THE POET'S DOMESTIC LIFE
In 1601 John Shakespeare's arduous life came to an end. Fifty years had
passed since he left Snitterfield for Stratford, to venture into several
business undertakings with temporary success, and achieve municipal
honours for a few years. His decline had been more rapid than his rise,
and, but for his son's success, his ending had been less peaceful. As
far as we can tell, the last four or five years were free from grave
financial trouble, but when he died the houses in Henley Street were the
sole remains of his fortune; the rest had passed to creditors. These
William Shakespeare inherited as eldest son--he let one, and left his
mother in peaceful enjoyment of the other. In the following year he made
more purchases, rather more than one hundred acres of farm-land at three
pounds per acre--a price that would be quite good to-day if we consider
the relative values of money--and a cottage with garden on the boundary
of the New Place grounds. In 1605 he bought the unexpired term of a long
lease of half the tithes of Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and
Welcombe, the price being L440, which may be taken to stand for more
than L3000 of our money, and a considerable part of a full year's
income in his most prosperous time. It was an unfortunate investment,
and one which led to his frequent recourse to the lawyers. Shakespeare's
knowledge of the law has often puzzled his biographers, and the
correctness of his phraseology has been advanced by upholders of the
grotesque Baconian heresy as one of the reasons why he could not have
written the plays attributed to him. But it is impossible for the plain
man to follow the arguments that the Baconians adduce and affect to
support.
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In later years the poet bought another twenty acres of arable land to
add to his already considerable holding. All these purchases were made
while he was a very busy man--actor, playwright, and manager. Doubtless
he had other investments and interests, of which we may some day know a
little more than we do now. Fresh documents relating to his investments
in the theatrical world were published as recently as the closing months
of 1909, and the records of the reign of Elizabeth and James I. are by
no means fully examined. One truth stands out clearly through the
interesting story of Shakespeare's investments, and that is his love for
the town in which he was born. With so large a share of the world to
choose from, with countless associations that might well have kept him
in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, with friends in Court circles
and acting circles who would scarcely be accessible in a town three,
four, or even five days' journey from London, he seems to have had the
fixed intent of spending his years of ease at home. There is too much
reason to believe that with him marriage was a failure. Reference has
been made already to the birth of his daughter Susanna, who became Mrs.
Hall, and we know that in 1585 his wife bore twins, boy and girl, Hamnet
and Judith, named after Hamnet and Judith Sadler, friends of John
Shakespeare. But the poet saw little of his family or of the three
children of his union, and at the time of his public return to Stratford
little Hamnet Shakespeare died, in his twelfth year. Susanna married, in
1607, the Puritan physician John Hall. Judith the twin married Mr.
Thomas Quiney in the year of her father's death. The poet seems to have
lived on excellent terms with his daughters, but there must be some
justification for the generally accepted story of unhappy married life.
Had he been devoted to his wife, Shakespeare could have sent for her
when he had been a very few years in London; the fact that he did not go
back to her for eleven years has a significance that takes a great deal
of explaining away, nor are the laboured explanations of the people who
assume that the life of genius is perfect, worth the ink and paper
devoted to them. The estrangement might have been the fault of the man,
or his wife, or both; it is a matter that ceased to be important when
one or both had died. We make our conjectures and pass on; others come
to do the same; but the first is likely to be as far from the truth as
the last. We do not find any reliable information that can clear the
darkness enshrouding the poet's life; even Aubrey's "Lives of Eminent
Men," in which the poet is described as "handsome and well shaped," was
written more than fifty years after his death, and was founded upon the
gossip of an old actor.
There is hardly more than one portrait that may be supposed to show the
poet as he was. This was discovered by Mr. Edgar Flower in 1892; it is
painted on an elm panel, with "Wm. Shakespeare, 1609," in the left-hand
corner. Several leading authorities have agreed that it may be the
original from which Martin Droeshout engraved his half-length portrait
for the folio of 1623, a likeness that was accepted as satisfactory by
Ben Jonson, though it was clearly a second-hand work, because the
engraver was no more than fifteen when Shakespeare died. The portrait is
now in the Memorial Gallery at Stratford. Dr. Sidney Lee, in his
fascinating "Life of William Shakespeare," a work that has run into many
editions, tells us that upwards of sixty portraits of Shakespeare have
been offered to the National Gallery since 1856, and that not one of
these has been shown to be authentic. How fortunate, then, that the
deeds and signatures quite beyond suspicion have told the world so much
about the business side of the poet's life. Just as the forgery of
portraits has been of common occurrence, so the forgery of deeds has
been a source of amusement, if not of profit, to many; but happily there
is always a strong critical faculty waiting to deal with startling
discoveries, and those that survive the sifting of the keen intellects
that examine them may be accepted in perfect good faith.
We have the safe material upon which to base the conclusion that the
poet left Stratford penniless, or well-nigh penniless, in 1585; that
after eleven years of hard work in London, in the course of which he
probably paid brief visits to his home, travelling by way of Oxford and
stopping at the Crown Inn, he returned to restore the family fortunes
and build up his own estate. We know that he bought the best house in
the town, that he planted an orchard, developed his gardens, and made
extensive purchase of farm-lands, some years before he could hope to
settle down in comfort to their enjoyment. It may be that the knowledge
that the new home was ready for him helped to put a period to the London
labours. He did not give any sign of appreciating the full significance
of his own work, or appear to know that he had made a position that
placed him side by side with Geoffrey Chaucer in merit, and still higher
in world renown. He never pushed the advantages that a connection at
Court and the favour of King James might have given him--he was only too
pleased to retire, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," while he
was yet on the sunny side of fifty. Man of affairs sufficiently to seek
the law-courts on the smallest provocation, idealist to the extent of
preferring a simple country life to all the glamour of London, a man
seemingly endowed with all the ambitions of the most sober and
unimaginative middle class--truly he presents strange and baffling
contrasts.
In the absence of direct evidence to the contrary, we may presume that
Shakespeare retired from the actor's profession in 1611, on or before
the completion of "The Tempest," into the closing act of which he would
seem to have put a reflection of his own inmost thought. Of all the rich
and varied emotions to which such a mind must have responded, there
could have been none more stirring than the thought that his life-work
had brought the reward he most desired. To the town from which he had
fled as an outcast he was returning a man of substance and repute; to
the failing fortunes of those he had left behind he had become a sure
support. Father, mother, one brother, Edmund, and the little son Hamnet
had gone before him "to that bourn from which no traveller returns," but
there were two loving daughters and a granddaughter waiting to welcome
him home, one sister, Joan, and two brothers, Gilbert and Richard. There
was Michael Drayton, author of the "Shepherd's Garland," the man after
his own heart, to whose charming sonnets he was indebted for some of the
beauty of his own, and it may be that some of his old companions of the
stage could be lured to New Place in the intervals of their touring. For
one who knew as well as Shakespeare the changes and uncertainties of
life, there must have been a keen consciousness that balance of fortune
was in his favour when he rode out from London on to the
Oxford-Stratford road, only to return to look after his vested interests
as occasion should demand.
The poet would appear to have taken an active part in developing the
prosperity of his native town, and to have found in that work
sufficient consolation, if any was needed, for his absence from the
scenes of greater activity. In 1611, the year of his retirement, he
supported with his purse and influence a Bill before Parliament for the
better repair of the highways. He had suffered first-hand acquaintance
with their wretched state. Doubtless he took part in much unrecorded
work for the betterment of his own estate, and he was frequently found
indulging in his undeniable passion for litigation. The purchase of a
house in Blackfriars is recorded in 1613, and it led to the seemingly
inevitable lawsuit some two years later. Nicholas Rowe, poet-laureate to
King George I., wrote a life of Shakespeare in the early years of the
eighteenth century, and we owe to him a statement, founded upon such
information as a lapse of a century could validate, that Shakespeare
spent the last years of his life enjoying "ease, retirement, and the
conversation of his friends." We know that Michael Drayton and Ben
Jonson visited him at New Place, and it is a tradition that their visits
were celebrated in convivial fashion. At the same time there would have
been certain restraints upon a very free life, even had the poet been
disposed to lead one. Society in small country towns is notoriously
inclined to be intolerant, and Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr. Hall, was
one of the great and growing body of Puritans that looked askance at
sensual indulgence in any form. Moreover, there was a strong feeling
against the stage in Stratford; it found expression only a year after
Shakespeare's return, when the Town Council passed a resolution that
stage plays were unlawful, and increased the penalties to which players
might be subjected. It would be a matter of great interest to know how
Shakespeare regarded a resolution that so wantonly decried the
profession by which he had lived and thriven. There is no evidence to
show that the action of the city fathers was symptomatic of any ill-will
towards him, or that he resented it openly. Yet he was a man who could
and would stand up for his rights in and out of season. Perhaps in the
most of his moods he was gentle and affectionate, for more than once in
his career we find his friends leaving him small legacies or gifts or
tokens of their affection. These came alike from actors who had shared
with him the traffic of the stage, and from fellow-townsmen of
Stratford. Even if the recorded references are scanty enough, there is
none that may be held unflattering if we except the attack by Greene,
for which his publisher went out of his way to apologise. It is hard, if
not impossible, to estimate the value of any form of art-work in the
lifetime of the worker, and it may well be that of the thousands who
applauded Shakespeare's plays there were very few who saw them as we do
to-day. The mere fact that they were for the most part new versions of
works that were then quite familiar to playgoers would have told against
them. Theme rather than treatment was best calculated to "tickle the
groundlings."