Shakespeare: A Life (71 page)

Authors: Park Honan

Tags: #General, #History, #Literary Criticism, #European, #Biography & Autobiography, #Great Britain, #Literary, #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Europe, #Biography, #Historical, #Early modern; 1500-1700, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Performing Arts, #History & Criticism, #Shakespeare, #Theater, #Dramatists; English, #Stratford-upon-Avon (England)

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12	A Perambulation of Kent Conteining the description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shyre ( 1576), sig. ¶ ^v( Thomas Wotton's epistle).
13	Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scot-lande, and Ireland , 3 vols. ( 1577), i. 243.
14	'Of Scholemasters', sig. D1 ^v.
15	If 'Rec. of m ^rhunt towardes the repayringe of the schole wyndowes vij ^sxj ^d' refers to a 'barring out' (in which the master was locked out and glass was broken) then boys in Hunt's class or their parents would have had to pay the 7 s. 11 d. (borough account of 17 Feb. 1574, for 1572-3). That sum compares with 5 s. 6 d. and 10 s. collected from Leicester schoolboys for window repairs somewhat later: Cross, Free Grammar School of Leicester , 25.
16	ME 56.
17	MS SBTRO, BRU 2/1.
18	M& A iii. 150, and iv. 18; Baldwin, Small Latine & Lesse Greeke , i. 471.
19	The xv bookes . . . entytuled Metamorphosis, translated . . . by Arthur Golding ( 1567), 'The Eight Booke' , sig. 05.
20	See Baldwin, Small Latine & Lesse Greeke , ii. 183-4.
21	Camden refers to the year 1574, with respect to this passage in Latin, in his Annales Rerum Anglicarum ( 1616), sig. R7 ^r.
22	W. Raleigh on attire, in Shakespeare's England , ed. C. T. Onions ( Oxford, 1917), i. 21.
23	Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses ( 1583), ed. F. J. Furnivall ( London, 1877-9), 147.
24	At least in Essex, where poaching was incessant; F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Disorder ( Chelmsford, 1970), 232-43.
25	3 Henry VI, iii. i. 6.
26	EKC, Facts , ii. 264.
27	ME 108.
28	'Of Scholemasters's, sig. DI ^v.

5. Opportunity and Need

1	MS Bodleian, Arch. F. c. 37.
2	Lost Years , 28-9.
3	MS Lancs., WCW 1581. The will was proved 12 Sept. 1581.
4	The possibility that 'William Shakeshafte' was the poet has been discussed often, notably in Oliver Baker In Shakespeare's Warwickshire and the Unknown Years ( 1937), E. K. Chambers Shakespearean Gleanings ( Oxford, 1944), and Robert Stevenson's Shakespeare's Religious Frontier ( The Hague, 1958), and, with a strong negative answer, by Douglas Hamer in Review of English Studies , 21 ( 1970), 41-8. In 1985 Honigmann, in Lost Years , replied to Hamer with fresh research, and in part

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focused on Stratford's series of Lancashire-bred schoolmasters in WS's time, in particular on John Cottom in relation to Lancashire recusants such as the Hoghtons. But families of 'Shakeshafte' lived in the north (as the Preston Burgess Rolls show), and the identity, with Shakespeare, so far, has not been capable of proof or disproof. Richard Wilson adds a lively essay to the debate (in TLS, 19 Dec. 1997, pp. 11-13), but settles nothing.
5	C Broadbent comments on topographical images in "Shakespeare and Shakeshaft'", Notes and Queries , 201 ( 1956), 154-7.
6	M&A iii. 39.
7	See E. I. Fripp, Shakespeare's Haunts Near Stratford ( Oxford, 1929), 30-1; John Pace , in fact, figures as a creditor (not a 'witness') in Richard Hathaway's will .
8	This occurred on 20 Nov. 1589.
9	J. K. Walton, Lancashire: A Social History, 1558-1939 ( Manchester, 1987), 13; J. J. Bagley , The Earls of Derby 1485-1985 ( 1985), 64.
10	6 Dec. 1571; Ferdinando, Lord Strange was then about 11 or 12; he was born in London in 1559 or 1560.
11	Francis Peck, Desiderata Curiosa ( 1779), 116 ( 15 Mar, 1582), 141-2 ( 16 Dec. 1583), and 147 ( 21 Mar. 1584).
12	Cf. Stevenson, Shakespeares Religious Frontier , 75.
13	Joseph Gillow, The Haydock Papers ( 1888), 3-5; Peter Aughton, North Meols and Southport. A History ( Preston, 1989), 42-3.
14	MS Lancs., DDH ^e11. 93 and DDHC 28. 44. The signatures are in witness to a feoffment of 1591 and to a conveyance of 1608, both with Robert Hesketh, Esq. as recipient.
15	Inventory of 16 Nov. 1620.
16	Cf. Broadbent, "Shakespeare and Shakeshaft'", 155-7.
17	Lost Years , 34.
18	Sir Thomas Hesketh (d. 1588), his son and heir Robert, and Ferdinando, Lord Strange appear in household books of the fourth Earl of Derby: ' Sondaye Sr Tho. Hesketh & his sone'; 'on Wednesday my L. Strandge' ( 1587); 'Sondai ^eMr Robt ^eHesketh at dinner and many others'; 'Thursdaie my L. & Lady Strange went to dinner at Rufford' (early in 1589). These social relationships had long antecedents; though often in London, the player-patron Ferdinando was intimate with the Heskeths; The Stanley Papers , pt. 11, The Derby Household Books , ed. F. R. Raines, Chetham Society xxxi ( Manchester, 1853), 47, 75-6.
19	Bagley, The Earls of Derby , 74; Lost Years , 34-5.

6. Love and Early Marriage

1	W. G. Hoskins, "Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480-1619" Agricultural History. Review , 12 ( 1964), 28-46.

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2	M&A iii. 129.
3	Richard Hathaway's will was made on 1 Sept. 1581; he was buried on the 7th. A pun on 'Hathaway' in Sonnet 14.5 was first suggested by Andrew Gurr, in Shakespeare's First Poem: Sonnet 145' , Essays in Criticism , 21 ( 1971), 221-6.
4	M&A ii. p. xiii; ME 68.
5	M&A iv. 149 and 162.
6	Transcribed and edited by C. J. Sisson, in "Shakespeare's Friends: Hathaways and Burmans of Shottery'", Shakespeare Surpey , 12 ( 1959), 95-106, esp. 96-7; ME 78 emends 'Bordon' to 'Baldon Hill' ('Balgandum'in a Saxon charter). Still useful on the Shottery milieu is E. I. Fripp "Neighbours of the Hathaways'", in his Shakespeare's Haunts Near Stratford ( Oxford, 1929), in connection with the borough Minutes and Accounts.
7	This is so in the probate copy of his will.
8	EKC, Facts , ii. 42, 25 Mar. 1601.
9	Whittington, in 1601, leaves 20s. to 'John Pace, of Shottre, the elder, with whom I sojorne', and this seems to be the 'John Pace of Shottery' who had wed Annys Debdale on 20 Oct. 1578.
10	MS SBTRO, "Baptismes'"; ME 69.
11	ME 31.
12	EKC, Facts , ii. 44.
13	Legally boys could marry at 14, and girls at 12. Parents could arrange for espousals, but we have no sign that WS's marriage was so arranged.
14	Cited in ME 65. 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	ME 66.
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, DL 118-19 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. G7 ^v.
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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