Worcester. In the
previous month Shakespeare had a draft of his will drawn up by Francis
Collins, a solicitor of Warwick, and after certain changes this was
signed in March. On the twenty-fifth of April the Registers show the
burial of "Will. Shakespeare gent." The monument over his grave gives
the day of his death as April 23 (Old Style). He was buried in the
chancel of Stratford Church, and on the grave may still be read the much
discussed lines:
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare
To dig the dust enclosed heare;
Bleste be the man that spares these stones,
And curst be he that moves my bones.
William Hall, who visited Stratford in 1694, records the tradition that
the poet himself composed the lines in a style calculated to impress
sextons and prevent them from digging up his bones and throwing them
into the adjacent charnel house. However this may be, the grave has
remained unopened.
[Page Heading: Death and Burial]
Seven years later, thirty-six of Shakespeare's plays were collected by
two of his former colleagues of the theater, Heming and Condell, whom he
had remembered in his will, and published in the famous First Folio.
The preliminary documents in this volume, printed in our appendix, close
significantly the contemporary records of the man, and bind together the
burgess of Stratford with the actor of London and the dramatist of the
world.
Of Shakespeare's handwriting nothing that can be called his with
complete assurance has survived except six signatures; one to the
deposition in the matter of the Mountjoy marriage; one to the deed of
the house he bought in Blackfriars in 1613, one to the mortgage-deed on
the same house, executed on the day after the purchase, and one on each
of the three sheets of paper containing his will, the last of which has
in addition the words "By me." All six are somewhat crabbed specimens of
the old English style of handwriting, which is the character he would
naturally acquire in such a school as that at Stratford in the sixteenth
century, as we learn from surviving examples of the copy-books of the
period. The manuscripts of his plays have gone the way of all, or almost
all, the autographs of the men of letters of his time, nor is it likely
that future research will add materially to what we have. The exact
signatures, though it is difficult to be certain of all the letters,
seem to show a variation in spelling--Shakspere, Shakespere, or
Shakspeare. His father's name appears in the records of the town in
sixteen different forms, an illustration of the inconsistency in the
orthography of proper names, as of other words, which was common with
people of that time of greater worldly consequence and education than
the poet or his father. The form of the name used in the present edition
is that which generally appears on the title-pages of plays ascribed to
him; it is that which he himself used in signing the dedications of his
two poems to the Earl of Southampton; it is that which occurs in the
legal documents having to do with his property; and it is the common
spelling in the literary allusions of the seventeenth century.
[Page Heading: Signatures and Portraits]
[Illustration: THREE AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURES WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON
THREE SHEETS OF HIS WILL
From the document now at Somerset House, London]
Our knowledge of Shakespeare's personal appearance is also far from
being definite. The bust on the monument in the church at Stratford was
cut apparently before 1623 by a Dutch stone cutter called Gerard
Janssen. It was originally colored; probably the eyes light hazel, and
the hair auburn. Its crude workmanship renders it unreliable as a
likeness. The frontispiece to the First Folio was engraved for that work
by Martin Droeshout, who was only twenty-two years old at the time, so
that he is more likely to have made it from a portrait than from memory.
No portrait has been found that seems actually to have served this
purpose, though there are resemblances between the engraving and the
portrait, dated 1609, presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery at
Stratford by Mrs. Charles Flower. The numerous other portraits that have
been claimed as likenesses of the dramatist have varying degrees of
probability, but none has a pedigree without a flaw. Those with most
claim to interest are the Ely Palace portrait, the Chandos portrait,
the Garrick Club bust, and the Kesselstadt death-mask.[2]
[2] See frontispieces in the Tudor Shakespeare to editions of _Henry V_
(Droeshout original), _King Lear_ (Ely Palace), _Romeo and Juliet_
(Chandos), _Pericles_ (Garrick Club bust), and _The Tempest_
(Death-mask). The Stratford Monument and the Droeshout engraving are
reproduced in the present volume.
* * * * *
Such is the very considerable body of authenticated facts about the life
of Shakespeare. Lacking though they are in intimate and personal
touches, they can hardly be said to leave the main outlines of his
career shadowy or mysterious. But they do not by any means exhaust the
data at our disposal for forming an impression of the poet's
personality. A large mass of tradition, of less than legal validity but
much of it of a high degree of probability, has come down to us, the
sources of which may now be detailed.
In the seventeenth century we have several biographical and critical
collections in which Shakespeare figures, the most important being
these: Fuller's _Worthies of England_ (1662), Aubrey's _Lives of Eminent
Men_ (compiled 1669-1696), Phillips's _Theatrum Poetarum_ (1675), and
Langbaine's _English Dramatic Poets_ (1691). The two last are for
strictly biographical purposes negligible, though interesting as early
criticism. Fuller began his work in 1643, so that he may be supposed to
have had access to oral tradition from men who actually knew
Shakespeare. He gives few facts, but some hints as to temperament.
"Though his genius generally was jocular and inclining him to
festivity, yet he could, when so disposed, be solemn and serious....
Many were the wit-combats betwixt him and Ben Jonson; which two I beheld
like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war; master Jonson
(like the former) was built far higher in learning; solid, but slow, in
his performances. Shakespeare, with the English man-of-war, lesser in
bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and
take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention."
[Page Heading: Sources of Traditions]
Among the actors who, with Shakespeare, took part in the first
production of Jonson's _Every Man in His Humour_ was Christopher
Beeston, who when he died in 1637 was manager of the Cockpit Theater in
Drury Lane. He was succeeded in this office by his son William, who
became in his old age the revered transmitter to Restoration players and
playwrights of the traditions of the great age in which he had spent his
youth. From him, and from another actor of the same period, John Lacy,
as well as from other sources, the antiquary John Aubrey collected
fragments of gossip for his lives of the English poets. According to
Aubrey's notes, confused and unequal in value, Shakespeare "did act
exceeding well"; "understood Latin pretty well, for he had been in his
younger years a schoolmaster in the country"; "was a handsome,
well-shaped man, very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant
smooth wit." It is Aubrey, too, that reports that John Shakespeare was
a butcher, and he adds, "I have been told heretofore by some of the
neighbours that when he was a boy he exercised his father's trade....
When he killed a calf, he would doe it in a high style and make a
speech. There was at that time another butcher's son in this towne, that
was held not at all inferior to him for a naturall wit, his
acquaintance, and coetanean, but dyed young." The same writer is
authority for the statement that it was at Grendon, near Oxford, on the
road from Stratford to London, that the dramatist "happened to take the
humour of the constable in Midsummer Night's Dream"--a remark that may
refer loosely either to Bottom and his friends, or to Dogberry and
Verges. He also ascribes to the poet an apocryphal epigram on a
Stratford usurer, John Combe.
The Rev. John Ward, vicar of Stratford-on-Avon for 1662 to 1668, kept
about the time of his coming to this charge a diary in which he relates
certain echoes of the conversation of the town at a time when the poet's
nephews were still living there. From him we hear that in his elder days
Shakespeare retired to Stratford; that in his most active period he
wrote two plays a year; that he spent at the rate of L1000 a year; and
that his death was due to a fever following a "merry meeting" in
Stratford with Jonson and Drayton.
An additional reference to the tradition of Shakespeare's convivial
tendencies is to be found in the legend of his visit to Bidford, six
miles from Stratford, with a group of cronies to compare capacities
with the Bidford Drinkers. According to the earliest version of this
somewhat widespread tale, that of a visitor to Stratford in 1762, "he
enquired of a shepherd for the Bidford Drinkers, who replied they were
absent but the Bidford sippers were at home, and, I suppose, continued
the sheepkeeper, they will be sufficient for you; and so, indeed, they
were; he was forced to take up his lodging under that tree [the
crab-tree, long pointed out] for some hours."
[Page Heading: Traditions]
The earliest description of Shakespeare as "a glover's son" is found in
the memoranda of Archdeacon Plume of Rochester, written about 1656.
Plume adds, "Sir John Mennes saw once his old father in his shop--a
merry cheeked old man that said, 'Will was a good honest fellow, but he
darest have crackt a jeast with him at any time.'" No Sir John Mennes
who could have seen John Shakespeare is known, but the saying may well
be the echo of contemporary gossip.
A manuscript preserved at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, contains
certain notes made before 1688 by the Rev. William Fulman. Among them
are interpolated others (given here in italics) by the Rev. Richard
Davies previously to 1708. "William Shakespeare was born at
Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire about 1563-4. _Much given to all
unluckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits, particularly from Sr. ...
Lucy, who had him whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him
fly his native country to his great advancement; but his reveng was so
sweet that he is his Justice Clodpate, and calls him a great man, and
that in allusion to his name bore three lowses rampant for his arms._
From an actor of playes he became a composer. He dyed Apr. 23, 1616,
aetat 53, probably at Stratford, for there he is buried, and hath a
monument (Dugd. p. 520), _on which he lays a heavy curse upon any one
who shall remove his bones. He dyed a papist."_ The inaccuracy of
Davies's version of facts otherwise known warns us against too great a
reliance on his individual contribution.
A certain John Dowdall left a short account of places he visited in
Warwickshire in 1693. He describes the monument and tombstone, giving
inscriptions, and adds, "The clarke that shew'd me this church is above
80 years old; he says that this Shakespeare was formerly in this towne
bound apprentice to a butcher, but that he run from his master to
London, and there was received into the play-house as a serviture, and
by this means had an opportunity to be what he afterwards prov'd. He was
the best of his family, but the male line is extinguished. Not one for
feare of the curse abovesaid dare touch his gravestone, tho his wife and
daughters did earnestly desire to be leyd in the same grave with him."
The traditional explanation of the curse as reported by William Hall,
has already been given (p. 35).
[Page Heading: Rowe's Biography]
The first regular biography of Shakespeare is that by Nicholas Rowe,
written as a preface to his edition of the plays which, issued in 1709,
stands at the beginning of modern Shakespearean interpretation. Though
compiled nearly a century after the poet's death, Rowe's life has claims
upon our credit more substantial than might be expected. His chief
source of information was the great actor Betterton, a Shakespeare
enthusiast, who had himself taken pains to accumulate facts concerning
his hero. Much of Betterton's material came to him through John Lowin
and Joseph Taylor, two actors who had been colleagues of Shakespeare's
and who lived into the Restoration period. According to John Downes, a
theatrical prompter in the end of the seventeenth century, these
veterans brought to the new generation the actual instruction they had
received from the dramatist himself on the playing of the parts
respectively of Henry VIII and Hamlet. Theatrical and other traditions
reached Rowe also through Sir William D'Avenant, the leading figure in
the revival of the stage after 1660. D'Avenant's father was host of the
Crown Inn at Oxford, where, according to the statements of Aubrey and of
Anthony Wood in 1692, Shakespeare was accustomed to put up on his
journeys between London and Stratford. Wood reports that the elder
D'Avenant was a "man of grave and saturnine disposition, yet an admirer
of plays and play-makers, especially Shakespeare," and that Mrs.
D'Avenant was "a very beautiful woman, of a good wit and conversation."
William D'Avenant was generally reputed to be Shakespeare's godson, and
Aubrey, whose gossip must be accepted with great hesitation, says that
he was not averse to being taken as his son. In spite of the fact of
this scandal's appearance in various seventeenth century anecdotes, the
more careful account of the D'Avenants by Wood points to its rejection.
The story is usually linked with another recorded by the lawyer
Manningham in his Diary, March 13, 1602, that Burbage, who had been
playing Richard III, was overheard by Shakespeare making an appointment
with a lady in the audience. When the tragedian arrived at the
rendez-vous, he found Shakespeare in possession; and on knocking was
answered that "William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third."
To return to the D'Avenants, the elder son, Robert, used to tell that
when he was a child Shakespeare had given him "a hundred kisses." Sir
William was Rowe's authority for the statement that the Earl of
Southampton once gave the poet L1000 "to enable him to go through with a
purchase which he heard he had a mind to"; but no purchase of this
magnitude by Shakespeare is recorded. D'Avenant himself was said to own
a complimentary letter written to Shakespeare by James I, and the
publisher Lintot says that the Duke of Buckinghamshire claimed to have
examined the document. The story about Shakespeare's first connection
with the theater consisting in his holding horses outside, told first in
a manuscript note preserved in the Library of the University of
Edinburgh, 1748, is also credited to D'Avenant. According to this
tradition, frequently repeated, the future dramatist organized a regular
corps of boys and monopolized the business, so that "as long as the
practice of riding to the play-house continued the waiters that held the
horses retained the appellation of Shakespeare's Boys."
[Page Heading: Further Traditions]
Many of the natural inferences to be drawn from the data in the first
part of the chapter are given by Rowe as facts. Thus he states
positively that Shakespeare attended a free school, from which he was
withdrawn owing to "the narrowness of his circumstances, and the want of
assistance at home." He repeats the deer-stealing anecdote, with further
detail. As to his acting, Rowe reports, "Tho' I have inquir'd, I could
never meet with any further account of him this way than that the top of
his performance was the ghost in his own Hamlet." He corroborates the
general contemporary opinion of Shakespeare's fluency and spontaneity in
composition. As to his personality, he says, "Besides the advantages of
his wit, he was in himself a good-natur'd man, of great sweetness in his
manners and a most agreeable companion." Rowe credits Shakespeare with
having prevented his company from rejecting one of Jonson's plays at a
time when Jonson was altogether unknown, and is inclined to consider the
latter ungenerous in his critical remarks on Shakespeare.
William Oldys, in his manuscript _Adversaria_, now in the British
Museum, reports a few further fragments of gossip, the chief of which
is that Shakespeare's brother Gilbert was discovered still living about
1660 and was questioned by some actors as to his memory of William. All
he could give them was a vague recollection of his having played the
part of Adam in _As You Like It_.
Such are the most significant details which tradition, unauthenticated
but often plausible, has added to our knowledge of the documents. There
exists also a very considerable amount of literary allusion to
Shakespeare's productions from 1594 onwards, which is easily accessible
in collected form. The most notable of these are the comments of his
friend and contemporary, Ben Jonson. Besides the splendid eulogy
prefixed to the First Folio, Jonson talked of Shakespeare's lack of art
to Drummond of Hawthornden, and expressed himself with affection and
discrimination in the famous passage in _Timber_.
After all allowances have been made for the inaccuracies of oral
tradition, we may safely gather from those concerning Shakespeare some
inferences which help to clothe the naked skeleton of the documented
facts. It is clear that, within a generation after Shakespeare's death,
common opinion both in Stratford and London recognized that in the actor
and dramatist a great man had passed away, that he had been in a worldly
sense highly successful, though starting from unpropitious beginnings,
that he wrote with great swiftness and ease, and that in his personal
relations he was gentle, kindly, genial, and witty. That the bailiff's
son who returned to his native town as a prosperous gentleman, is to be
identified with the actor and shareholder of the London theaters, and
with the author of the plays and poems, it is difficult to see how there
can remain any reasonable doubt; and, though the facts which prove this
identity contain little to illuminate the vast intellect and soaring
imagination which created Hamlet and Lear, they contain nothing
irreconcilable with the personality, which these creations imply rather
than reveal.
[Page Heading: Evidence of the Sonnets]
One further source of information about Shakespeare's personality has
figured largely in some biographies. The _Sonnets_ were published in
1609, evidently without Shakespeare's cooeperation or consent, with a
dedication by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, to a Mr. W. H., "the onlie
begetter of these insuing sonnets." All attempts to identify this Mr. W.
H. have failed. He may have been merely the person who procured the
manuscript for Thorpe, though the language of the dedication seems to
imply that he was the young gentleman who is the subject of a
considerable number of the poems. Of this young gentleman and of a dark
lady who seems to have been the occasion of other of the sonnets, much
has been written, but no facts of Shakespeare's life have been
established beyond those which are obvious to every reader: that
Shakespeare wrote admiring and flattering sonnets to a young man who is
urged to marry (and who may have been the Earl of Southampton, or an
unknown Mr. W. H., or another); and that he treats of an intrigue with
some unknown woman. The identification of the young man of the first
seventeen sonnets with other friends who are praised in later sonnets is
not certain, though in some cases probable; and much research and
conjecture have entirely failed to make clear the relations between the
poet, the rival poet, the lady, and the friend. The _Sonnets_ furnish us
with no knowledge of Shakespeare's personal affairs, and only a meager
basis even for gossip as to some of his experiences with men and women.
Another kind of inquiry has sought to discover in the sonnets not facts
or incidents of Shakespeare's life, but indications of his emotional
experiences. The results of such inquiry are manifestly outside the
scope of this chapter. For their discussion, the reader must be referred
to Professor Alden's introduction to the Tudor edition of the _Sonnets_.
Shakespeare's personality as it is reflected from his works will also be
considered in the concluding chapter of this volume. So much stress,
however, has been placed on interpretations of the sonnets, and these
have so often occupied an exaggerated place in his biography, that it
may be worth while to remark that whether these lyrical poems are
genuine and personal or are conventional and literary, and whether they
make the poet more clearly discernible or not, they must certainly be
taken not alone by themselves, but in connection with the dramas as
affording us an impression of the man who wrote them. Of the sonnets,
it may be said in almost the same words just now used of the documents
and traditions, that whether they contain much or little to illuminate
the vast intellect and soaring imagination which created Hamlet and
Lear, they contain nothing irreconcilable with the personality which
these creations imply rather than reveal.