Shakespeare Re-invented (5 to 7)

            Chapter 5     

    

William Shakespeare – first sightings

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Will Kemp – actor and comic dancer

 ‘Let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them’ (Hamlet).

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William Shakespeare – at last..!!

The words of William Shakespeare are on the school curriculum in almost every country on the planet and he is one of the most famous names in history. Billions of words have been written about the ‘great man’ and his works, and the analysis and criticism doesn’t seem to be abating. A Hollywood film was released in 2011, suggesting that William of Stratford didn’t write the works attributed to him, and this was immediately met with a flurry of indignation from those who are convinced believers in the legitimacy of the author. My impression is that the most vociferous defenders of his reputation tend to be those whose livelihoods depend on the status quo being maintained.

With the 400^th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death upon us, there will be a further rise in the temperature, as literary scholars, the media and the general public, clamour to celebrate this significant milestone. His anniversary will see sales of his works given a boost, and so the gloves will be off in the battle between his supporters, who I call the ‘Stratfordians’ and the ‘doubters’, some may call ‘conspiracy theorists’, commonly known as the ‘anti-Stratfordians’.

My journey into the realm of Shakespeare has brought me into contact with a variety of his admirers, from the ‘great and the good’ of the literary and theatrical world, on to scholarly academia and finally to people like myself, who have started some simple local history or family research and ended up in the arms of the Bard of Avon.

These various commentators seem like decent, honest, often highly educated people, but almost all avoid taking a ‘broad brush’ approach to the subject, but stick to the minutiae. Acknowledged experts in the field have actively discouraged me from taking a wide approach. I have always found that attitude quite strange, as addressing the ‘big picture’ is an essential component in understanding any project. This is especially so when the researcher is trying to unravel the complications of centuries of learned conjecture, mixed in with a measure of conjugated detritus. This is a cat’s cradle of the first order..!!

Established academics tend to approach the discussion from a specific direction and their musings frequently try to justify their beliefs. Academics also strongly believe that supporters of the Bard don’t have to prove the status quo, but any deviation from that entrenched position has to be backed up with evidence of the highest order, coupled with a bibliography of gargantuan proportions. This is not a level playing field, as Stratfordians continue to want to play the game downhill, with the wind at their backs and the referee in their back pocket.

The other glaringly obvious necessity for anyone who wishes to commentate on anything with the name ‘Shakespeare’ appended, is that this must be done in hushed tones and with a certain degree of reverence. Any attempt to do otherwise is treated with disdain, contempt and regarded as an unworthy piece of research. We are dealing with a ‘national treasure’ here so charlatans, conspiracy theorists and those without a raft of academic qualifications must stand well clear. ‘Mind the doors please..!’

Some of the ‘small time’ authors, who actually have new and refreshing things to say about William Shakespeare, talk about being afraid to speak their mind on the subject, just in case it upsets the academic community. This sense of fear has even spread to liberal, free-thinking, literary academics themselves, those who want to openly challenge the status quo, which is being perpetuated by their single minded colleagues. This seems akin to becoming acquainted with the rules of an exclusive Gentleman’s club in Mayfair, or perhaps an august Scottish golfing institution, with admission only available, to the ‘right sort of person’.

The whole subject of Shakespeare, the man and his works, is thus treated with a religious reverence by the ‘clergymen’ of the literary world, who see it as their job to guard its rituals and secrets. This is rather at odds with the welcome sign at the gate to Stratford’s Holy Trinity, a parish church that claims to be the most visited in England. Here, they also do their best to maintain the sense of mystique and theatre, which surrounds their great literary figure.

In all these billions of words of praise and criticism, the fact and the fiction, the real man and his stories, all seem to get jumbled together. One eminent expert comments on another’s analysis, and if they are of some repute, then this goes on the record as being a definitive truth. I have read material that is third, fourth, fifth, even twentieth hand, and when I trace the reference back to the earliest source, I often find the original premise is woolly in the extreme. The experts’ cast iron journals aren’t quite as well founded as they believe.

The creativity of Shakespeare’s supporters, the Stratfordians, often out-performs the works of their hero, himself. The very few words written about him, by his contemporaries, have been turned into countless chapters and volumes of extrapolation and explanation, often just pure fiction. In my own family’s copy of Shakespeare’s Works, the ‘Henry Irving’ edition of 1899, the introduction by Henry Glassford Bell puts the situation quite succinctly. Bell describes how experts on the subject, ‘fringe an inch of fact with acres of conjecture, many of the facts of which are self-evidently false’.

One of the first people to suggest that William Shakespeare wasn’t the author of the works attributed to him was the Reverend James Wilmot, who in 1780 scoured Warwickshire seeking tangible evidence of the Bard’s existence. After searching in vain, failing to find even a snippet of physical evidence, and covered ‘with the dust of every private bookcase within fifty miles of Stratford’, he decided to destroy his notes, fearing that news of his lack of evidence would reach the outside world. However, Wilmot did tell a friend about his misgivings, but these doubts only emerged when the friend’s papers were discovered, some 150 years later, in 1930.

The first person to pose the authorship question in print was Delia Bacon, an American writer who was convinced Shakespeare was a pseudonym for a group of men who had fallen out of favour with the Royal Court. She included Francis Bacon, Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser amongst her suspects.

Whenever Delia Bacon and Francis Bacon are mentioned together in this context, there is nearly always a footnote by the author, saying the two Bacons are not related. Has anyone checked, as this seems to be an untested assumption? If the genetic work of Bryan Sykes is to be believed, there has to be a good chance that they are related, if someone was to look back through history? Her grandfather was a church missionary, working with the native, American Indian population, but the family must have migrated from England at some point.

Delia was followed very shortly afterwards by William Henry Smith, who proposed Francis Bacon as the sole author of Shakespeare’s complete canon of work. Both Delia Bacon and William Smith published their work in 1857 and since that time over 5000 contentious volumes have reached the shelves of booksellers like W.H. Smith & Sons; about two every month for over 150 years. Yes, in case you are wondering, the Shakespeare sceptic was also the famous bookseller, William Henry Smith.

Many doubters, the ‘anti-Stratfordians’ have been prominent figures; respectable writers, actors and scholars of their era, but even these luminaries have become the subject of ridicule and scorn. Those that don’t agree with the perceived wisdom have been described as; ‘eccentrics of the most familiar type or wealthy old gentlemen safely indulging a latent hunger to be radical about something.’

Perhaps, there should be a crime of ‘Shakespearean literary heresy’, with the punishment being burnt at the stake in the main square, outside the Stratford Memorial Theatre, fuelled with copies of the author’s own satanic work. I have already felt the ridicule of the Stratfordians, after communicating my findings to some of the leading lights on the subject. My eyes are now wide open, my back covered and my old friend, Barney McGrew, is permanently on standby with his fire engine.

I have also felt the criticism of the flailing tongue of supposed colleagues, in the battle to unearth the truth about the Stratford mystery man. In fact, the doubters can be just as extreme as the Stratfordians. There seems to be very little neutral ground between the two sides.

Plays and poems

With most authors there is a simple, well established chronology to their work, with little doubt about what they wrote or when they wrote it. Newcomers to the Shakespeare genre would expect mountains of documentation and cross-referenced data, but this is William Shakespeare the most famous and yet the most mysterious writer in history. There are so many questions, and rarely do two scholars come to agree on any of the answers.

One reason for the uncertainty is that literary documentation in Elizabethan times was chaotic in the extreme. The performance of a play had to meet the approval of the Master of the Revels, who was the official censor, appointed by the monarch, working under the auspices of the Lord Chamberlain. This was a system of government approval, but matching the name of the play to the content and assigning an author to the work was not an exact science. Plays often had a change of title or the name of the author was not mentioned. Plays also tended to evolve over time, as performances became polished.

The publishing of literary works had to undergo a different process. Plays and poems were supposed to be registered with the Stationers Company, but many never were or those that appeared on the record might not appear in print until years later. Again the names of plays changed between editions and many were recorded without an author.

Thirty six plays were included in the 1623 folio, with eighteen of them published under Shakespeare’s name for the first time. Later folios, published in 1632, 1663, 1664 and 1685, include amendments to the original plays, with an extra tranche being added to the compendium, in 1664. It is these later folios, that were regarded at the time, as ‘new improved’ versions, which add to the confusion. The Bodleian library, in Oxford, sold their 1623 edition, to replace it with the enlarged, ‘director’s cut’, 1664 version, so this esteemed body was as confused as everyone else.

There are two other, pre-1623, collections of work that are attributed to the Stratford man, and both produced by publisher cum printer, William Jaggard. In 1599, he published a collection of poems entitled the ‘Passionate Pilgrim’, which had ‘W. Shakespeare’ named as the author, although on closer scrutiny, the anthology had a variety of named and anonymous contributors. Jaggard reprinted these poems again in 1601 and twice in 1612.

In 1619, Jaggard also printed what has become known as the ‘false folio’, when ten ‘Shakespeare’ plays were bundled together into one volume. William Jaggard certainly seemed to know who his target was, but many scholars take a similar view to that of George Swinburne, who in 1894, described him as an ‘infamous, pirate, liar and thief’, making the family,‘rogue printers’, intent on just making a quick groat or two.

Little did George Swinburne know…!!

Nothing could be further from the truth……. read on..!!

There is a little help in the dating and attribution of Shakespeare’s work from Frances Meres, who listed twelve plays under Shakespeare’s name, in his ‘Palladis Tamia’, or ‘Wits Treasury’, of 1598. This is a rambling summary of the works of Elizabethan playwrights and poets, and Meres comments on the specific strengths of numerous writers, listing them in a loose pecking order.

Palladis Tamia – 1598

Royal Court and other official records also offer a source of dating, as they mention performances at significant state events. Generally though, despite hundreds of years of exhaustive scholarly study, the extent and timing of Shakespeare’s literary canon is still a matter of fierce debate.

The earliest evidence of the plays appears from 1592 onwards, but these were in performance only, without attribution to an author, and not yet in print. Indeed, there is no play attributed to Shakespeare, by name, until 1598. Of course, the plays could have been written much earlier, and there is one group of anti-Stratfordians, who suggest they were written a decade prior to their emergence on the stage.

In theory, it ought to be clear what Shakespeare wrote, and what he did not. Surely the plays included in the ‘First folio’ must belong to Shakespeare, because those contemporary compilers were in the best position to know. The printers, Jaggard & son, had been involved with the Shakespeare name over a number of years and so they ought to have known what was genuine and what was not. However, their 1619 folio contained three plays that were not contained in the 1623 ‘official’ edition and many Stratfordian scholars doubt whether two of the three were written by Shakespeare, at all.

So which version was correct?

Literary scholars have long questioned the Jaggards’ credibility in their dealings with the Shakespeare canon and some are bemused how the perpetrator of earlier, what they now regard as scurrilous, unapproved, piratical work, could end up winning the contract for the official version. I leave that till later, because my revelations about the Jaggards will open up whole new lines of enquiry. Indeed the Jaggards might not be the ‘problem family’ frequently mentioned, but rather offer help in finding a solution to this whole mystery.

The Jaggard legacy continued on through to the later folio editions, printed decades later, and these ‘rogues’, also have connections to a number of other creations, attributed to Shakespeare. The ‘apocrypha’, as it is known, are the works not in the 1623 folio, but which have appeared at various times with Shakespeare’s name attached. Modern scholars now pass judgement, on these ‘extras’, which skirt around the edges, and the Juke Box Jury panel of ‘Oxbridge’ literary experts has enough confidence in their ability, to declare them a genuine ‘hit’ or a ‘miss’, 400 years after the event.

There are various theories about how these other offerings arrived at the table. Fraudulent printers seem to get the lion’s share of the blame for most things, whilst more generous commentators suggest that the apocrypha may have been collaborations with other writers, or earlier works that were overlooked by the King’s Men, the company who gained the sole rights to perform Shakespeare’s plays and were able to control their publication.

There are over twenty contentious plays, including several which appeared during Shakespeare’s lifetime and with his name firmly stamped all over them. One of the most interesting is ‘Sir John Oldcastle’, which was originally published by Thomas Pavier, in 1600, with no named author. However, in 1619 the play was attributed to Shakespeare, when it was re-published as part of the ‘false folio’ project. The plot thickens because, theatre owner, Philip Henslowe records in his diary that the play was written jointly by Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Richard Hathwaye and Robert Wilson. Surely, in this situation this clear conflict of attribution should sound alarm bells for everyone involved in the debate.

‘A Yorkshire Tragedy’ was published in 1608, credited as the work of Shakespeare, and although not seen fit to be included in the 1623 version, appears in the revised, second edition of the Third folio, in 1664. Many scholars now give Thomas Middleton the credit for this play, but I offer other options.

‘Two Noble Kinsman’ was not published until 1634, being credited as a collaborative effort between William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. This generally gets the thumbs up for authenticity from modern scholars, but it never made an appearance in any of the five folio compilations.

‘Edward III’ was a play originally published anonymously, in 1596, and was only attributed to Shakespeare in a bookseller’s list, some fifty years later. Some scholars credit Thomas Kyd with at least part of the content, but the Royal Shakespeare Company has performed the play in recent years, because it has many hallmarks of their hero.. ‘Edward III’ does seem to be a crucial play in any discussion about the authorship question, because if it had been included in 1623, then few scholars would have challenged its authenticity – but it wasn’t.

There is a smattering of consensus about which plays came first, but there is still no certainty. That honour is fought out between one of the ‘Henry VI’ trilogy, ‘Richard III’, ‘Titus Andronicus’ and ‘Two Gentleman of Verona’, but exactly when they were written or in which order is hotly debated.

The Henry VI trilogy started life as three separate plays, each with very different names, probably written Henry/2, then Henry/1, as a prequel, and finally Henry/3. It is commonly thought ‘Henry VI/2’ might have been the first ‘Shakespeare’ play, but ‘Two Gentleman of Verona’ also has its supporters.

No single publisher or printer was used by Shakespeare and there is no consistency of bookseller either. The rights to publish and print plays were, often, transferred between the various commercial entities, so the path from the stage to the printed page was rarely a straightforward one. Some of the printed material is of dubious quality and there seem to be a number of pirated and incomplete versions. Nothing is clear and simple. There are dozens more points of discussion and with some plays the debate about authenticity gets far more air time than the play itself.

However, the first appearance of the name William Shakespeare, anywhere in literature, was associated with poems not plays. ‘Venus and Adonis’, a love poem based on Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ was registered anonymously with the Stationers’ Company on 18^th April 1593, and printed by Richard Field, later that year. This poem contains a dedication, made by William Shakespeare to the Earl of Southampton, and is the first mention of his name attached to a piece of literature.
 

The following year another poem appeared in print, this one with a much darker theme. The ‘Rape of Lucrece’ was registered with the Stationers Company on 9^th May 1594, and printed later that year, again by Richard Field. This poem takes a lead from work by classical writers Ovid and Livy, and has similarities to one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, ‘Titus Andronicus’. Again this poem was registered anonymously and Shakespeare’s name was only attached in the form of a second dedication, again directed to the Earl of Southampton.

Dedication attached to the ‘Rape of Lucrece’.

THE LOVE I dedicate to your lordship is without end; whereof this pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours. Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater meantime, as it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still lengthened with all happiness.

 Your lordship’s in all duty, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.

Both these poems were registered anonymously, and significantly in the original editions, Shakespeare’s name is not attached to the poems themselves but only to the dedications. (Later editions did carry the Stratford man’s name.) Writers of the period frequently dedicated their work to their benefactors or even potential sponsors, but there is no evidence of reciprocation between the two men.

However, here we find one of many unfounded ‘truths’ that have entered the Shakespeare biography. Over a hundred years after the event Nicholas Rowe wrote, in 1709, that “There is one instance so singular in the magnificence of this patron of Shakespeare that, if I had not been assured that the story was handed down by Sir William D’Avenant, who was probably very well acquainted with his affairs, I should not have ventured to have inserted; that my Lord Southampton at one time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to.”

£1000 was a small fortune in Shakespeare’s day and payments for poems often amounted to only a pound or two, perhaps £5 for a play. This seems to be an unlikely embellishment to the Shakespeare saga, aimed no doubt, to raise the kudos of the author?

 

Science to the rescue…?

As well as literary experts, historians and scientists have done their best to help answer the authorship question. These various disciplines have sough the truth by analysing the one million words which make up the complete Shakespeare text and apocrypha. Literary experts have looked at the development of the style, looking for typical signs of a maturing author. They have also compared every word and phrase with those of contemporary authors, and have checked for source material, earlier books which might have given Shakespeare his ideas. Every literary stone has been upturned, perhaps ten thousand times, but still questions seem to outnumber the answers.

Historians have tried to match the content of Shakespeare’s work to the political and social events of the period and this has helped to confirm the order in which the plays were written. This dating method helps a little, but is often compromised by supporters of a particular alternative candidate, who desire to match the plays EXACTLY to the biography of their man. Of course supporters of the status quo likewise try to match the dating evidence to the period, 1564-1616.

Scientists are now using the powerful memory chips of 21^st century computer technology, to analyse Shakespeare’s portfolio. Research is slowly leaking out, but has not, yet, provided the definitive, single author answer, which the majority of literary historians seem to demand. Recent results complicate rather than simplify the picture, and some of these are discussed later, when looking at rival candidates.

Twenty five years ago, in the early days of computer analysis, Ward Elliott and Robert Valenza, studying at Claremont McKenna College in California, compared a selection of Shakespeare’s poems and plays with those of fifty eight contemporary authors. The pair of American statisticians took a sample of Shakespeare’s sonnets, poems in plays, and the plays themselves and broke them down into standardised word blocks. Their methodology comes in for criticism today, but mainly because it didn’t produce the answers those critics desperately seek.

The Californians’ results turned out to be quite conclusive, as Shakespeare’s words and phrases came out of the tests as very different to his contemporaries. The closest match was for explorer, Walter Raleigh, but he only had a two per cent chance of him being the author of Shakespeare’s entire canon. The study particularly focussed on the Earl of Oxford, as he was the bookies favourite in the 1990s, and is the one still making the running today.

Elliott and Valenza’s findings:

‘We found Shakespeare’s patterns to be strikingly consistent, and often strikingly at variance with those of other Elizabethan poets. A cross-check of each conventional test against 3,000-word samples from an early Shakespeare play (Richard III) and a late one (Macbeth) indicates very little change in Shakespeare’s profiles, apart from line endings. The old Shakespeare seemed just as likely as the young to pour out hyphenated compound words, to stint on relative clauses, and to write at a given grade level. In general, Shakespeare used compound words and open and feminine endings more frequently than his contemporaries and relative clauses less frequently.’

 ‘Our conclusion was that Shakespeare fits within a fairly narrow, distinctive profile under our best tests. If his poems were written by a committee, it was a remarkably consistent committee. If they were written by any of the claimants we tested, it was a remarkably inconsistent claimant. If they were written by the Earl of Oxford, he must, after taking the name of Shakespeare, have undergone several stylistic changes of a type and magnitude unknown in Shakespeare’s accepted works.’

The Earl of Oxford, the bookies favourite, is given a very hard time, and comes out as a no-hoper. The idea of a collaborative work also didn’t gain favour with the researchers. Consistency is the word that jumps out of the report, and the authors wondered how a ‘committee’ could provide that consistency. The Californians suggest the author is probably one person and conclude that this must either be the man Shakespeare himself, or a total newcomer on the block, a person that has not previously entered the discussion.

 

Creating Shakespeare by committee

What seems obvious to me, and is mentioned by an increasing number of commentators, is that ‘Shakespeare’ could well be the product of a co-operative venture. This seems to be the only solution that makes complete sense, when you take into account all the ponderables. Yet, the analysis, by tens of thousands of scholars, and by that Californian research team, shows a remarkable consistency of writing. So much so, that certain plays are discounted by modern literary scholars, as definitely not attributable to the Bard, despite having his name firmly attached to them during his own life time.!!

Even amongst the anti-Stratfordians, the strongest advocates are very much for the ‘single persona’ theory, and few can comprehend how it is possible to persuade a group of free thinking authors to write as one coherent brand name.

In fact, the group dynamic is the norm in modern creative writing for the television screen. Books are, generally, written by single individuals, but many of the most successful television ‘light dramas’, are created by partnerships of two people, and in the case of innovative comedy during the 20^th century, frequently by groups of writers, often in a seemingly unregimented environment.

Ground breaking comedy fits that pattern, with the Goon Show, Cambridge Footlights and Monty Python, each working off a strong group dynamic. Then there was that huge list of American screenwriters that seemed to roll on forever, in the final credits to ‘Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In’. This used to bring a smile to the British audience, even if the jokes seemed less than funny, to the more sophisticated natives, living on this side of the pond.

Successful single comedy writers are rarer and often the very best exhibit personal flaws. Stephen Fry and Victoria Wood have openly expressed doubts about their own literary abilities, whilst Ronnie Barker, who I regard as one of the most creative wordsmiths of my lifetime, was so unsure of his writing skills that he donned the persona of ‘Gerald Wiley’, keeping the secret long into his acting career. In what was an ‘ensemble’ scriptwriting team, many of the funniest sketches of the ‘Two Ronnies’ and all the trademark communal songs were contributed by the reticent, ‘Gerald Wiley’.

Writers such as Alan Bleasedale, Alan Plater, Dennis Potter and Alan Bennett, working at the more serious end of popular drama, tend to prefer their own company. Much of their output is personal and emotional and sometimes with a strong political or social message. They have been praised for the realism shown in the literary portraits they paint, but their work has been criticised strongly, by those who hold different political views. In other regimes and in earlier generations, all might well have experienced the inside of a prison cell, for openly expressing such individualistic views, which challenged the government policy of the day.

Literary critics have a tendency to want to give labels to writing genres, but often comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin, with some of the best writers managing to mix the two, almost seamlessly. When David Renwick was asked why his hit comedy series, ‘One Foot in the Grave’, often had extreme moments of violence and melancholy, he responded by saying, probably with a little tongue in cheek, that he had never thought of the program as a comedy show! Shakespeare’s plays demonstrate that same strong mixture of tragedy and comedy, with the odd romantic touch thrown in for good measure.

However, the question posed by the Californian analysts was how is it possible to get such literary consistency from a diverse group of people, writing under one name. Well, this is how it could be done and I know because, at one point, I was an integral part of such an ongoing literary operation.

One of my tasks as a training specialist, working for an international pharmaceutical company, was to compile and update the medical manuals, which were used to train our 200 sales people. Two or three of the training department always had a ‘manual’ project on the go, and with plenty of new products being added to the portfolio, it was always one of the first jobs given to a new member of the team.

When I got down to the task, it soon became obvious this was not just an extended essay and that I was not merely an author, but a project manager. The task seemed daunting in the extreme, because I had never written a training manual before, indeed, I hadn’t written anything longer than a sports report for a local newspaper, since my time at university.

I quickly realised, there was a very strict formula and all the manuals had a similar look and feel to them. It was also clear there had been several rebirths of the original format, so not only was it important to retain an overall style, but also necessary to keep abreast of the latest educational trends.

Despite my paucity of experience, there was plenty of guidance available from colleagues, plus there were ten manuals in regular use, and many more on the dusty archive shelves, all to be used as guides and comparators. Each section of the manual needed specialist content,, which had to be scientifically accurate and verifiable. To be assured of the accuracy of the technical detail, I was going to have to rely on the input of qualified doctors from our medical department, and a variety of medical journals.

The company was also obsessive about its image, which meant they demanded consistency of literary style for all written material, both formal publications and even simple memorandums to colleagues. These were the days before personal computing and email, which meant that every typed letter and document, produced in the company’s name, had to be ‘signed off’, by at least one line manager.

Finally, there were the guys with the red pens, two ex-Fleet Street proof readers who were notoriously good at their job. Their guide to uniformity was a thick glossary that ensured a world wide standard was maintained, all the way from Hoddesdon to Honolulu. Punctuation, numbers, capital letters and layout were all covered in the bulky tome. My first humble offering, a simple one paragraph letter to a regional manager, was returned with a laugh and more red marks than I had words on the page. I learnt quickly and a week later, I was almost red line free and close to their idea of ‘acceptable’.

Each section of the training manual had to be signed off by my head of department, and this was then passed around to the other section leaders, who had a vested interest in my work. The whole process sanitised my efforts, removing my personal idiosyncrasies, and kept the writing and content at the required standard. It was an unforgiving process and so by the end, my completed manual looked like all the others. Yes, it was really my piece of work, I wrote every word, although my name did not appear on the finished item, just the trademark of the company.

So, could a similar process have been used to create William Shakespeare’s plays? Does the pen-name, ‘William Shakespeare’, really have to be one person or could it be the pseudonym for a collective of Elizabethan writers, produced, in not dissimilar fashion to my corporate training manuals?

The original format for Elizabethan plays would have been the starting point of the process, one that was provided by the classical authors of Greece and Rome. The ‘Seneca’ play had a strict format, and there were also ‘Aristotle’s rules’, which were seen as a model for all playwrights.

Therefore, writing to strict guidelines was nothing new to the classically educated writers of Tudor England. Some writers had been brave enough to develop this further, to reflect the more liberal Renaissance mood, but there were still unwritten rules and overall Elizabethan writers adhered to an accepted formula.

Members of a ‘Shakespeare playwright team’ would need some agreement to moderate their writing style, but as with my own experience, the co-operative system brought us together to write with one ‘voice’. If the plays were being produced in a workshop situation, in the convivial surroundings of a grand house or university, then this convergence would happen naturally.

Imagine a group of literary friends together in a grand Tudor drawing room and you have the beginnings of a successful writing ensemble.

This corporate approach was clearly explained by the actor and director, Mark Rylance, at a conference to discuss the ‘authorship question’. He said that different writers have different strengths; ‘some are good at plot, others at characterisation, whilst others adept at timing, humour or the mechanics of stage production’.

Finally, there would need to be a proof reader or editor, someone that acted like a shearman in the textile industry, removing the unwanted bits and pieces, smoothing the text, and who signed off the work before it was handed over to the actors. This would be the ‘William Shakespeare’ figure, the editor-in-chief, and that position might have changed hands over the twenty plus years of the project, something suggested by a change of style in the later plays.

Whilst some authors kept their own ‘fair copy’ notebooks, it is likely that the finished work was dictated and that a scribe did the writing. Employing a copywriter, seems to be an essential part of any ruse. It was no good attempting to be incognito if your handwriting was all over the work. This would explain why not a single word has been found in the authenticated ‘hand’ of William Shakespeare.

The text could certainly be influenced by the final copywriter, the man who wrote out neat copies of the original scribblings and ensured a consistency of grammar, spelling and punctuation. He was the equivalent of my Fleet Street men with the red pens, but he may have had a little extra input, and yes even the Shakespeare diehards accept this might have happened, but with their man as the main author.

The majority of the people, who I believe were involved in the Shakespeare conspiracy, worked as government officials, foreign ambassadors, had secret lovers, or were simply members of that political cauldron, the Royal Court. Passing covert messages and keeping their identity secret was an everyday part of the lives of so many of these individuals. For most courtiers, ‘covert’ was their middle name, and for those caught out, a heavy fine or even a visit to Tower Green was their potential reward.

Indeed, at the same time Shakespeare’s plays first appeared on the stage, there was already a major co-operative work underway. The King James Bible, eventually published in 1611, was the culmination of a 20 year project and the work of forty seven of the most learned and religious men of the period.

This was a translated work, not a totally creative one, but it was important to maintain a house style, one that kept the writers speaking with a single voice, all the way from Genesis to Revelations. On completion, their great Bible, like my training manuals, was published anonymously.

Interestingly for my story, the only member of the translation team, who wasn’t a member of the clergy, was Henry Savile. He was a Greek tutor and mathematician at Oxford University and the leader of a four year journey around classical Europe, which included visits to Vienna, Venice and Verona and from Paris to Padua. Quite coincidentally, Henry Savile was born on a rather inconsequential family estate, just a couple of miles from Halifax… at Bradley Hall, Stainland..!!

 

View halloo….?

Like so much about Shakespeare’s literary life, there is great debate about when his name was first mentioned as an author. His name is clearly associated with the two poems, ‘Venus and Adonis’, registered in 1593, and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’, in 1594. Both were originally printed by Richard Field, in London, not long after the poems had been registered with the Stationers Company. Field adds extra colour to the story, because he was, ‘by chance’, also a native of the same, Warwickshire town, as the Bard, himself.

As we saw earlier, there is a separate page of dedication attached to each poem, and these are addressed to the 21 year old, Earl of Southampton, by the signee, William Shakespeare, although there is a slight look of a 1960’s, ‘John Bull printing set’ about the addition of his name at the bottom. Shakespeare’s name does not appear directly attached to the poems till later editions were published, and their original registration with the Stationers Company makes no mention of an author’s name.

However, there is a strange reference to a ‘hyphenated’ Shake-speare in another poem, which was registered on 3^rd September 1594, very soon after the ‘Rape of Lucrece’ must have been published, as it was only registered, a few weeks earlier, on 9^th May. This poem, published as a pamphlet, was titled, ‘Willobie his Avisa’, the story of the wooing of a woman called Avisa, by H.W., who sought advice from W.S ‘the old player’, a previously unsuccessful suitor of the same old maid.

The poem is believed to have been written by Henry Willobie, a native of West Knowle, in Wiltshire, who was an undergraduate at St John’s College, Oxford, from 1591 to 1595, a man who would have been living amongst those Oxford ‘wits’ , who appear, regularly, throughout my saga.

The poem is interesting in several ways, all of which are relevant to the Shakespeare story.

At the end of one stanza there is the phrase ‘And Shake-speare paints poore Lucrece rape’, which is clear reference to the freshly published poem, dedicated to the Earl of Southampton. Some scholars speculate that Willobie is also referencing Shakespeare, in his use of the initials, W. S., and that the H.W. might refer not to himself, but to Henry Wriothesley (the Earl of Southampton).

Curiously, in 1596, Henry Dorrell wrote an ‘apology’, (an explanation of the story behind the poem), which seems intended to create a smokescreen around the ‘Avisa’ poem. Dorrell said the author, Willobie, had ‘now of late gone to God’, and his poem had been written 35 years earlier. Most of Dorrell’s ‘apology’ seems like nonsense, as Willobie was born in 1574 and died in 1596 and ‘Lucrece’ had only been published just days before the Avisa poem must have been written.

If Dorrell is correct, and the ‘old player’ is really ‘old’, then Willobie was not the author, and so we are dealing with another pseudonym, one that was invented to challenge that of the name ‘William Shakespeare’, which appears on the two dedications to the young Earl of Southampton.

The refusal to wed a number of suitors, suggests that the maiden, Avisa, may be intended to represent Queen Elizabeth – and that idea is strengthened because Elizabeth’s personal motto was ‘Semper eadem’, (always the same), and the heroine of the poem signs her letters ‘Alwaies the same, Avisa’

This was obviously a satirical work, intended to mock the use of Shake-speare’s name and to use Avisa as a caricature. Eventually there reached a tipping point, because an entry to the Stationers’s Register dated 4th June 1599, says that ‘Willobies Adviso’ is to be ‘Called in’, which indicates the pamphlet was censured, and probably to be burned. However, that wasn’t the last that was heard from ‘Avisa’, as the pamphlet was reprinted several times more, after the death of Elizabeth, in 1603.

Clearly, there are word games being played between the intellectual elite of Oxford, and the courtiers, represented by the Earl of Southampton, and at the heart of it all is Good Queen Bess. No-one has yet contrived a suitable explanation for these literary shenanigans, but it is the first time that Shakespeare’s name is written as Shake-speare, suggesting that there was a plot afoot to use the name of a man from Stratford-upon-Avon, in a clandestine way. Note too that date, 1596, the year of the ‘apology’, which I believe is the most significant year in this whole Elizabethan melodrama.

Overall, this simple pamphlet rather muddies the waters rather than produce a crystal clear stream of understanding. If this was intended to be a parody of Elizabeth’s love life, why did the censors wait for five years before banning the work. Previously the punishment for questioning the Queen’s decision making had been swift and more draconian to the perpetrators, be they writer, publisher or printer.

When the Shakespeare conundrum is finally exposed to sun drenched daylight, I’m sure ‘Willobie’s Avisa will make sense, but till then it can be put to one side, as one of Poirot’s unexplained clues.

BUT – these are poems, and there is no written connection between William Shakespeare and any of ‘his’ plays until 1598. So, to fill that time gap, the Stratfordians need something more substantial to support their cause and hold back the growing tidal wave of anti-Stratfordian sentiment. Their single straw in the wind and a single crumb of comfort, is the word, ‘shake-scene’.

The hyphenated word appears in a letter, written by the author, Robert Greene, who died in 1592, at the very beginning of the ‘Shakespeare era’. ‘The word, ‘shake-scene’ and other confirming lines are part of a posthumously published letter that was addressed to three friends and fellow poets, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and George Peele, to whom Greene administers a ‘gentle reproof’ and offers advice as to how to move forward with their lives.

Green admonishes Marlowe for being a non-believer in God, whilst to Nashe, he suggests he lightens his verse a little and write a comedy, and to Peele; he says he has more talent than the others, and not waste time writing for the theatre.

Even these few lines by Greene, written to friends and colleagues, aren’t as simple as they might be. The letter is contained in a work entitled; ‘Greenes, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance’, published by author, printer and publisher, Henry Chettle, ostensibly, as the work of the ‘recently deceased writer Robert Greene’.

This work, attributed to Greene, is a compilation of poems and prose with much revision and addition by Chettle, and was entered at Stationers Hall on 20^th September 1592. How much is Greene and how much Chettle is still hotly debated, but there is clearly a fair smattering of both.

‘Base minded men all three of you, if by my miserie ye be not warned; for unto none of you, like me, sought those burrs to cleave; those puppets, I meane, that speake from our mouths, those antics garnisht in our colours. Is it not strange that I, to whom they all have been beholding, shall, were ye in that case that I am now, be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not; for there is an up-start crow, beautified with our feathers, that, with his Tyger’s heart wrapt in a Player’s hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute ‘Johannes Factotum’, is in his own conceit the onely Shake-scene in a countrie’. ‘But now returne I againe to you three, knowing my miserie is to you no news; and let me heartily entreate you to be warned by my harme. For it is a pittie men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasures of such rude groomes.’

…. ‘the upstart crow…….. the only Shake-scene in the country’.

The Stratfordians, almost without reservation, take this to mean Greene is addressing his three friends and making reference to Shakespeare, who MUST be the ‘upstart crow’.

Nearly a century ago, William C. Chapman, a Canadian scholar, expended several thousand words analysing these ‘shreds of evidence’, which the Stratfordians hold so dear and Chapman pulls to pieces the suggestion that the phrase ‘shake-scene’, has anything at all to do with William Shake-speare.

The connection between ‘shake-scene’ and Shakespeare was never a contemporary one, but made over a century later, when the study of his plays became popular. Thomas Tyrwhitt (1730-85), seems to be the first to make a connection and this is now treated by ‘Stratfordians’, as one of those ‘irrefutable facts’ that cannot be challenged, but without any evidence to support it.

Chapman suggests the ‘upstart crow’ is NOT Shakespeare at all, but clearly identifiable as William Kemp, the celebrated comic actor, jig-dancer, and jester, who was in his own admission, the ‘only shake-scene in a country’ – referring to his abilities as a comic jig-dancer.

Will Kemp became established as a leading actor in the Elizabethan theatre, during the 1580s, but also acted the clown and for many theatre-goers his dancing jigs, accompanied by comic words and music, were the highlight of the entertainment.

Kemp was a popular performer as early as 1589, and was in the habit of not sticking to the script, making him unpopular with the playwrights, whose work he spouted with such gay abandon. His performances wouldn’t have been out of place at a performance of the ‘Good Old Days’, at the City Varieties Music Hall, in Leeds, or perhaps a 1950s ‘End of the Pier Show’, at Margate.

Will Kemp, in his only published pamphlet, ‘The Nine Days Wonder’, written in 1599, turned upon his high brow critics, and in retaliation, called them ‘shake-rags’. Shakespeare was an unknown and unheralded name in 1592, whilst Kemp already had a growing reputation. So, Chapman believes the face of William Kemp fits far better than William Shakespeare, on the photo-fit of the ‘upstart crow’.

The final nail in the ‘shake-scene’ coffin, is that there is no mention anywhere of William Shakespeare as an actor, writer or theatre owner during Robert Greene’s lifetime, so any connection between the two is unrecorded, and would not seem worthy of note, in such a cryptic way.

 

More poems

Shakespeare’s poems are regarded as a major part of his writing and reputation and one particular format of poetry, the sonnet, goes hand in hand with the ‘Shakespeare’ name. The connection between the sonnet format and Shakespeare was first established in William Jaggard’s ‘Passionate Pilgrim’, an anthology of twenty poems attributed on the front cover to ‘W. Shakespeare’, although inside there are a variety of credits to other poets, including several with none – ‘anon’.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, numbers 138 and 144 appear for the first time in ‘Passionate Pilgrim’, but after due consideration, although Jaggard, quite clearly credited Shakespeare with 13 of the 20 poems, the jury of experts now attribute only five ‘hits’, to the alleged author.

The next mention of Shakespeare, allied to a piece of poetry, is the mysterious allegorical poem that appears in an anthology of poems, under the title, ‘Loves Martyr or Rosalins Complaint’.
It was ‘imprinted for E.B’ in 1601; the publisher being Edward Blount, who 20 years later had his name, writ large, on the front of Shakespeare’s First folio. The printer was Richard Field, who had been the printer of ‘Venus & Adonis’ and ‘Rape of Lucrece’. This anthology was never registered with the Stationers Hall, but the author of the main poem appears to be an unknown poet, Robert Chester.

The ‘Phoenix and the Turtle’, are the subjects for ‘Loves Martyr’, an allegorical tale that includes the story of King Arthur. This is thought to allude to another of Queen Elizabeth’s failed love affairs, her favourite brooch being the Phoenix jewel. The single poem, commonly attributed to William Shake-speare, also takes the ‘Phoenix and Turtle’ theme. Poems by the other named contributors, Ben Jonson, George Chapman, John Marston, also follow the same theme.

However, I am going to attract plenty more controversy here because on reading a facsimile of ‘Loves Martyr’, it doesn’t seem to reflect EXACTLY, the sections attributed to William Shake-speare. Almost all current texts give a title to the work, but in my facsimile copy, there is NO title – it just begins:

 LET the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

This is then followed by thirteen further stanzas, each with four lines and a rhyming pattern; abba.

There is no author mentioned at the bottom of this page..!!

On the next page there is a new poem, blocked by a woodcut, top and bottom, which bears the title:

‘Threnos’, (meaning lamentation).

Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie.
Death is now the phoenix’ nest;
And the turtle’s loyal breast To eternity doth rest,
Leaving no posterity:
‘T was not their infirmity, It was married chastity.
Truth may seem, but cannot be:
Beauty brag, but ’tis not she;
Truth and beauty buried be.
To this urn let those repair
That are either true or fair;
For these dead birds sigh a prayer.

The attribution to William Shake-speare appears at the bottom of the ‘Threnos’ page, and in my understanding of the layout of the pamphlet, this does not relate to the poem on the previous two pages. ‘Threnos’ is short and simplistic, in the extreme, with a rhyming scheme that wouldn’t be out of place in the notebook of a ten year old ‘apprentice’ poet, not one attributed to the world’s greatest writer…??

The style and content of the longer poem, which most scholars attribute to Shakespeare, doesn’t bear his name, nor does it fit any of the other work attributed to the great Stratford poet.

It looks to me that modern scholars have got it horribly wrong – the first poem being a total irrelevance and that the short and simplistic, ‘Threnos’ poem has been written by another of the anthology’s contributors, possibly Ben Jonson, included as an in-joke amongst those in the know, thereby ridiculing the fakery of the Shakespeare brand, following on from the ‘mustard’ reference in 1598.

***

However, the bulk of Shakespeare’s poetry is contained in the 154 sonnets, which were first published , in its entirety, in 1609. The sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, ending in a rhyming couplet. The name ‘sonnet’ means ‘little song’ and had its origins in the south of Italy, during the 13^th century. The format moved north, to Tuscany and Venice, where the English were frequent visitors in the 16^th century.

Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard were the first Englishmen to use the sonnet style and the ‘little song’ appeared in print for the first time in England, in 1558, as Tottel’s Miscellany of ‘Song and Sonettes’. The form was not used again until it was adopted by Philip Sidney in the 1580s and then a decade later when 23 of the 79 poems in the ‘Phoenix Nest’ anthology, published in 1593, used the ‘sonnet’ format. In later centuries, many of the great English poets used the sonnet form, including William Wordsworth, John Milton and my namesake, Robert Browning.

There is mention, by Francis Meres, that a number of Shakespeare’s sonnets were being circulated amongst the ‘smart’ set, in coffee shops and taverns, during the 1590s, but apart from the two which appeared in the ‘Passionate Pilgrim’, there is nothing to offer a clue as to when they were composed.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first published in 1609, by Thomas Thorpe, but there was an additional poem added to that volume, entitled, ‘A Lover’s Complaint’. This poem comprised forty seven stanzas, each of, seven-lines, but written in ‘rhyme royal’, the same metre that had been used in ‘Rape of Lucrece’. Modern day experts regard this additional poem as very ‘un-Shakespearean’ and probably not connected with the person who wrote the ‘Sonnets’. Again doubts are being raised, even by Strafordians, and here are more ‘expert’ judgements being made in the modern era, on work that clearly says ‘Shakespeare’ on the cover..!!

Shakespeare’s ‘Sonnets’ ought to have been a popular work amongst the dandy courtiers of the period and to prove the point, the ‘Passionate Pilgrim’ was reprinted in 1601 and 1612, (twice). However, after its initial release, in 1609, the Bard’s sonnet anthology seems to have gone into hibernation, for a number of years, with no mention by contemporary sources, and no reprint made until 1640.

Then, the ‘little songs’ re-appeared in a different format, as ‘Poems: Will. Shake-speare, Gent’, published by John Benson of St Dunstan’s Churchyard and printed by Thomas Cotes, printer of the Second folio of 1632. Benson rearranged the sonnets into groups, added titles and generally tampered with the original concept of the 1609 version. Poems by other writers, associated with the Shakespeare canon, were also added, and six original sonnets were omitted. Benson may have felt freedom to edit the original volume because Thomas Thorpe had died in 1635, causing the copyright to lapse.

  

     1609 edition                                                 Benson’s 1640 version

Shakespeare’s sonnets seem to be autobiographical, and a very personal record of the feelings of one person towards others, famously with mention of a ‘fair youth’, the ‘rival poet’, and the ‘dark lady’. The dedication at the beginning of the original, 1609, edition is framed in a pyramidal format and addressed to ‘Mr W.H.’. Many readers regard the dedication itself as cryptic and the mystery of ‘Mr W.H.’ has still not been solved and has brought dozens of suggestions as to the owner of these initials.

The case has been made for lovers (of both sexes), a variety of noble lords and the publisher’s financial sponsor, with the intriguing dedication, itself, being analyzed by everyone, from code breakers in Cheltenham to the crossword experts of the Waterloo & City line. This puzzle-solving exercise is one where every contestant seems to believe they have found the correct solution, despite the vast array of answers being proffered to the panel of adjudicators, no prizes have yet been awarded

One novel suggestion, and one which appeals to me, because of its simplicity, is by American Shakespeare theorist, Alan Tarica. In his treatise, ‘Forgotten Secret’, Alan has made a strong case for reversing the order of the original 154 poems, then reading them in sequence from 154 to 1. You might say he has turned Shakespeare on his head.

Sonnet 154

The little Love-God lying once asleep,
Laid by his side his heart inflaming brand,
Whilst many Nymphs that Vow’d chaste life to keep,
Came tripping by, but in her maiden hand,
The fairest votary took up that fire,
Which many Legions of true hearts had warm’d,
And so the General of hot desire,
Was sleeping by a Virgin hand disarm’d.
This brand she quenched in a cool Well by,
Which from love’s fire took heat perpetual,
Growing a bath and healthful remedy,
For men diseased, but I my Mistress thrall,
Came there for cure and this by that I prove,
Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.

This would seem to read as an introduction to a sequence of poems, not the end, whilst the reverse is certainly true of Sonnet ‘Numero Uno’, which could easily be read as a melancholy finale.

–

Sonnet 1

From fairest creatures we desire increase,
That thereby beauty’s Rose might never die,
But as the riper should by time decease,
His tender heir might bear his memory:
But thou contracted to thine own bright eyes,
Feed’st thy light’st flame with self-substantial fuel,
Making a famine where abundance lies,
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel:
Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament,
And only herald to the gaudy spring,
Within thine own bud buriest thy content,
And tender churl makest waste in niggarding:
Pity the world, or else this glutton be,
To eat the world’s due, by the grave and thee.

Alan Tarica is a proponent of the idea that the Earl of Oxford wrote the Sonnets, as a secret correspondence with his lover, the ‘virgin’ Queen, Elizabeth. He postulates that the poems are a plea from Oxford to Elizabeth that their ‘love-child’, Henry Wriothesley (the Earl of Southampton) should be made her successor to the throne of England. This might seem far too much ‘conspiracy’ rolled up into one story, but covert references to Elizabeth’s inability to find a mate, litter the writing of the period, and may well have inspired the creation of the Shakespeare pseudonym.

I make the point because there is plenty of innovative thinking which surrounds the work of ‘Mr Shakespeare’, but most is actively ignored by those who think they know better. Here, by simply reversing the order, a new meaning is revealed, and without the need to decipher complicated codes. Is Alan Tarica right or wrong about the deeper meaning of the Sonnets? I have no idea, but his theory does make more sense than many that have gained far greater prominence and given more credence by mainstream Stratfordians.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets, instead of being simpler to unravel than the plays are actually just as complex, continuing to ask questions at every level. Nothing is simple – from the pen first hitting the paper, through to the dedication, the relevance of the order of the poems, and finally to their later printing and distribution. The plays are a mystery, the poems are a mystery, the publishing and printing of his works befuddles many learned minds, and so what about the man himself?

Barney McGrew and his mates – on hand to help – just in case I have upset someone..!!

–

 

 

Chapter Six

 

Shakespeare – the man

 

The Bard’s Biography

The simple biography of William Shakespeare, the one I was taught at school, talked of a clever man, even a genius, who was the greatest playwright and poet of the English speaking world. He was said to be born in Stratford-upon-Avon on 23^rd April 1564 and died in the town, on his birthday, in 1616. His father was a glovemaker and after marrying Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare moved to London and became a writer. Shakespeare was also an actor and a part owner of a theatre and a complete collection of his plays was published, posthumously, in 1623. He is also famous as a poet, writing the ‘Sonnets’.

There isn’t too much detail, but all the ‘facts’ seem to be correct. I could have mentioned that William’s father, John Shakespeare, was Mayor of Stratford, and his mother was Mary Arden, from a distinguished Warwickshire family. ‘Will’ wrote poems and three types of plays; history, comedy and tragedy. Ben Jonson was another famous writer of the period and the two playwrights would frequently be found discussing literary and theatrical matters in one of London’s taverns. William Shakespeare’s nickname was the ‘Bard of Avon’ and in his will, he left his ‘second best bed’ to his wife.

That’s a total offering of nearly 200 words, which seems rather basic information about England’s greatest writer. There must be a multitude of books written about his personal life, his family and his career as a writer. Where is the detail? Well, if you visit Stratford-upon-Avon today, you will find a whole industry based around these few simple facts. No more, no less.

Shakespeare in Stratford – here, there and everywhere..!! – photo KHB

Despite this wafer thin biography, William Shakespeare’s plays and poems are on the curriculum of every education system across the planet and his name must be in the ‘top ten’ most famous names of all time. The Bard’s collected works, along with the Holy Bible, are included as essential reading on the BBC Radio program, Desert Island Discs, making an assumption that everyone would want to take them to their paradise isle.

Yet, 150 years ago, the famous American author, Mark Twain, was sceptical whether there was a scrap of evidence to prove, even the existence, of a man called William Shakespeare. Rather bizarrely, Mark would debate this issue with an old steamboat pilot, who was training the future writer, to take on that responsible role, of navigating a safe passage through the sandbanks of the Mississippi River.

 Mark Twain

It was another 50 years before Twain published his thoughts on the subject, in his book entitled: ‘Is Shakespeare really dead?’

‘Isn’t it odd, when you think of it: that you may list all the celebrated Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotchmen of modern times, clear back to the first Tudors; a list containing five hundred names, shall we say. You can add the details of the lives of all the celebrated ecclesiastics to the list; all the celebrated tragedians, comedians, singers, dancers, orators, judges, lawyers, poets, dramatists, historians, biographers, editors, inventors, reformers, statesmen, generals, admirals, discoverers, prize-fighters, murderers, pirates, conspirators, horse-jockeys, bunco-steerers, misers, swindlers, explorers, adventurers by land and sea, bankers, financiers, astronomers, naturalists, claimants, impostors, chemists, biologists, geologists, philologists, college presidents and professors, architects, engineers, painters, sculptors, politicians, agitators, rebels, revolutionists, patriots, demagogues, clowns, cooks, freaks, philosophers, burglars, highwaymen, journalists, physicians, surgeons; you can get the life-histories of all of them but ONE. Just one, the most extraordinary and the most celebrated of them all; Shakespeare!’

Mark Twain is of course correct, because when the tangle of 400 years of celebrity is cleared away, there is very little left of substance, apart from a very scratchy biography and the plays and poems themselves.

 

Footprints in the sand

Not only is Shakespeare one of the most famous of all Mark Twain’s ‘names’, he is also the most widely researched. Generations of scholars have avidly sought more information about the great man, but although a trickle of new material has been uncovered about his personal life, there is nothing new to support his credentials as a dramatist. Many have tried, but the success rate hovers close to zero.

Writers have long used pseudonyms to hide their identity and Samuel Clemens is one of the better known, prominent amongst a list that includes the Bronte sisters, George Elliot and Lewis Carroll. There must be a multitude of reasons why an author doesn’t wish to attach their real name to their own work, but Clemens was somewhat of a comedian, and his first use of the name, Mark Twain, was just a bit of escapist fun. This was just one of a number of different names he attached to his early work, when a cub reporter with his local newspaper. Insecurity may have been part of his initial motivation to use pseudonyms, an emotion felt by many creative people, when offering their work to public view.

Agatha Christie was her own name, but the famous writer of detective fiction, used another personna, that of Mary Westmacott, when writing romanctic novels. Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, took the same avenue, creating a new personna, when she followed Christie in the other direction, trying her hand at detective fiction, rather than the world of child magicians.

Many other use a ‘false’ name because they are fearful of the political or social consequences of challenging authority or even just the social conventions of the day. This was, indeed, very much the situation in Shakespeare’s time, as government laws and social conventions dominated all aspects of life. To make things more complicated, the rules might change in a trice, as monarchs and subsequent allegiances often changed with the swing of an axe.

Modern autobiographies are, increasingly, being written by ‘ghost writers’, especially when the ‘A list’ storyteller has limited literacy skills. Here the dictated words of the celebrity and the scribblings of the real author become inter-twined, so it becomes difficult to tell them apart. Most published material is actually an amalgam to some extent, as the proof reader or sub-editor wields the red pen of correction and deletion.

Surely, though, the expectation has to be that any author (noteworthy or otherwise) would wish to be associated with his work at some point. Both the heralded and the anonymous writer would inevitablyt leave a trail of personal and literary footprints throughout their writing career. My own contribution to the William Shakespeare debate contains a plethora of autobiographical material, which includes snippets from my earliest days, and then onwards, to shape my present day view of the world.

 

 A few literary tracks I would expect to find with any writer:

Education commensurate to their literary skills.
Variety of life experiences, reflected in their work.
Literate family environment, parents, siblings, children.
Travel experiences reflected in literary content.
Survival of ‘other’ written material; short notes, letters to friends & family.
Original manuscripts written in the author’s hand.
Literary ability mentioned by friends and family in their own letters.
Unfinished manuscripts, notes, etc, found after death.
Mention of own literary work in own will and testament.
Recognition during lifetime, by place of birth or place of abode.
Dedications to family and friends on published work.
Family show interest in literary work, especially after death.

The list is long and certainly not inclusive of all the possibilities. Famous playwrights and authors of the last 100 years might not tick every box, but the ones I have perused seem to tick most of them.

Noel Coward, Tom Stoppard, Alan Bennett, Arthur Miller, Alan Plater, Alan Ayckbourn, Frank Muir, W.H. Auden and Harold Pinter were writers in various genres, which I have checked in some detail and all have clear literary and personal biographies. I then, quite randomly, chose other names from a Wikipedia list of international authors, none of whom I had previously heard about. The list included Vasile Alecsandri, Ugo Betti, Nick Enright, Max Frisch and Jack Gelber – but I soon got bored with the exercise, because the picture was identical every time, their lives and works were easily detectable, albeit to a greater or lesser extent.

The majority of these great writers hailed from wealthy, privileged or literate backgrounds, but there was a minority who found literary fame from illiterate, poor or rather discouraging homes. The disadvantaged ones seized their opportunity at some point, often with the opportunistic help of a friend, relation, tutor or mentor, who championed their attempt to express themselves on the printed page.

All tended to begin their writing in a small way and developed their skills with age. Once they had begun to write, they all left clear trails, showed development in their work and left a few tangible pieces of paper to show they really had put pen to paper. My list is not exhaustive, but the creative writer who ticks the fewest boxes, leaving little or no trail at all, is William Shakespeare.

I have often heard it said that a writer’s first work is almost always autobiographical, and for many authors, all their writing is based on personal experiences or based around people they have known. Charles Dickens based his wonderful characterisations on real people, and Arthur Conan Doyle did the same, with his great detective character, being an amalgam of friends, colleagues and included large traits of himself, in both Holmes and Watson.

   

 Dr Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh doctor, (left) inspiration for Conan Doyle’s great detective

Indeed, autobiographical tracks must, surely, be a clue to the provenance of any author’s output. Is there such a trail in Shakespeare’s great works? Well, amongst nearly one million words you would expect there must be a clue to the author’s identity in there somewhere. Of course there is, but does that trail lead back to Stratford-upon-Avon or should we be looking for inspiration somewhere else?

 

William Shakespeare and his Dad

Mark Twain doubted even the existence of a man called William Shakespeare, but I feel confident there was such a person, although whether this man had any literary skills, I have become, very much, a ‘Doubting Thomas’.

The quantity of evidence has increased a little since Mark Twain’s time, as more documents are discovered in the dingy basements of libraries, legal store cupboards or the recesses of county record offices. More is now known about William the man, and his family, than appeared in my brief schoolboy summary, so here is an updated, extended version of the ‘official’ evidence.

William’s father, John Shakespeare, was probably born about 1530, and certainly by 1552, he was living in Henley Street, in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he was fined by the local council for failing to remove a pile of horse dung, from in front of his house. This was the first of several brushes with the authorities, which John Shakespeare had during his life, and it is this tranche of legal records which provide the most conclusive evidence about the existence of John, Mary, William and the family.

John Shakespeare married Mary Arden, although we don’t know when or where, as parish registers were not routinely kept during the Marian period (1553-58). The suggestion by historian, Michael Wood is that they married in 1556 or 1557, possibly at Aston Cantlow church. Mary had inherited land at Wilmcote village (a couple of miles outside Stratford), from her father, Robert Arden. He was a member of a prominent Catholic family and she was the youngest of eight daughters, by Robert’s first marriage. John Shakespeare proved to be an astute businessman, which he demonstrated in his choice of trade, his choice of friends and his choice of marriage partner.

The Stratford parish records only began in 1558, at the time when Elizabeth took the throne after the death of her Catholic sister, Queen Mary. It has always been supposed that John and Mary Shakespeare’s first two children were Joan and Margaret, born in 1558 and 1562. Both died a few months after their birth and the first to survive infancy was William, born in 1564, and baptised on 26^th April. An outbreak of bubonic plague hit the town that following summer, so William and his family were lucky to avoid being one of 250 victims of the disease, which took about a fifth of Stratford’s population.

Shakespeare traditionalists have always celebrated his birthday on 23^rd April, which is St Georges Day, and very conveniently for the patriotic types, is the patron saint of England. Traditionally, St George’s was the Catholic feast day when artistic merit was celebrated and dates back to medieval times.

Two centuries earlier, on St George’s Day, in 1374, Geoffrey Chaucer, another great English writer, was rewarded for his literary efforts with a ‘gallon of wine, daily for life’. The Shakespeare marketing department couldn’t have done a better job, if they had actually chosen the date themselves..!

British stamps to commemorate the 400th birthday, in 1964.

John Shakespeare’s political star rose quickly during his first years in the town. He held several responsible positions in the newly created, Borough of Stratford, being elected ‘aletaster’ (the weights and measures inspector) in 1556, constable in 1558, chamberlain of Stratford in 1561, voted an Alderman in 1565, High bailiff (mayor) in 1568 and Chief Alderman, in October 1571. He was obviously a trusted and successful member of the community during these years.

During John Shakespeare’s advancement through the ranks, more children arrived. So, Joan, born 1558, Margaret; 1562 and William; 1564 were followed by Gilbert, 1566; Joan, 1569; Anne, 1571; Richard, 1574 and Edmund, 1580, all clearly recorded in the Holy Trinity church register.

However, in the early 1570s, John Shakespeare had several brushes with the law, charged with illegal wool dealing and money lending. His involvement with usury probably began as an extension of his trading business, but also because of his association with the Combe family, who were also in the same unsavoury occupation. Despite Henry VIII legalising usury, in 1545, the whole principle of money lending was regarded by the Protestant and Catholic churches as immoral and by the population at large, as a dubious business. John also made an application to the College of Heralds, to bear his own coat of arms, but his application, made in 1570, was eventually rejected.

Researcher, Donato Colucci, a professional magician (!!!) by trade, suggests a sequence of events which explains John Shakespeare’s rise to fame, followed by his meteoric fall. From 1578 onwards, the family came under severe financial pressure, as John failed to pay his taxes for ‘Poor Relief’ and Mary’s inherited lands, including ‘Asbies’ at Wilmcote, were mortgaged.

Colucci’s study of the original records for Stratford Borough, found that John was originally apprenticed to master glovemaker, Thomas Dixon, who owned the bespoke Swan Inn. The innkeeper did well, so he ‘passed’ his leather business to John Shakespeare, an enterprise which included the preparation and trading of animal skins, and the bleaching process, known as whittawing.

After 1565, John diversified his business, adding wool dealing and money lending to his portfolio, so making his main occupation that of a ‘brogger’, a middle man (wholesaler) dealing in wool. Brogging was a very lucrative occupation, taking much of the profit that had originally gone to the yeoman and tenant farmers. Wholesaling in wool was taxed, from 1552 onwards, with the intention of dissuading participation in the business, but the regulations were rarely enforced locally.

John Shakespeare was warned by local magistrates, in 1569, for charging £20 interest on a loan for a partner to purchase wool, and in the early 1570s was, himself, charged with illegally purchasing wool. Usury and brogging would explain how John became a rich and successful man, but Colucci thinks he has discovered why the business suddenly nose-dived in spectacular fashion.

On 28^th November 1576, Queen Elizabeth made a proclamation, that because of excessive exporting of wool to Europe; ‘no licensee shall buy any wool until 1^st November 1577’.

This meant the ‘official’ wool trade was halted for nearly a year, but this also ensured that unofficial ‘broggers’, like John Shakespeare, were affected, with only Merchants of the Staple being able to trade in wool. The law was rigorously enforced the following summer (1577), at sheep shearing time, and to discourage any attempt to break the regulations all ‘wool traders’ were bonded to deposit the substantial sum of £100, with the local court, as a guarantee against any indiscretion. The government placed much of the blame for the problems in the wool trade on the shoulders of the dealers in animal skins, who had illegally moved into the wool trading business. The regulations were specifically aimed at people like John Shakespeare.

John attended the Stratford council meeting on 5^th December 1576, but was marked absent at the next one, held on 23^rd Jan 1576/77. He remained away from the council from then onwards, failing to pay as dues as an Alderman, in 1578. The lucrative side of his business was in ruins and he and the family must have been forced to return to their leather and tanning business, which might also explain his possible diversification into butchery. Things got even worse, because, in 1580, John was fined £40 for failing to appear at a debtor’s court case, and for much of the next decade he regularly seems to have been in financial difficulties and unable to pay his dues. John Shakespeare was finally struck off the council list of Alderman in 1586, having not attended the meetings for ‘many years’.

William Shakespeare’s school days?

So, William Shakespeare was the offspring of successful parents whose prosperity came to an abrupt halt during his early teenage years. John Shakespeare’s trade and civic position in the town should have given his boys access to the King Edward VI Grammar school, situated next to Hugh Clopton’s Chantry Chapel, in the centre of Stratford-upon-Avon. There had been a school on the site since the 13^th century, but it became the very last of Edward VI’s endowed grammar schools, chartered at the same time that the town was given borough status, and only days before the young King died, in 1553.

These were not totally new schools, but upgraded and re-branded with the King’s seal of approval, and granted the right to display the Tudor Rose. Education was conducted entirely in Latin with long, twelve hour, days, which provided a high standard of education for those lucky enough to receive it.

   
Was Will, a pupil at Stratford Grammar School, or helping his father, prepare the skins?

 Supporters of Shakespeare’s claim to be a writer, the Stratfordians, assume William must have attended this school, because if he was the author of thirty six plays and a multitude of poems, then at some stage in his life he needed to have acquired the skills and knowledge to have written them. There are no school records for the period, and there is no evidence to show that William, Gilbert, Richard or Edmund Shakespeare, were ever in attendance. It seems logical to us that John, a senior town official, would educate them to a high standard, but most children were set to work from the age of six or seven, especially if there was a family business to run.

Illiteracy was the norm in the population as a whole, and that shortcoming also reached the higher echelons of society. The sudden collapse in the family fortunes, when William was aged twelve, puts in grave doubt whether he or his brothers attended school after 1577, as all hands would have been needed to support father’s failing enterprise.

The most gifted pupils at the grammar school could win scholarships, to move forward to the universities of Oxford or Cambridge, or possibly to study law in the Inns of Court, in London. The majority of these varsity students were from the wealthiest sections of society but ‘bright’ pupils from humbler homes did make it through. These poor boys would have needed to find a suitable sponsor, someone of substance who recognised their latent abilities and could afford the costs of university life.

To complete their education, the young sons of the aristocracy travelled to Europe and occasionally even further afield, to the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East or as part of an expedition to the New World. The young bucks visited the classical high points and also took advantage of the seedier, less salubrious ones, en route. Their journey abroad was a costly business, only available to the sons of the wealthy, and each trip had to be expressly authorised by the monarch. Many of the main characters in my story were widely travelled, but William Shakespeare’s travel log seems to have taken him no further south than Southwark, on the south bank of London’s River Thames.

 

Mr and Mrs William Shakespeare

There was still no evidence of William Shakespeare’s literary ability, when at the age of 18, sometime in November 1582, he married the pregnant, 26 year old, Anne Hathaway. Even the details of this marriage are strange and unclear, as a marriage licence for a William Shakespeare to marry Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton was granted, but then a day later a financial bond of £40 was made for William Shakespeare to marry ‘Anne Hathwey’. Perhaps he wanted to marry the Whateley woman, but the friends of Anne Hathwey got wind of his intentions and stepped in, to make sure he stood by his pregnant assignation. No-one has yet found the registration for an actual marriage, or in which parish church a ceremony might have been performed, so this is just another of the many conundrums that keep Shakespeare theorists fully occupied.

The ‘bulge’ turned into Susanna Shakespeare, who was born to William and Anne, in 1583, a few months after the presumed marriage. Two years later, twins Hamnet and Judith, arrived on the scene, probably named after family friends, Hamnet Sadler, a local baker, and his wife Judith. (Hamnet Sadler was still around in 1616, when he was a witness to William’s will.) No more children are recorded for William and Anne Shakespeare, and his wife is raely mentioned with his again, only in a legal document and finally when her name appeared as an inter-lined afterthought, near the end of the Bard’s amended ‘last will and testament’.

In 1588, William, now aged 24, was named in another document, the first mention since his baptism, when he was a witness in a legal action taken by his parents against John Lambert, concerning land at Wilmcote. This is frequently mentioned as a reference to an ‘eldest son’, but the Latin text just says ‘son’, and being a witness, might suggest he was able to read, although he did not sign the document.

 ‘Johannes Shackespere et Maria uxor eius, simul cum Willielmo Shackespere filio suo.’

(‘John Shakespeare and Mary, his wife, at the same time with William Shakespeare, his son’.)

The legend of Shakespeare, the writer, begins at this time, because William then disappears from the Stratford records, before reappearing in London, six years later. These are the ‘missing years’, which themselves have been the subject of much debate and a fair lathering of myth and fable.

There is a long held story that William ran away to London, after he was caught poaching deer on the nearby estate of Sir Thomas Lucy. Deer parks were under the close control of the monarch and there are no documents to indicate that Sir Thomas Lucy was allowed to keep deer on his lands.

Others have suggested Shakespeare became a country schoolmaster, perhaps in Lancashire, where he became known as ‘Shakeshaft’. This variation of the name is common in Lancashire, but there is no known connection between the two family groups. This is all good romantic stuff, which might plug a few holes in his biography, but nothing with any golden shred of evidence to support the fiction.

It is frequently suggested that Will left home after a troup of actors visited Stratford, and there is a snippet of evidence to support this, but it pre-dates his witnessing the Wilmcote legal wrangle.

In 1587, Robert Dudley’s personal troup of actors, the Earl of Leicester’s Men, toured a number of major towns, beginning in Dover, then on to Canterbury, Oxford, Marlborough, Southampton, Exeter, Bath and Gloucester. It is the final few legs that are of most interest, as the next stop was Stratford-upon-Avon, and then to the Earl of Derby’s home, at Lathom House, Ormskirk, in Lancashire. They performed at Lathom House from 11^th to 13^th of July, before heading back south to Coventry and finally the town of Leicester.

No doubt most of the citizens of Stratford turned out to watch Leicester’s Men perform, that summer, a troup that included several actors, who would later, in the 1590s, perform ‘Shakespeare’ plays with other bands of Men. Thus it would have been possible for the 23 year old, Will, to tag along with the acting entourage, as they headed north, to perform at the home of the Earl of Derby household. He could then have returned home to Stratford, after the next performance at Coventry.

Was this the moment that the name of William Shakespeare began a 400 year association with the theatre, and was it during these few days that friendships were forged, and which led, much later, to his name being used by these same friends and associates, in a clandestine way.

This is all open to total speculation, but, indeed, even the hardest facts, about William and his family, are open to question. This is no better exemplified than the discovery, by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust themselves, as recently as the year 2000, that the house, long regarded as the childhood home of Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, is in fact not the grandiose structure pictured on the billboards, but actually the building next door. This all sounds a little like the main plot line from the Monty Python film, ‘Life of Brian’. When looking for the baby Jesus, the Three Wise men knocked on the house next door, mistaking new born Brian, for the Messiah…!!

Mary Arden’s childhood home,well until 2000 – photo KHB

 

 

Her family actually lived in the more mundane dwelling next door. – photo KHB

William Shakespeare – Protestant or Catholic

John Shakespeare’s in-laws, the Ardens, were staunch Catholics, and so were several leading families in this part of Warwickshire. These Catholic families, who had refused to accept Henry’s Church Reformation in 1536, had briefly prospered again during the short reign of Queen Mary (1553-58), but were forced back into clandestine prayer after Elizabeth came to the throne.

Several of the most respectable Warwickshire families were vociferous in defending the Catholic cause and they also constructed some well contrived ‘priest holes’, in their grand houses, allowing them to continue to receive the sacraments from a Catholic clergyman and maintain their allegiance to Rome.

They began to find their rebellious feet again, for what proved to be the final time, ten years into Protestant Elizabeth’s reign, being bolstered by sabre rattling from Spain and other parts of Catholic Europe. The thirty five years, from 1570 till 1605, saw a whole series of Catholic plots, aimed at unseating the monarch, but each time, the failed attempt was quickly followed by the most brutal reprisals. These all came to a dramatic conclusion, in 1605, featuring Clopton House, in Stratford-upon-Avon, as a starring role. William Clopton, who sold New Place, was a recusant Catholic as were the Underhill family, who eventually sold the house to William Shakespeare.

With that background, common sense would suggest that ‘William Shakespeare’ must be a Catholic or at least had Catholic sympathies. However, despite this evidence, many literary scholars assume he was a Protestant, otherwise how did he survive imprisonment, or worse, when his plays hit the headlines. Others suggest William was a ‘closet’ Catholic, but no-one seems certain.

As a man and a writer he appears to have been middle of the road, even agnostic on the matter, a stance that was also illegal, as heretics had a habit of being burnt at the stake. Life at all levels of Tudor society was lived on a swaying, rather greasy tightrope of religious and political preference. You needed to keep supporting the winning side, but as the rules of the game kept changing that was a near impossible task, and so adding your name to any written work, particularly if you had Catholic tendencies, was fraught with potentially fatal risks. However, despite the great breadth and social challenge of his work, there was never a government challenge to any of his plays or poems.

The Bard’s work is also noted for its large number of Biblical references, upwards of a thousand and counting, and all the plays were written before the revised, King James Bible, appeared on the scene in 1611. English translations of the Bible had become more widely available after the ‘Geneva Bible’ appeared in 1560, the Protestant enclave, where it had been conceived by the Marian exiles, between 1554-58. Initially, all copies of the Geneva Bible were printed in Europe and imported to England, and it wasn’t until 1576 that the first editions were printed on home soil. These came from the presses of Christopher Barker, who gained the rights to print Bibles, at his Tiger’s Head shop, in Paternoster Row, close to St Paul’s Cathedral.

The Geneva Bible was produced by Calvinists, a Protestant religious group who wanted to move the authority of the church from the bishops to lay preachers. Their version contained a number of annotations in the margins, to accompany the key texts, and this ‘graffiti’ upset the mainstream Anglicans of Elizabeth’s church.

In retaliation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Mathew Parker commissioned his own translation, which was an updated version of the ‘Great English Bible’ of 1538. This became known as the Bishop’s Bible, was first produced in 1568 and revised in 1572, later becoming the basis for the King James version of 1611. The Bishop’s Bible became the standard text for use in every local parish church in England, but the Geneva version remained the market leader for those Protestants who were wealthy enough to afford their own copy.

Shakespeare’s early work takes text from the government approved, Bishop’s Bible, but for the later plays, which appeared after 1598, the great author takes his lead from the Geneva Bible. That ought to be quite telling and suggests to me that at least two different people or groups of people were involved. Shakespeare scholars merely suggest that Shakespeare just had access to a different Bible…!!

Take your pick, but remember your choice of Bible made a statement about your religious and political leanings and your upbringing. If you were a writer, it would be difficult to ‘unlearn’ one version and replace it in your consciousness with another, but that is what Shakespeare is supposed to have done.

The printing of Bibles during the Tudor period does have added significance in my story, because the official Bible printer of the early Elizabethan age was Richard Jugge, a name that sounds as though it might have a familiar ring to it. When Richard Jugge died in 1576, his patent for Bible printing was passed to Christopher Barker at the Tiger’s Head printing house and bookshop.

So, whilst the Shakespeare family had Catholic leanings, the plays suggest they were written by a ‘middle of the road’ Protestant. The use of two different versions of the Bible, suggests we are probably dealing with more than a single author, whilst a lack of any attempt by the authorities to censor any of these great works, suggests that the ‘author’ had influence close to the centre of government, in the reigns of both Elizabeth and James.

The Affair of the Coat-of-Arms

On 20^th October, 1596, John Shakespeare was finally awarded his own coat of arms, by the College of Heralds. Remember please, this is the father, NOT the ‘playwright and poetry spouting’ son.

The affair of the coat of arms is one of the most poured over events of John Shakespeare’s life and what ought to be a simple story, yet again, has hurdles and pitfalls everywhere. Most scholars attribute John’s earlier application in the 1570s, to his rise through the hierarchy of the town and desire to be labelled a ‘gentleman’. They usually attribute the failure of his application, to his rapid monetary demise. The timings don’t quite fit that scenario, but it should be noted that during the time his first application was being processed, John got into hot water over a number of legal improprieties.

Onlookers to the Shakespeare story often assume that the eventual grant of arms, made in 1596, was a natural reward to the whole family for the literary skills of their son, akin to the Queen’s Honours lists of the present day. No, things didn’t work quite like that in Tudor times, although the term, ‘cash for honours’, was very much alive and well, and certainly wasn’t the invention of 20^th century British Prime Ministers, David Lloyd George and Tony Blair.

In the 16^th century, the award of a coat-of-arms was granted by the monarch as a reward for service to the Crown. That service usually meant military service, but previous bailiffs of Stratford had received the honour and that was, indeed, part of John’s initial application.

It should also be noted, that the guidelines for approval allowed,

‘Whosoever can live without manual labor, and thereto is able and will beare the port, charge, and countenance of a gentleman, he shall for monie have a cote of armes bestowed upon him by heralds.

This suggests that by 1570, John was no longer making gloves or tanning hides himself, but making his way in the world as a wool trader and businessman.

His wealth and heritage is mentioned in the second part of the application for 1570.

‘Justice of the Peace and Bailiff, chief of the town of Stratford-upon-Avon. He hath lands and tenements of good wealth and substance; 500 pounds. He married a daughter and heir of Arden, a gent of worship.’

25 years later, the application had been modified to include particular reference to the military service of ancestors, and the grant of arms was finally approved on the basis of:-

 ‘the faithefull & approved service to Henry VII’, by John Shakespeare’s (unnamed) great-grandfather.

The ancestor who best fits this description of ‘great-grandfather’ is Thomas Shakespere, who was on a muster roll of troops, under the command of Henry Lord Grey, taken on 27^th Aug 1478. This was at the time of a well documented event, when Edward IV sent Lord Grey and 300 archers to take control of Dublin Castle. They failed to accomplish the mission, when the governor of the castle destroyed the drawbridge and told them to ‘go away’. Lord Grey was, therefore, unable to obtain the ‘Great Seal of Office’ and was recalled by the King. Seems like another Pythonesque – Holy Grail, scenario, I think?

This event took place before Henry VII took the throne in 1485, but Lord Grey was one of those ‘turncoat’ rose wearers, supporting both sides at various times. Grey was astute enough to retain the favour of Richard III and Henry VII, who both granted him land. With these contorted allegiances of Lord Grey, this might well have led to the sponsors of John Shakespeare to have been economical with the truth about his great-grandfather, particularly as over a century had passed in the meantime.

The description of the ‘coat of arms’ awarded to John Shakespeare is as follows:

‘Gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the first, steeled argent; and for his crest, a falcon his wings displayed argent , standing on a wreath of his colours supporting a spear gold, steeled as aforesaid, set upon a helmet with mantles and tassels’.

The main emblems are a silver tipped spear, which dominates the shield, topped by a falcon, a noble beast, which also appears on the ‘arms’ of Anne Boleyn, her daughter, Elizabeth I, and was the highly prized mascot of the Knight Hospitallers, during their occupation of the island of Malta.

Then there was the Shakespeare motto:- ‘Non sanz droict’ or ‘Not without right’.

The motto seems to be nonsensical, and mischievous scholars have suggested that the College of Heralds were making this award under pressure from elsewhere, and so retaliated by making a fool of the Shakespeares. It has been said that the 1570 application was rejected and the document filed away with, ‘No, without right’, written across the top, by the Heralds.

When John’s application was reactivated, these words of rejection were used as the family motto, and the illiterate John Shakespeare knew no better. The final sketch also had the word ‘player’, clearly written at the bottom. This is also odd because this was John Shakespeare’s application, not that of his son. There is still no mention of a ‘writer’, famous or otherwise.

     

The application would have cost the sizeable sum, for a commoner, of £30, and no doubt there would have been other expenses involved in implementing the use of the award. The coat of arms was for the personal use of John and his heirs, for posterity, and they could now call themselves ‘gentlemen’. This meant that only direct blood descendants of John Shakespeare could legally display the award.

 ‘it shalbe lawfull for the said John Shakespeare gentilman and for his children yssue & posterite (at all tymes & places convenient) to beare and make demonstracon of the same Blazon or Atchevment vppon theyre Shieldes, Targetes, escucheons, Cotes of Arms, pennons, Guydons, Seales, Ringes, edefices, Buyldinges, utensiles, Lyveries, Tombes, or monumentes or otherwise for all lawfull warlyke factes or ciuile vse or exercises, according to the Lawes of Arms, and customes that to gentillmen belongethe without let or interruption of any other person or persons for vse or bearing the same. In wittnesse & perpetuall remembrance hereof I hav here vnto subscribed my name & fastened the Seale of my office endorzed with the signett of y Arms.

 At the office of Arms London the xx daye of October the xxxviiith yeare of the reigne of our Soveraigne Lady Elizabeth by the grace of God Quene of England, France and Ireland Defender of the Fayth etc. 1596.’

The award should soon have become defunct and gone into abeyance, as William inherited the right from his father, but had no surviving male heirs, as he is supposed to have outlived his, unmarried, brothers. The ‘coat of arms’ could have been used by a sister or a daughter, but only if they were incorporated into a husband’s shield. No such halved or quartered shield exists.

Nevertheless, other Shakespeares began to display the exact same coat of arms, and also thought fit to title themselves as ‘gentleman’, at a time when misuse of both was a serious matter. Perhaps, they were also descendants of archer, Thomas Shakespeare, who had given service to King Edward IV, but they were not at liberty to make that decision themselves. Their flagrant use of the coat of arms meant they believed they were direct descendants of John Shakespeare, bailiff and glove-maker of Stratford.

More strange things happened with this award, because John made a further application, in 1599, asking for the addition of the Arden name to the Shakespeare shield. The wording in this application was now changed from ‘great grandparent’, to say ‘parent, great grandparent and late antecessor’, so more military connections had been ‘discovered’. The 1599 application was never implemented and the Arden coat of arms never became incorporated into the Shakespeare shield.

In 1602, the year after the death of John Shakespeare, a formal objection to this award, together with that made to twenty two others, was made by Peter Brooke (York Herald), in what was seen as a test case. Brooke accused William Dethick (Garter King-of-Arms) and his deputy, William Camden, (Clarenceux King-of-Arms) of ‘elevating base persons, and assigning devices already in use’.

The complaint, which was dismissed, was aimed at trying to remove Derrick from his post, rather than being a direct attack on the Shakespeares and others, who had benefited from the generous interpretation of the heralds. Peter Brooke later became a thorn in the side of another member of my Shakespeare cast, when he questioned the professional integrity of the Jaggard printing business, at the same time they had another important job on the go.

Shakespeare’s fellow thespians also joined in with the coat of arms saga, seeming to make merriment at his expense. One line in Ben Jonson’s play, ‘Every Man in His Humour’, uses the phrase, ‘let the word be, not without mustard’, in a scene involving the purchase of a coat of arms. The Bard, himself, was noted as an actor in this play and this piece of theatre seems to be the author ‘sending up’ the newly created, Shakespeare family award.

Many commentators regard this long and lingering ‘coat of arms’ process as a fraudulent attempt by the Shakespeares to bring a degree of respectability into an otherwise average family. Those who have no belief in Shakespeare’s authorship also rubbish everything else about him, and then concentrate on singing the praises of their own candidate. Personally I think there might be a chink in the armour here and the Shakespeare clan may not be quite as ‘average’ as is generally believed, by his detractors.

John Shakespeare didn’t get too many years to enjoy his rank of ‘gent’, although he did make it back to the Stratford Borough Council. He died in 1601, but no will has been found, and if one existed it would be a very useful document, indeed, as gaps and anomalies in his family history might be clarified. Yet another key part of the Shakespeare saga has gone missing..!!

Cooked book

The conclusion of the heraldic machinations, concerning the Shakespeare coat of arms, took place after the death of Robert Cooke, Clarenceux, King of Arms, who had been in post, from 1567 to 1594.

One of the responsibilities of the College of Heralds was to ensure the correct people were using the correct emblems and Robert Cooke was one of those who made visitations to the English provinces to ensure order was kept. The findings were published county by county and the whole operation took several years.

Robert Cooke had visited Warwickshire in 1563, when still in the junior post of Chester Herald. This was at the time John Shakespeare was nearing the peak of his climb up the greasy pole of Stratford life. Cooke was promoted to the important and influential role of Clarenceux King of Arms in 1567, just ten years after leaving St Johns College, Cambridge. He was the official that dealt with John Shakespeare’s initial coat of arms application, but he had died before the arms were finally approved.

Cooke’s 30 year career, in the College of Heralds, included one year as acting Garter Herald, the top job. His career was dogged by accusations that he awarded arms for monetary gain, and with over 500 new awards approved during his time as a herald, his accusers had a point. Robert Cooke is one of those mysterious characters who pepper this saga, one of those people who rose rapidly to great heights, from seemingly very humble beginnings.

Robert Cooke was said to be the ‘son of a tanner’, brought up as a ward of court, in the household of Edmund Brudenell, a rich landowner, who sponsored expeditions to Newfoundland, notably by Humphrey Gilbert, a step brother of Walter Raleigh. Brudenell was well regarded by Queen Elizabeth, who knighted him in 1565, and visited his home at Deene Hall, Northamptonshire, in 1566, just a year before young Robert Cooke gained promotion to this influential office. Visits by the monarch were often quickly followed by promotions or favours, dished out to ‘mine host’ or to their entourage of kinsfolk. Often it was the children, who suddenly found themselves, almost forcibly removed from home, to work as servants in the royal household.

Robert Cooke was identified by the London diarist, Henry Machyn, a member of the Company of Merchant Taylors, as previously having been a servant of Queen Elizabeth’s favourite, Robert Dudley. Henry Machyn was particularly active in his writing during the turbulent 1550s, at the time of Lady Jane Grey’s succession to the Crown. His diaries give precise detail about both notable and mundane events of the period. Machyn offered advice to anyone who wished to maintain a position in public life, suggesting, that they ‘do not speak up for the losing side’.

This is just one of many ‘Cooke’ interventions that litter this saga. You can certainly add the Cooke surname to your notebook, and I would allow at least a couple of pages, to make sure you have enough space. They continue to turn up, almost always associated with just the right people.

From Stratford to London and back again

My ‘Jagger’ research has uncovered over twenty different spelling variations of my forefathers’ name, but usage and corruptions of the Shakespeare name are far more frequent. Our man from Stratford is recorded more often as ‘Shakspere’ or ‘Shackspear’ than our now routine spelling of ‘Shakespeare’.

‘Shagspear’ and ‘Shaxpere’ add to the mix, and then there is the problematic ‘Shake-speare’. The hyphen is said to offer conclusive proof that we are dealing with a pseudonym and the discussion concerning that single horizontal mark occupies acres, or should that be hectares, of space.

There is no trace of William Shakespeare, under any of these spelling variations, between witnessing the legal document of his father, in 1588, and a mention of him being in London, in December 1594.

A Royal Court record of 15^th March 1594/95, shows payment of £20 to ‘Will Kempe, Will Shakespeare & Richard Burbage’ for plays performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, before the Queen on the 26^th & 28^th December 1594.

This very first mention of William Shakespeare, in Royal Court records, immediately causes problems, because it is noted elsewhere that the very first performance of the ‘Comedy of Errors’, then named ‘the Night of Errors’, was also performed on 28^th December, at Gray’s Inn, for the benefit of the gentlemen of the Royal Court. Shakespeare acting in one place and having a play debut elsewhere seems an unlikely scenario. The discussions and debate about this obvious conflict of interest has seen the death of many forests, and some scholars even suggest the record shown above is a complete forgery, added later to the official records, so adding weight to the idea of a conspiracy.

From that 1595 document onwards, a steady flow of material indicates William Shakespeare lived in both London and Stratford-upon-Avon, but none show any connection to a man of literature. Most are legal documents, some are connected to the theatre, whilst the ones back in Stratford would suggest that William had inherited his father’s acumen for trading goods, land purchase and money dealing. This trail of documents is now quite extensive and heading towards the century mark.

In London, they tell of an actor and investor, with his name at the top of some playbills. However, there is no mention of him at any of the literary social clubs, such as the Mermaid or Mitre, and he is also absent from random lists of attendees at various social functions, where he might have been expected to have shown his literary face, even if only once.

There is an inauspicious event, recorded in London in November 1596, when William Wayte swore an oath, before the Judge of the Queen’s Bench, that he stood in ‘danger of death, or bodily hurt’ from Will Shakspere, Francis Langley, (builder of the Swan theatre), and two women. The four accused were found guilty and bonded to keep the peace.

This story is revived later, when a fuller biography of William Wayte is revealed, one that might surprise even the most expert of Shakespeare scholars.

In what proved to be an ongoing saga, Shakespeare seemed unwilling to pay the poll tax for his stay in Bishopsgate parish, London. His default began in 1597 and continued for another three years. Despite having moved across the Thames, to Southwark, the Bishopsgate parish officials were not to be denied and in 1600, Will Shakespeare was summoned to the Court of the Bishop of Winchester, where his dues were eventually paid. This clearly shows how seriously record keeping and tax collection were treated in Tudor times, but does beg the question why a supposedly wealthy man, did not pay these relatively modest dues, much sooner.

There are also a number of records noting his involvement with the theatre, as an investor and an actor. Shakespeare owned a one eighth share in the ‘Theatre’, at Shoreditch, and this involvement continued after the building was re-assembled across the river and renamed the ‘Globe’. His financial interest also continued after the original Globe theatre was burnt down, in June 1613, and then rebuilt again on the same spot. This shareholding lasted until at least 1614, although his share by then was smaller because of additional partners. However, his investment in the Globe is not mentioned in his will.

As mentioned earlier, in 1598, Ben Jonson noted Shakespeare as an actor in ‘Every Man in his Humour’ and in 1605, Augustine Phillips, a musician, actor and fellow shareholder, left him a thirty shilling gold coin in his will. There are surviving playbills, for both comedy and tragedy, which show his name at the ‘top of the bill’. Where else would it be?

The most auspicious entries are his royal connections, when Will was one of nine actors named in the grant of patent by King James I, when the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were transformed into the King’s Men. Soon afterwards, in July 1603, Shakespeare and his eight colleagues were festooned in purple, as they were appointed, ‘Grooms of the King’s Chamber’, at the coronation of the new monarch.

On 10^th March 1612/13, William was involved in a complicated property deal, to purchase the Gatehouse at Blackfriars, in London. The vendor was Henry Walker, citizen and minstrel of London, with William Shakespeare named as the purchaser, and William Johnson, vintner of London, John Jackson and John Hemming, named as trustees. Johnson may have been the landlord of the Mermaid Tavern, John Heminges, an actor-manager and John Jackson, a shareholder in the Eliot Court printing consortium and publisher of the ‘Phoenix Nest’ anthology. The next day Shakespeare mortgaged the property for £60, the sum to be repaid by the following September, but there is no record of that event.

This gatehouse, adjacent to Baynard Castle, had previously been owned by Anne Bacon, step mother of Francis Bacon and mother of Matthew Bacon. In 1614, the young Matthew filed a lawsuit disputing the ownership of the Blackfriars property, but it remained in Shakespeare hands. An earlier owner was Francis Bryan, who had gained the property during Henry VIII’s carve-up of clerical London, in 1538, and prior to Ann Bacon’s occupation, it was owned by Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. Every one of these previous owners and trustees connect directly to my story of intrigue and potential ‘conspiracy’, so Shakespeare’s name does not seem to be involved in this transaction, just by accident.

The story about Shakespeare remaining in London and abandoning Stratford, doesn’t seem to be as clear cut as the guide books would have us believe. In 1598, he is listed as resident in Stratford’s Chapel Street Ward, which included New Place, and later the same year he was accused of hoarding eighty bushels of malt and corn during a food shortage. William seems to have inherited his father’s trading skills, but turned to dealing in basic foodstuffs, which were increasingly scarce during this time.

In September 1601, John Shakespeare died and William inherited the family house in Henley Street, Stratford, where his daughter, Susanna then took up residence. Another illuminating record, in 1601, has the shepherd to the Hathaway family, claiming in his will that William and Anne Shakespeare still owed him 40 shillings, which would have been a fortune at the time for the poor sheep watcher.

A year later, William paid John Combe the vast sum of £320, for the freehold to 107 acres of farmland, near Stratford, and also a second conveyance for New Place was drawn up, the one signed by Hercules Underhill, with the Bard’s new title of ‘gentleman’ added. William, later, paid the even larger sum of £440, for a quarter of the lease to Bishopton tithes, a hamlet near Stratford. This also brought with it rights to be buried within the confines of the Holy Trinity church.

Shakespeare’s mean and careful streak also appears, when he sued the Stratford apothecary, Philip Rogers, for the sum of £1 19s 10d, for ‘malt supplied but not paid for’, which incidentally was almost exactly the sum he owed that poor shepherd. William was back in court again, and in a most vindictive way, when he sued John Addenbrooke, as a debtor, ensuring he was imprisoned for the offence. When Addenbrooke absconded, Shakespeare made claims against his surety, the local blacksmith.

Mr Shakespeare, gent, – not ‘Mr Popular’ in downtown Stratford, I think.

In 1614, John Combe, step-son of Rose Clopton, reportedly one of the richest and meanest men in Stratford, died leaving William Shakespeare the sum of £5 in his will, and it was not too long before the Bard of Avon was heading in the same direction.

Plenty of legal matters and plenty of property deals, in both London and Stratford, and plenty of indication that he was continuing to be active in Warwickshire, as well as keeping his business interests in the London theatre. There is no indication, whatsoever, that he was earning money as a writer.

There is also no sign of anyone receiving a letter from him, but one was found that had been addressed to him, although it was never sent.

Richard Quiney wrote a letter asking ‘Mr Shackspre’ for a £30 loan.

 ‘To my Loveinge good ffrend & contreymann mr wm Shackespre’ who ‘shall ffrende me muche in helpeing me out of all the debettes I owe in London I thancke god & muche quiet my mynde which wolde nott be indebeted’.

Perhaps, Richard Quiney thought better of the idea, given the Bard’s record of wanting his ‘pound of flesh’, when the debt became due.

Richard Quiney’s reluctance to send the letter might have been prompted by this telling quote, from his father which says;

 ‘if you bargain with William Shakespeare or receive money bring your money home that you may’.

Author, Diana Price, in ‘Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography’, thinks it strange that:

‘he had a well documented habit of going to court over relatively small sums, but never sued any of the publishers pirating his plays and sonnets, or took any legal action regarding their practice of attaching his name to the inferior output of others.’

Probably the best known transaction made by Will of Stratford was the purchase of his main residence. After a mention as an actor in London, at the end of 1594, he reappeared back in Stratford, in 1597, to purchase the house built by Hugh Clopton a century before. This was the second largest house in Stratford and as mentioned in detail earlier, was purchased from William Underhill for £60.

The house was in a derelict state and Shakespeare paid for the refurbishment, to a high standard, as decades later, it was deemed suitable to house the Queen of England, on a visit to the town.

This house purchase is one of the best documented parts of Shakespeare’s biography, but no-one seems to have looked too closely at the peripheral members of the Underhill family; those inconsequential names, such as William Cecil, Francis Bacon and Christopher Hatton..!! There is also the death of two relevant characters to consider, one pre-dating the sale and another, that of the vendor himself, poisoned only a few weeks after the transaction was completed. Now, with the addition of these ‘A list’ celebrities on to the New Place scene, this makes the whole transaction sound very fishy, if you ask me.

The history books and even the latest television documentaries describe this as a simple property purchase, with the Bard reaping the rewards of his literary skills. Well, writing plays wasn’t well paid and the most a theatre manager would pay to a writer was about £5, the purchaser then owning the rights to further performances and publication.

Diana Price notes in her book that, ‘there is no evidence Shakespeare of Stratford was ever paid for writing anything’.

To find the source of William Shakespeare’s money we must look elsewhere.

 

The Death of a Stratford wheeler-dealer and part-time actor

Mark Twain wrote:

‘When Shakespeare died in Stratford it was not an event. It made no more stir in England than the death of any other forgotten theatre-actor would have made. Nobody came down from London; there were no lamenting poems, no eulogies, no national tears; there was merely silence, and nothing more.’

This was in striking contrast to what happened when Jonson, Bacon, Spenser, and the other literary folk of Shakespeare’s era, passed away. Francis Beaumont, an acknowledged writer of the period, also died in 1616, and warm tributes were paid to him, by his friends and literary colleagues. Forty eight days after Beaumont’s decease, William Shakespeare was buried inside Holy Trinity church, at Stratford, in a prime plot, situated in the chancel, the rights obtained as part of his land purchase deals. The graves of Will and others in his family, continue to dominate the chancel of the Stratford church, until today.

His death was marked by a deafening silence from anyone with a theatrical or literary bent, but now his tombstone must be the most photographed in Britain, although it doesn’t bear his name..!!

The slab over his body is inscribed with these threatening words:

‘Good friend, for Jesus sake forbeare
To digg the dust enclosed here
Bless be ye man yt spares this stown
And curst be he yt moves my bones.’

Perhaps this is the real poet, the real William Shakespeare at work. Not fluent and poetic in verse, but rude and uncultured. The verse is of similar quality to that found on the tomb of his rich friend and money lender, John Combe, who had died a couple of years earlier. There are records of association between the two families and so if William Shakespeare wrote one, he might well have written both.

‘Ten-in-a-hundred lies here ingrav’d.
‘Tis a hundred to ten his soul is not saved.
If any man ask, who lies in this tomb?
Oh! ho! quoth the devil, ’tis my John-a-Combe.’

 

William Shakespeare and the family taking pride of place – photos KHB

Shakespeare was clearly fearful that someone might disturb his grave, and he was well aware that his business and money lending activities were not liked by the community. He was certainly hard on debtors and, at the time of his death, was in the process of attempting to enclose ‘common land’. This land grab was fiercely resisted by the townspeople and subsequently the plans were dropped.

But – again things aren’t quite as them seem, because although most people would expect to be buried, six feet under, in the churchyard, or in a family crypt, below the floor of the chancel, William Shakespeare’s resting place is plagued by anomolies. Surprise, surprise…!!

The slab bearing the threatening inscription is split in two, with one section appearing to be a later repair. Neither piece bears William Shakespeare’s name, so we have to take the word of the church authorities that we are ‘worshipping’ in the right place.

There are stories of the grave being disturbed, in each of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries, and there was a non-invasive attempt to discover the truth about what lay below ground, during a radar scan of the slabs, in 2016, when the results were laid before a TV audience. It was confirmed that the row of five family grave slabs, did not conceal a family crypt, but that the bodies were buried in soil, just three feet below the surface. There were no signs of any coffins, so it was conjectured that the bodies must have been originally wrapped in woven cloth.

These modern archaeologists were following up an old story, that his grave had been robbed by trophy hunters, in 1794, in response to a 300 guinea bounty being offered for the recovery of Shakespeare’s skull. The bizarre practice of recovering the skulls of famous people was common place at the time, as learned gentlemen wanted to discover what made these people different to the rest of the population.

The radar scan did show ‘a strange brick structure’, where Shakespeare’s head should be, but nothing to confirm whether his head, or the rest of his body, was still in the grave. There are records of the grave stone subsiding during the 19^th century, and being topped up, which could be when the new piece of stone and the ‘strange brick structure’, were added. There was no mention of a missing skull at the time, and that wasn’t mentioned until 1879, when an article appeared in the Argosy Magazine.

Another newspaper story from this same period, suggested that Shakespeare’s original grave had been ‘seventeen feet’ deep, way down below the chancel floor. For a number of reasons that seems incredible, least of all, why go so deep? To dig a hole of that depth in the alluvial soil of the River Avon, would need some serious engineering, and this would also have taken him well below the water table. The ‘seventeen feet’ story emerged in ‘The New York Times’, in July 1884, when historian, Halliwell-Phillips, published news of a discovery, made by ‘Mr Macray’ at the Bodleian library, in Oxford. Macray had found a letter, written on 2^nd Jan 1694/5, by William Hall to Edward Thwaites., both antiquarian scholars, Hall suggests that Shakespeare did not wish to be removed to the charnel-house, where the bones of many old graves ended their days. The modern radar scanning did not go down to that depth, so we don’t know whether the real body of the Bard is still down there.

Whatever the truth, Shakespeare’s grave appears to have been disturbed on at least two occasions, and has certainly been a focus of morbid attention since he was incarcerated there. Shakespeare’s head may now be a prized possession, adorning a cabinet in a secret room, or far more likely, lying in a box in a dusty cellar. However, even with these new discoveries, the full story of Shakespeare’s grave remains unsolved, with the answers, just out of reach, below those cursed flagstones.

Will’s last Will

The final legal document of William’s life was his ‘last will and testament’, and this offers the most detailed piece of evidence we have about the man. This must be the most chewed over ‘last will’ in history, and every schoolboy English scholar knows that Shakespeare left his wife his ‘second best bed’, and nothing much else.

Yet again, this is not a straightforward document, as it was initially drawn up in January 1615/16, but then amended soon afterwards, on 25^th March 1616 (the first day of the Julian New Year). The changes were possibly prompted by the marriage of his daughter, Judith, to Thomas Quiney, on 10^th February, and the subsequent events surrounding the legality of this marriage, that ensued after an admission of adultery, by the bridegroom.

The March version of the document contains a series of additions and alterations, but a fair copy was never made. Several of the additions are inter-lined, and therefore not part of the original January document, whilst several deletions are still decipherable. There is no indication when the inter-linings were made or who made them. Despite these discrepancies, the document was accepted as valid when it was proved at the law courts in London.

Here are some of the most interesting and relevant points in this detailed, three page document.

His name is written by the lawyer or the legal scribe as William ‘Shackspeare’.

William’s younger daughter Judyth is the first beneficiary, with a sum of money and an annuity, mentioning ‘interest’, which is couched in the language of a money-lender.

‘with consideracion after the rate of twoe shillings in the pound for soe long tyme as the same shalbe unpaied unto her after my deceas, and the fyftie poundes residwe thereof upon her surrendring of, or gyving of such sufficient securitie as the overseers of this my will shall like of’

Judyth’s husband, the new and errant son-in-law was erased as a beneficiary in the March revision.

Shakespeare left a ‘parcell or holden of the mannour of Rowington, unto my daughter, Susanna Hall and her heires for ever’.

There is further detail of substantial sums of £50 and £100 left to his niece and his sister Joane. Again there are detailed caveats that only a man well acquainted with monetary transactions would make.

His sister, Joane (Hart), also received all his clothes and a bequest for her children of £5 each.

£10 was to be given to the poor of Stratford.

His sword was left to Mr Thomas Combe, (a nephew of John Combe the money lender). This item would normally have been left to an eldest son, but Hamnett was deceased.

Money was to be set aside to buy memorial rings for Hamnett Sadler, William Raynoldes; gent, William Walker; godson, and Anthony Nashe; gent.

There is a significant inter-lining, addition, which is the only part that has a theatrical connection: ‘and to my fellowes John Hemynges, Richard Burbage, and Henry Cundell, 26 s. 8.d.(4 marks) a peece to buy them ringes,’

Daughter, Susanna Hall was given his Stratford home, New Place, and any land or other buildings he owned in Warwickshire. He also mentions the property in Blackfriars, near the Wardrobe, which was occupied, at the time, by John Robinson.

There is mention in a most pedantic way, how he wished the inheritance to be passed down to the sons of his daughter, mentioning fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh sons. (This was all in vain as she had none.) His default to that eventuality was for his estate to pass to his niece, Elizabeth Hall.

Just before the end of the document, there is an inter-lined addition, very much an afterthought.

 ‘I gyve unto my wief my second best bed with the furniture’.

This is the only time his wife is mentioned, and indeed the only reference, to her by him, at any time.

It is suggested, by some, that she wasn’t mentioned in more detail because, by law, she was entitled to a proportion of William’s estate. That is at odds with other wills of the period; where I always found the wife to be prominent in a husband’s bequest and usually near the top of page one.

Final page of William Shakespeare’s will

The remainder of his goods and chattels were left to his daughter, Susanna, and son-in-law, John Hall, who he made executors of his estate.

He appointed Thomas Russell and Francis Collins as overseers of the will.

The will was witnessed by: Francis Collins, (lawyer), Julius Shawe, John Robinson (Blackfriars tenant), Hamnet Sadler (baker), and Robert Whattcott.

John Hall proved the will in London on 22^nd June 1616, and this was accepted, which is perhaps surprising, considering all the irregular changes.

The Signatures

Three of the six attributed examples of William Shakespeare’s handwriting appear at the bottom of each of the three pages of the will, whilst two others were connected to the purchase and mortgage of the Blackfriars Gatehouse. The final one is, when Shakespeare was a witness in a matrimonial dispute about a dowry, although interestingly, his testimony stated he could not remember the key financial arrangements of the marriage, supposedly one of his areas of expertise.

The three rather shaky signatures on his will compare with the more cultured hand of the lawyer or his scribe.. Handwriting experts have even suggested that the three ‘will’ signatures are by three different people and to the untrained eye, the six don’t seem to belong to the same person. Was this a man who was suffering a terminal illness, or the signature of a man who was shakily literate? Certainly he wouldn’t have been top of the class in the Stratford Grammar School handwriting tests. Whoever these signatures belong to, it would be difficult to imagine they had belonged to a man who had written one million words of flowing and most colourful English.

 

Not a Pretty Picture

Overall, the number of legal challenges and matrimonial improprieties in the Shakespeare household seems extraordinary, but it has given us an enhanced record of the man and his family, although it isn’t a pretty picture. His father was on a roller coaster of success and failure, and William’s own irregular, shotgun marriage, with a licence to marry one woman, then bonded to marry another, and no sign of a ceremony to either, is unusual in the extreme. His daughter, Judith seems to have had similar problems with the paperwork and legality surrounding her own marriage.

How literate William Shakespeare was is unclear, but he was certainly numerate, because his understanding of money and inheritance law comes over strongly in his will and other legal dealings. William seemed reluctant to pay his tax dues in London, but was willing to invest in the risky venture of theatre ownership. Back in Stratford, the Bard was purchasing land for substantial sums of money., but failing to pay his dues to the poor shepherd. His best friends seem to be the wealthy, Combe family, who made their money at the expense of many in the community. The two families’ lack of respect for the locals was shown when, together, they began the process to enclose common land around the town.

Compare this to the original creator of New Place, Hugh Clopton, who spent much of his wealth building a stone bridge across the River Avon, and making improvements to the churches and other public buildings of the town. Hugh was a great benefactor and is fondly remembered five centuries later and the stone bridge is still there. In contrast William Shakespeare left the people of Stratford a miserly ten quid, and built them nothing, although in the long haul they probably haven’t done too badly from his legacy….!!!

Hugh Clopton’s grand bridge across the River Avon – photo KHB

Are the words of his will, the words of the man who wrote ‘Macbeth’, the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor’ and ‘Venus & Adonis’, or those of a trader and money-lender, from a small Midland town? They sound like the words of a man who liked to guard his money carefully, and in a most un-theatrical way. Perhaps though his last testament was this just the archane, legal mumbo-jumbo of his lawyer, leaving the Bard totally lost for words…!

There is no evidence that Shakespeare’s published plays and poems ever reached as far as Stratford-upon-Avon, during his lifetime, or ended up in the hands of his kinsfolk. There was no presentation copy of his 1623 folio, given to the Holy Trinity church, by the King’s Men, or any mention by visitors to his home, of a well thumbed version of ‘Macbeth’ or the ‘Passionate Pilgrim’ lying around on the coffee tables at New Place. Not even dog-eared copies of ‘Hamlet’ quartos hanging in the garderobe.

Dr. John Hall, who inherited New Place, through his wife, Susannah Shakespeare, failed to mention his father-in-law in his ‘cure-book’ of remedies and observations. There are cures for his wife and their daughter, Elizabeth and there is also mention of the illness of Mr Drayton, who Dr John describes as ‘an excellent poet’; just the very phrase that every Shakespeare supporter has been desperately seeking.

This is almost certainly Michael Drayton, a Warwickshire lad, who collaborated with others, to create several plays for Philip Henslowe and became a well respected poet in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign. That makes it seem even stranger, why there is no mention in the Shakespeare household of their famous father, when there is mention of a man, with a similar, literary, biography.

There is one more significant event that needs attention, one that took place many years after the death of William Shakespeare. In 1643, during the first impasse between King Charles I and Parliament, his Queen, Henrietta, led an army of 3000 men to relieve her husband, who was marooned, near Oxford. On the way back she spent two days, in Stratford-upon-Avon, staying at New Place, complete with her entourage. Charles was known to be a fan of Shakespeare’s works and Henrietta was a fan of the theatre and had appeared in Court masques herself, written by Ben Jonson. She was also a great letter writer, but amongst the hundreds of surviving letters, she wrote to her husband and to nephew, Rupert, she never once mentioned she had stayed in the home of her husband’s hero. Perhaps Ben Jonson had let it be known that the Stratford connection to Shakespeare was all a complete scam.

I get bored saying it, but nothing about William Shakespeare seems straightforward. There are a multitude of questions about William and his family, and very few definitive answers. So, the plays and poems are a mystery and, so far, the man himself has proved equally elusive on the writing front.

But what about the ‘outlaws’ – the wider members of the Shakespeare family?

–

 

Chapter Seven

 

 

Plenty more Shakespeares

 

 

Genealogy of the Shakespeare Clan

Historians have taken a different tack, to their literary equivalents, in the search for the truth behind William Shakespeare. They have examined the Shakespeare family tree and their work has thrown up a number of other Shakespeare families in Warwickshire, mainly in the villages to the north of Stratford. Again using the ‘Bryan Sykes rule’ of name and place, added to first names and occupations, it ought to be possible to formulate a reasonably accurate tree for the extended Shakespeare family.

There is plenty of information to chew over, some of it extremely detailed, but because of the age of the data there are inevitably pieces missing in vital places, or which don’t fit together perfectly. The wealth of information, collected prior to the internet revolution, was uncovered by the hard graft of researchers, in libraries and record offices, or found by chance amongst documents kept in legal storerooms or historic collections of the aristocracy. The internet has filled a few gaps, but the Shakespeare tree is still far from perfect and as with my own family research, there are far too many ‘Johns’, who I believe were baptised into this world just to make the job of genealogists more difficult.

Michael Wood in his BBC series, in 2003, spent four programmes hunting for Shakespeare’s extended family and the roots of the Bard. The information he presented wasn’t new or ground breaking, but he did open a window, allowing the wider world to view the Warwickshire Shakespeare clan.

‘The Shakespeares’ ancestors came from around the village of Balsall with its old chapel and hall of the Knights Templars. There is still a red-brick farm house, where Adam of Oldeditch lived in the 14th Century. His son gave himself the surname Shakespeare. There were still Shakespeares at Oldeditch 100 years later, and almost certainly the clan descended from them’.        Michael Wood

The Knights Templar also owned other lands in Warwickshire, but it was at Balsall they built their main commanderie, which served as the regional headquarters for this extensive farming operation.

 ‘By 1185 we have a picture of a largely developed manor with 67 tenants with some 640 acres of arable parcelled out in virgates and irregular enclosed crofts, and with ‘customs’, those local bylaws that regulated the relationship between the lord of the manor and his tenants.   Leveson Foundation

These lands briefly returned to the Mowbray family after the official demise of the Templars, in 1312, and it wasn’t until 1322, on the death of John Mowbray, that the Knights of St John took possession of Temple Balsall, continuing to run the estate much as had been done in Templar times.

‘The house of Templars beyond the bridge at Warwick, founded by Roger, Earl of Warwick, in the time of Henry I, was united with the preceptory of Balsall when the Templars were dissolved. The return of 1338 gave its receipts as £18 3s. 4d., and the expenses as £12 6s. 8d., leaving a balance for the general treasury of the Hospitallers of £5 16s. 8d. The expenses show that 5 marks was the salary of the chaplain and 20s for a bailiff who took charge of the lands and meadows.’  www.british-history.ac.uk.

Old Hall, Temple Balsall – photo KHB

The Shakespeares remained in Temple Balsall for another 250 years, surviving longer than the Hospitallers, who were briefly removed in 1470, and seemingly on a permanent basis in 1536. The inter regnum involved Sir John Langstrother, who was not only Prior at Temple Balsall, but from 1467 to his death in 1471 was Grand Prior of the Knights of St John of Jerusalem in England, with his base at their headquarters in Clerkenwell. Langstrother had been assigned to provide protection for Margaret of Anjou, wife of Lancastrian king, Henry VI. The Prior fought his last battle at Tewkesbury, in 1471, being one of several captured knights, who were taken from sanctuary, in the abbey and executed.

Margaret Beaufort, Lancastrian matriarch – © National Portrait Gallery, London

The Battle of Tewksbury was a key event of the Wars of the Roses and led to the decimation of the male line of the House of Beaufort, leaving only Margaret Beaufort and her son Henry Tudor, to continue to fight on, in what seemed like a hopeless cause. The Grand Prior had done his job, protecting the Queen, but at mortal cost to himself.

After the execution of John Langstrother, the Temple Balsall estate was leased to John Beaufitz, who acted as a local enforcer for King Edward IV, in Warwickshire. John Beaufitz died in 1489 and the Knights of Malta then reclaimed the Balsall estate for themselves, but their occupation only lasted until 1496, when John Kendall, the new Grand Prior, leased the Balsall estate to Robert Throckmorton.

The lease was to be renewed every three years, to the term of twenty years, if the Grand Prior should live so long. The Throckmorton family were bound, ‘to keep due and convenient hospitalitie and one honest and able priest to minyster dyvine service in the said commandrie.’

However, when Prior Kendall died, in 1503, his successor, Prior Thomas Docwra, refused to renew the lease, but allowed Robert to stay one more year, but must leave, if any knights returned from Rhodes.

When Sir Thomas Sheffeld and Sir Launcelot Docwra, returned to take over the commanderie, Robert and his brother, Richard Throckmorton, added fortifications to the manor house and refused to go. The matter went to the courts and the solution agreed was to install a ‘neutral’ chaplain, who continued to run the estate along Knight Hospitaller lines.

So, Temple Balsall continued to operate in the spirit, if not the letter, of the order of Knights, but met a more challenging hurdle when Henry VIII, in 1536, began to dismantle the monasteries, stone by stone. Henry had previously confirmed the special privileges of the Knights Hospitaller, but when they showed little appetite for reform, he dissolved the order, because they; ‘maliciously and traitorously upheld the Bishop of Rome to be Supreme Head of Christ’s Church’.

In the typical carrot and stick approach of Henry VIII, he granted generous annuities to the last Grand Prior, William Weston and his fellow officers, which allowed them to retire to their stronghold on Malta. Three knights didn’t accept the terms and were executed as traitors; one hung, drawn and quartered, the other two beheaded. Much of their old London headquarters was robbed out for building materials, leaving only the gatehouse intact. The Clerkenwell estate was then granted to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, on payment of a fee to the King of £1,000.

Back in Temple Balsall, Henry VIII disposed of the estate, as part of the marriage settlement to his sixth wife, Katherine Parr. On her death, in 1548, the property reverted to the Crown again, now under boy king, Edward VI. He granted the Balsall lands to his uncle, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, but he didn’t last long, as in 1552, he was executed on trumped up charges brought by John Dudley. Somerset’s daughter, Anne Seymour, had already married his protagonist’s son, John Dudley (junior), so father-in-law executing father must have made for some interesting breakfast table conversations.

Almost immediately, the Dudley family became embroiled as prime movers in the Lady Jane Grey succession, with John Dudley the elder losing his head, whilst his son, John died, soon after being released from the Tower of London. Queen Mary took the throne instead of Lady Jane and Catholicism in England was to have one last and final, hurrah…!!

The period, 1536-53, saw the monastic influence in the area surrounding Temple Balsall, dissolve away and the way of life and land use structure of the area, that had been so successfully cultivated for nearly 300 years, collapsed in a single generation. However, there was nearly a reprieve for Temple Balsall and Clerkenwell, as the Catholic Queen, ‘Bloody’ Mary, petitioned the Pope and set in motion plans to reinstate the Order of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Mary died before this was implemented and Queen Elizabeth soon quashed the idea, finally removing all visible signs of her sister’s faith.

Instead, in 1572, Elizabeth returned the Balsall property to the Dudley family, in the guise of her favourite man, Robert, Earl of Leicester. When he died in 1588, his brother, Ambrose Dudley, took control, but he only survived two years longer and a caveat in his brother’s earlier will, stated the estate should then go to Robert’s illegitimate son, Robert Dudley.

Young, Robert had an adventurous spirit and led expeditions abroad. The Spanish would have described him an English pirate. He was contracted, with the Queen’s approval, to marry Anne Vavasour, but instead secretly married Margaret Cavendish and was banished from the Royal Court.

On Margaret’s early death, Robert married Alice Leigh, who produced four daughters for him. In a massive court case, with over a hundred witnesses, Robert failed to establish his own legitimacy, and quickly fled to Italy, with his lover, Elizabeth Southwell, where he fathered thirteen more children. The deserted wife and mother, Alice Dudley, continued to fight to regain possession of her title and the lands, which went with them, but it wasn’t till 1644, that she became a duchess in her own right.

Meanwhile the manor had passed to two of young Robert’s daughters. The first, Lady Anne Holbourne, widow of Sir Robert Holbourne, Solicitor General to Charles I, began to restore the Temple Balsall church, and in her will of 1663, left £500 to complete the work, with an endowment of £50 a year for a minister. Lady Katherine Leveson of Trentham Hall, Staffordshire, then bought up her sister’s share in the manor and in her will of 1671, founded a hospital for, ‘20 poor women, widows or unmarried’.

‘The Foundation of Lady Katherine Leveson in Temple Balsall is a Christian Foundation, with a fascinating past, lively present and an open future. The history of Temple Balsall is focussed on the Old Hall which was the headquarters for the Knights Templar from the 12th Century and The Church of St Mary the Virgin, built about 1340 by the Knights Hospitaller, who succeeded the Templars and was later restored by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in 1849.(Scott alert!!) The present work of the Foundation is focussed on Lady Katherine Housing and Care which provides supported and residential care for older people, the education of children in the School, and the local community.’

 

Shakespeares in Temple Balsall, Wroxall and Rowington

So, in a convoluted way, the property remained with the Dudley family and the work of the Knights Hospitaller continued with only slight interruption and they are still around today, offering the same wholehearted support for the needy of the parish. The function of Temple Balsall has barely changed in 800 years. It is also interesting to note that the ‘Order of the Knights Templar’, is still alive and well, with meetings of this elite group taking place four times a year, at the Temple Balsall preceptory. This is very much in the spirit of the organisation that was supposedly disbanded 700 years ago.

Temple Balsall Hospital, built for 20 poor women – photo KHB

The original Shakespeare family home, mentioned by Michael Wood, was known as Olditch House Farm and it still exists today, modernised, but still retaining several of its original medieval features. It is thought Adam de Olditch was given the house around 1350, as a reward for his military service and it was his son who called himself, Adam Shakespeare. The first mention of a William Shakespeare, probably Adam’s brother, was in 1385, when he sat on a coroner’s jury in Temple Balsall.

The style of ownership is unclear, as there were special rules of tenure on these Knights’ estates. There is mention of Shakespeares owning and selling holdings, but the meaning may be different from today. A monastic charity or a noble family usually held the original title to the land, the origins of which trace back to post Conquest gifts, handed out by of William of Normandy.

The most common system of land tenure, on large English estates, was a ‘copyhold’ tenancy agreement, made between the land owner and the tenant. Copyhold tenancy allowed for secure, on-going occupancy, which was renewed usually every 20 years or sometimes with a caveat for ‘three lives’ (three generations). In this way the land rights could be, smoothly, passed on to the next generation, but they could still be sold on to another party, with the landowner’s consent.

Olditche House Farm – © Robin Stott

The Shakespeare family spread into the neighbouring parishes of Baddesley Clinton, Wroxall and Rowington and several people bearing the family name joined the Guild of St Anne, at Knowle. This religious establishment combined a place of worship with a meeting hall and also acted as a college, to educate the clergy. It had gained special authorisation from Rome, because the local parish church was three miles away, across a ford, over an unpredictable river.

The Guild was founded in 1415, by Walter Cooke and was managed by a board of trustees, who were also responsible for the construction of a new church, next door. The Guild kept excellent records of membership, although did not specifically record baptisms, marriages or deaths. The Knowle Guild eventually ceased to function in its original form, in 1550, another victim of the Protestant Reformation.

So, Walter is another man called Cooke, holding a responsible position, who played a significant part in this Shakespeare story. Another in the locality was Richard Cooke, a gentleman of Wroxall parish, who made a will, in 1538. These estate lands have connections to the Dudley family, who had Robert Cooke, later herald at arms, as a servant, but the inter-relationship between these members of the Cooke clan is not known. This is discussed later, when the Cooke clan feature in the headlines.

Shakespeares from both Rowington and Balsall were members of the Knowle Guild.

1457        Pro anima Ricardi Shakespere et Alicia uxor ejus de Woldiche.
1464        Johnannes (John) Shakespeyre ejusdem villae (Rowington) et Alicia

1476        Thomas Chaksper et Christian cons suae de Rowneton

1486        Payment for soul of Thomas Schakspere (indicating decease) and payment for Thomas  Shakspere (his son and the replacement member)

Knowle Guild House – photo KHB

The Knowle Guild connection, with the Shakespeares, had long been known about by Victorian literary historians, but they had been confused with the phrase ‘of Woldeiche’. This place appeared in the Guild records for members of the Shakespeare clan and it was only in the 1880s, that the connection was made with Olditch House Farm, in Temple Balsall parish.

The authorship problem is clearly demonstrated here, because when the great Victorian Shakespearean scholar, James Halliwell-Phillips (1830-99) was told about the ‘discovery’ of Olditche, in 1887, he assured the messenger that; ‘Shakespeare, the poet, was in no way connected with the family of that name, at Rowington or Balsall’ – despite, of course, the Bard mentioning Rowington in his will.

The messenger was George Russell French, who wrote his ‘Shakespeareana Genealogica’, in 1869. This was a major attempt to make sense of the Shakespeare family tree, but there were errors a plenty in French’s work, including one instance where two sons, who he names as John Shakespeare, were actually daughters called Joan.

Halliwell-Phillips has other literary claims to fame, as he was a great collector and publisher of ‘Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Stories’, introducing the wider world to the ‘Three Little Pigs’. He was also a collector of books and manuscripts and was banned from the British Museum and other libraries, as he was suspected of permanently ‘borrowing’ items and adding them to his own collection.

So, we have the narrow mindedness and fairy tale imagination of one great scholar and simple errors being made by another. Despite these shortcomings, the work of these two Victorian scholars provides much of the bedrock on which current Shakespeare history is based. This does not seem to offer a great recipe for revealing the truth about the Shakespeare conundrum.

Some of the Shakespeare smallholdings, although in different parishes, were very close to one another and perhaps only a decent long bow shot apart. Olditch House Farm continued to be occupied by Shakespeares, but by the late 15^th century the main focus of the family had moved a couple of miles south, to Wroxall Priory and Rowington. The estate of the Priory of St Leonard, at Wroxall, was run by Benedictine Nuns, and Shakespeares were important in that society, as Isabel Shakespere was Prioress of the Abbey, in 1500 and Joan Shakspere was the sub-prioress in 1524, and she remained in post until the dissolution, in 1536. The Priory estate wasn’t entirely female, with the farming tenants consisting of normal family groups, all run on similar lines to the Balsall commanderie.

‘At the court of the Lady Isabella Shakspere, the prioress held there on Wednesday the Morrow of All Saints in the 23rd year of the reign of King Henry the Seventh (3 Nov. 1507) came John Shakespeare and took of the said Lady one messuage, 4 crofts and one grove with the ‘crosseffilde’, with their appurtenances, in Wroxale. To have to him, Ellen his wife and Anthony, son of the same. To hold to them according to the custom of the manor there. Paying therefor yearly to the Said Lady and to her successors 17s. 2d. And he is admitted. And he did fealty (swore an oath).’

Two year earlier, in 1505, there are records of Shakespeares, from Wroxall, selling their copyhold on the Balsall estate, soon after Thomas Docwra and the Throckmorton household were in dispute over the property rights. The earliest Shakespeares known to be living in Wroxall, were in the mid 15^th century, so this was a gradual drift away from the home preceptory and not a sudden migration. The movement away from Balsall continued over time, until most of the parishes in the area had a Shakespeare family in residence. The distances involved were quite small, with Olditche House lying half way between the Balsall and Wroxall Priory, both being about a mile distant.

 

The End is Nye

The Templar and Hospitaller tenure and hierarchy system created a stable, organised community for countless generations. Land was passed on from one family to another as it was needed, and there seems to have been no attempt by one individual to create their own large holding, indeed the system actively prevented it. Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries, in the 1530’s, and the subsequent dissolution of Knowle Guild, in 1550, changed the way of life for everyone, as the security of their well ordered lives was lost, to be replaced by a new age, perhaps even a new world order.

Joan Shakespeare and her fellow Wroxall Priory nuns, were cast out on to the green lanes of Warwickshire, to make their way the best they could. This must have been the stimulus that caused the family to scatter, because from that time onwards, Shakespeares become more difficult to find, and they begin to turn up in much larger centres of population, such as Warwick, Stratford-upon-Avon and the mushrooming metropolis of London.

In the final years, before the dissolution, the Shakespeare family had been on a rising curve. There were the two Prioresses of Wroxall Priory, whilst Joan’s brother, Richard Shakespeare, became Bailiff of Wroxall, After their forced removal, Richard the bailiff and Joan, the sub-prioress, both ended their days, not too far away, just across the parish boundary, in Haseley, on land that had previously been part of the Wroxall Priory charity lands.

Other offshoots of the Shakespeare family ended up on a small estate called ‘Mousley End’, at Rowington, which became known as Shakespeare Hall. This building is still in existence today, although like most of these 400 year old survivors, little of the original structure is in evidence.

This house was only a mile or so west of Wroxall and had previously, been part of the Wroxall Priory estate. Thomas Shaxpere and his wife Annis (nee Scott) held it until his death in 1591. Their recorded children were; Richard, who died in 1592, Thomas, Joan, Eleanor and Annis. Another large Shakespeare family arose in Packwood parish, where Christopher had a family of nine. As we see later, a Shakespeare family did return to Wroxall, but lacked the status of pre-Reformation times.

Shakespeare Hall, Mousley End, Rowington – courtesy of Warwickshire Record Office

One Shakespeare family still seemed to occupy the Olditch House property throughout this period, but the last mentions of any of them living in Balsall, was John ‘Shakeshaft’, in 1543-9, and then the transfer of a copyhold in Balsall, to his wife, in the will of Thomas Shakespeare of Warwick, which was proved in 1577. The sale of this copyhold, in 1596, by a John Shakespeare, finally ended the Balsall connection.

The trail of 16^th century Warwickshire Shakespeares, clearly leads back, via many Johns, Williams, Thomases and Richards, to the complex of parishes at Rowington, Wroxall and Temple Balsall. Given this evidence of continual tenure, it seems to be obvious the Shakespeares had Knights Hospitaller origins, and probably Templar connections before that. No, not knights and noblemen, but sergeant grade and rising to the rank of bailiff and prioress, on the adjacent Wroxall Priory. They were, without any doubt, people who were respected and had a degree of status in their communities.

The cross-over of names, places and occupations, ranging across a multitude of wills and other documentation indicates this is a single family group. William of Stratford mentions property in Rowington in his will, and it seems clear that the extended Shakespeare family held rights to small parcels of land in several adjacent parishes. William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon was descended from the Shakespeares of this former Templar stronghold at Temple Balsall.

‘And Now for Something Completely Different’

The family tree of William Shakespeare of Stratford seems to have been cast in stone, by his Victorian biographers, but the original facts on which they based their genealogy were assembled many decades after his death, by historians living early in the 18^th century. Assumptions were made at that time, and they have become a definitive and entrenched truth. John Aubrey and Nicholas Rowe fabricated a story and then Halliwell-Phillips embellished the fable and despite the efforts of French and a whole raft of modern investigators, the story has changed very little. The accepted Shakespeare genealogy, shown in the Stratford guidebooks, must therefore by correct, mustn’t it?

However, what I have discovered calls into question several of these established truths. Most of the information was easily found, so there is little that is totally new, although no-one else seems to have assembled the pieces into one story. I’m going to use this ‘new’ information to try to create an improved Shakespeare tree, using a few basic rules, ones which have served me well, in creating my own family tree of over 10,000 individuals.

The guidebooks say that William’s grandfather was Richard Shakespeare, a copyhold farmer, who lived in Snitterfield, a small settlement about half way between Stratford and Warwick. However, there is no mention of a Richard in any documents related to William and his father, John, but conversely a John Shakespeare is mentioned frequently in documents relating to Richard Shakespeare of Snitterfield. The evidence comes from one direction only, not corroborated from the other side.

The assumption, therefore, has been that these two Johns are the same person, and that impression is strengthened when you realise the Arden family owned land, close to where Richard Shakespeare farmed his copyhold. This Richard Shakespeare was also a respected member of the community, chosen to take responsibility for valuing the estates of deceased friends and neighbours.

In 1560, when Sir Thomas Lucy held an inquisition in Warwick, into the estates of Robert Throckmorton, Richard Shakespere was a member of the jury. At the time of his death, in February 1561, Richard’s estate was valued at £38 17 shillings, with the inventory indicating he held the land between his house on the High Street and the small stream, which flowed through Snitterfield village.

Stephen Pearson, a family history researcher, was puzzled why the John Shakespeare, clearly identified with Richard’s estate in Snitterfield, is referred to as ‘agricola’ (farmer), ten years after John the glovemaker, money lender and trader in wool, was living in Stratford. John ‘agricola’ Shakespeare appears to have spent much of his life in the nearby village of Clifford Chambers, and it also appears that this John of Snitterfield, son of Richard, died, leaving a will, in 1610. Whilst the ‘small parcel of land theory’ means that John the glovemaker could appear in the records of several places at once, when all the documentation for Richard’s family is assembled it looks certain these are two different John Shakespeares and William Shakespeare’s grandfather was not Richard of Snitterfield.

So, if John Shakespeare the glovemaker did not come from Snitterfield farming stock, then who was his father and where was he born? The answer must be amongst our multitude of other Johns, and to find the answer, we need to delve deeper into other branches of the Shakespeare clan.

A similar analysis could be used on the previous generation as well, because there appear to be two Richard Shakespeares, one we have seen as ‘bailiff of Wroxall’ and the other who farmed at Snitterfield. Originally scholars thought that ‘Wroxall Richard’ was grandfather of the Bard, and then they thought the two Richards might be the same person. Now, modern researchers are sure they are two different people, and I believe neither are the Bard’s grandfather, so, perhaps we need to look at all these Shakespeares with fresh eyes, and be prepared to test these and other long held assumptions.

In 1709, Nicholas Rowe published his version of the Shakespeare plays and included a biography of the Bard. His account, compiled over a hundred years after the events, became the standard 18^th century history and is the basis for almost everything that takes place in Stratford-upon-Avon today. However, in Rowe’s initial history, he actually believed that William Shakespeare was one of TEN children, not the eight now verified in the parish records and who appear in the current history books.

The source of Rowe’s information was the actor, Thomas Betterton (1634-1710), ‘who made a journey to Warwickshire to gather up any remains he could, of a name for which he had such veneration.’

Betterton sought out the most elderly inhabitants, who convinced him there were TEN children.

Was this a mistake, caused by the fading memories of some very old folks?

If there were ten, then who are these two missing children?

Did they die as infants or should we be looking for adult siblings that have, so far, evaded the radar?

John the glovemaker, was known to be living in Stratford from 1552 onwards, because he was fined for failing to remove his dung heap. The parish records of birth, marriage and death, were not begun in the town, until Queen Elizabeth came to the throne, in November 1558, and so there is ample time for an unrecorded marriage to Mary Arden, and for earlier children to have arrived on the scene. Six years in fact, and that was a long time in the lifespan of a Tudor Stratfordite.

The estimate has always been that John Shakespeare was born around 1530, but that was based on Richard of Snitterfield being his father, and so after that reappraisal, there is ample room for a couple more kids and possibly another wife and even step children. Despite a thorough search, no record of another child has been found, so where next?

Crammer – Naming patterns before Kylie and Romeo

Naming patterns in English families, affecting all rungs of the social ladder, were incredibly important, right through to the end of Victorian England, and it is only in recent times has this traditional approach been overtaken by a more liberal method of name calling. Some Americans of English descent still keep the traditions alive today, using the patterns of their Puritan migrant ancestors, but such strict conformity has rarely been seen in England, since the early years of the 20^th century.

After 1700, through to the late Victorian period, there was a fairly standard naming formula used in most families. The eldest son was named after the father’s father; 2nd son: mother’s father; 3rd son: father. There was a similar naming pattern on the mother’s side, with the female side of the tree being the place to look, when a brand new ‘given’ name enters an established family genealogy.

Prior to 1700, the naming pattern was more heavily biased towards the male side and you would expect a father to use his own name and that of his father for his first two boys. If a child died in infancy, then the name might be used immediately on the next born, and I have seen examples where the first three children were all baptised with the same name. If a child died as a teenager, then the name might be re-used again at the end of the line. If the name was important, then you tried not to lose it.

The system preserved the heredity of the family, but did have its down side, as the names John and William began to dominate, and in the 15^th century at least a third of the male population, answered to these two names. After a trio of kings, Richard also became popular, and with war and plague decimating the population, families rarely became too adventurous when choosing a child’s name.

 

John Shakespeare’s tribe

John Shakespeare and Mary Arden named their children in this order; Joan, Margaret, William, Gilbert, Joan, Anne, Richard and Edmund. Therefore, with a Joan up first, repeated again later, then a Margaret, followed by William, as the first boy, the names should already be telling a family story.

So, according to the rules of the period, we should be looking for either a Joan or Margaret to be the mother of John Shakespeare. More often than not, we would know the first name of John’s mother, but in typical Shakespeare fashion, that simple piece of information hasn’t been passed down to us. Mary Arden’s mother was also called Mary, but her name is not on the list at all. Very strange..!!

William was the first named boy, but there is no John amongst four boys; surely, there must be a John…!! If a John had died as an infant, first born, then the name would have been repeated later. The list suggests that William ought to be the name of John’s father and that at least one from Gilbert, Richard and Edmund should be the name of at least one of John’s siblings. If Richard was his father, as the experts tell us, it would be an insult in the extreme to put him third in the order, and after Gilbert.

Gilbert is unique in the Shakespeare clan, and so could be a first name taken from the maternal side, or possibly, a surname reused as a Christian name. This would often happen when a sister married and her new surname was then incorporated as a first name, by the families of her siblings.

Mary’s father was Robert Arden and her maternal grandfather was John Alexander Webb, giving another reason to add a John to the list. Mary did have a sister, Margaret, and that seems an obvious source of the name of the second infant. That would leave the two Joans, who seem likely to be John Shakespeare’s mother’s name or possibly a sister, or quite likely, the name of both females.

So are there any likely candidates for a missing John, and possibly a mother or sister, called Joan?

Well there are, and one of them is very close to home.

There were TWO John Shakespeares living in Stratford-upon-Avon, during the second half of the 16^th century and one was a generation older than the other. John Shakespeare, a shoemaker, has long been known about, but along with other Shakespeares who don’t match the approved biography, he seems to have been disregarded as ‘connected in a far-off degree’, very much the Halliwell-Phillips school of lateral thinking!

Peter Lee, an experienced Warwickshire family historian, has argued a strong case for making John the shoemaker, the missing elder brother of our infamous William Shakespeare, of Stratford. This John Shakespeare was an apprentice shoemaker and after his master, Thomas Roberts, died, he took over the business in Stratford, by marrying the shoemaker’s widow, Margaret Roberts, (nee Lawrence).

Margaret had married Thomas Roberts in 1570, so she was probably in her early 30s when she married this John Shakespeare, in 1584. John Shakespeare had paid £3 to join the Company of Shoemakers and Saddlers, in 1580; was elected ale-taster for Stratford in 1585; paid for his freedom as a shoemaker on 19^th Jan 1585/86, before being elected the Constable for Stratford, late in 1586. His wife, Margaret, was buried on 29^th Oct 1587, and the following year, 1588, John Shakespeare became the legal guardian of the two boys his widow had produced with Thomas Roberts.

John Shakespeare must have married again immediately, because three children then quickly appeared on the scene. These were Ursula, baptised 11^th March 1588-89, Humphrey, 24^th May 1590 and Phillip, 21^st Sept 1591. John and his new family remained living in the old Roberts house until 1594.

Researchers have always linked this John Shakespeare to the Thomas Shakespeare, who was a shoemaker in Warwick, some ten miles away. Few scholars have dared suggest that John Shakespeare, the shoemaker, was in fact, William Shakespeare’s elder brother…!!!

However, if this was just any other family, you probably wouldn’t hesitate too long in adding him to the Bard’s tree. John, the younger, could easily have been born before the Stratford parish records began, in 1558, or even as an unrecorded boy, in the years between Joan and Margaret. This John also became ale-taster and constable for Stratford, following on in the tradition of John, the Bard’s father. The leather skills of a shoemaker have obvious similarities to those of a glove-maker.

Over in that Warwick family, Thomas Shakespeare, the shoemaker, named three sons in his 1557 will; John, William and Thomas. It is this Thomas Shakespeare, senior, who died in 1577, leaving his wife, Agnes, with the rights to his copyhold in Temple Balsall. Thomas the elder was described as ‘from Rowington’, but as we know from the records of the area, this is ambiguous and could also refer to the Wroxall Priory charity lands.

We also find that Thomas the shoemaker had been the bailiff for Warwick, the same job that John the glovemaker held in Stratford. There is a record of John (named as bailiff of Stratford) and Thomas Shakespeare, both sitting on the same jury in Warwick, one which adjudicated on a land dispute in Rowington. This also suggests that John the glovemaker had a previous association with either Warwick or Rowington, or both.

Now, what about those three sons of Thomas, the Warwick shoemaker?

One son, William, tragically drowned in the River Avon, on 6^th June 1579, leaving two other brothers.

Historian, Arthur Mee, writing in 1936, discovered that Thomas, junior, became a butcher, in Warwick and that he had a son, John, who became an apprentice printer. Thomas the butcher, took a copyhold on a business in Smith Street, Warwick, in 1585, and bought other property in the town in 1597, before marrying Elizabeth Letherbarrow, daughter of the bailiff of Coventry, a year later.

In 1601-02, Thomas acquired land in the nearby parish of Bishop’s Tachbrook and followed his father, being elected bailiff of Warwick, in 1612. Certainly the Shakespeares were men of influence in this important Midland town, one that gave its name to the county.

The third brother, John, is the one that traditionalists believe to be the Stratford shoemaker, but is he? There is a John Shakespeare and a Thomas Shakespeare recorded as being assessed for ‘Poor Rate’ (local property tax) in Warwick, in 1582. Was this the same John who was an apprentice shoemaker in Stratford, who then married the boss’s widow two years later? That is what serious Shakespeare historians expect us to believe..!

This John Shakespeare had married in Warwick, in 1579, and yes it would be possible for him to be widowed and marry again in Stratford, in 1584. However, apprentices were usually, young and single and marriage was forbidden, as it would affect their training.

I have a long list of my own family who were apprenticed in skilled trades and married their sweetheart, the same year they finished their training and gained their ‘freedom’ from their ‘master’. Little did they realise what they had let themselves in for..!!

The details of this man, though, don’t quite fit the normal routine you would expect of a trade apprentice. The John Shakespeare, shoemaker, who became ale-taster and constable for Stratford, would seem to be much older than the normal apprentice age, particularly as he had married his boss’s widow and taken on the business, BEFORE achieving his ‘freedom’ – his qualifications.

This could be the Warwick man, marrying in 1579, immediately moving to Stratford and going through wives in quick succession, but why was he assessed for Poor Tax in Warwick, in 1582. We also know he was alive in 1557, when his father made his will. Why didn’t he train as a shoemaker under his father in Warwick, because he would be fully qualified and have gained his freedom by 1579, which is, indeed, the year when John of Warwick did get married, in Warwick!

What seems more likely is that the eldest child of John, the Stratford glove-maker and brother of the Bard, probably intended to follow in his father’s wool trading business, but because of the disastrous years, from 1577 onwards, he decided to change career. A date of birth just prior to the beginning of the Stratford parish records, say 1557, would make him a shoemaking apprentice at 23, married aged 27, ale-taster at 28 and constable at 29. This was not a youth, but a mature individual, who must also have had the backing of the local Stratford community, probably because his father had previously held the same positions.

The final piece of evidence to suggest that John Shakespeare the shoemaker was the Bard’s older brother, is in a document relating to the Field family. John Shakespeare the glovemaker was a witness to the inventory of effects of Henry Field, a local tanner, and in this document, John is described as John Shakespeare, senior.

Now, the problem of ‘too many Johns’, was a recurring issue for lawyers and clergymen of the period, but they generally overcame the problem like this. If they were father and son they would call them John, senior and John, junior and, of course, that tradition still continues in America today. If the relationship was less clear cut, perhaps a cousin or uncle, then it would be John the elder or John the younger. This system of identification was routinely used in parish records, right through till the Victorian era.

When all this basic evidence of genealogical research is added together, then it does strongly suggest that scholars have been wrong, William did have an elder sibling and his name was John Shakespeare, the Stratford shoemaker.

In addition, if Rowe’s findings are correct, there might be another missing sibling, still out there to be discovered, and might that missing person be Mary Shakespeare, the name that occurred in successive generations on the maternal side. Someone who still needs to be found..!

Now, recall that Thomas Betterton did some field research in the 17^th century, when he was one of the first people to go hunting for traces of the Bard. He was told there were ten children, but another helpful, elderly resident told him that William Shakespeare was a ‘butcher’s apprentice who had run away to London’. Are these just the indistinct memories of aging residents or is there a grain of truth emerging here. My own experience is that old people have good memories of their childhood, but struggle with memories of what they had for breakfast that morning. Could the Bard really be a truant apprentice butcher, who ran away and became an actor?

The historian, John Aubrey (1626-1697), also believed that John the glove-maker was a butcher, and suggested that, in a rather thespian way, his son, William Shakespeare, would make a speech before dispatching a calf. Aubrey was noted for his colourful biographies, rather than his accuracy, but there is usually no smoke without a little fire. We have already seen good reasons why the Shakespeare family might have diversified into other branches of the sheep and cattle business, after they hit hard times, so butchery might well have been one of them.

Aubrey, author, antiquarian and biographer, is still the source of much of Shakespeare’s story line which appears in the text books of today. John Aubrey is also the rock which any ‘new kid on the block’ has to remove, before any semblance of truth can be propagated to the literary world at large.

There are two other strong similarities between the Warwick and Stratford families. They both have a William near the top of the list of children, which suggests the father or grandfather of both John the glovemaker and Thomas the shoemaker was a William. There was also a sister to the Warwick boys, and her name was Joan, the same name that was first up in Stratford John’s family, and was repeated, when the first child died in infancy. Could this be the name of their mother, and could this be the same Joan, making John and Thomas brothers?

Tudor shoes

 

Fall-out from the coat-of-arms saga

There is still plenty of room for speculation and there is no confirmed data to support my very different interpretation of the Warwick and Stratford Shakespeare families, but it does make much more sense than the one in the Stratford guide books. This reconfiguring of the genealogy also offers possible solutions to other previously, unsolvable, conundrums in the Shakespeare story. By adding an eldest son to John Shakespeare’s family, this also explains how the Shakespeare coat of arms began to spread more widely than was possible under the old chronology.

John Shakespeare, the shoemaker, had three children, each baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon; Humphrey, Phillip and Ursula. (1589-91). Two of these are rare names in the Shakespeare clan and the third one unusual enough that it may help to mark out a distinctive trail.

You might ask why there was no John on the list? That could be explained because John’s first wife, widow Margery, already had two children by her first husband, Thomas Roberts. The two step-children, Thomas and John, were adopted by John Shakespeare, in 1588, after their mother’s death. Did they remain as Thomas and John Roberts, or did they become Thomas and John Shakespeare? That is an interesting question that, potentially, has further ramifications.

Ursula is a unique name in the Shakespeare clan, so to find an Ursula Shakespeare recorded on 12^th April 1624, at Allesley church, as baptising an illegitimate son, Hezekial, suggests this is John’s daughter. The name is absent elsewhere, until it appears, later, in the family of Humphrey Shakespeare of Preston Bagot, one of those who felt free to use the coat of arms of John Shakespeare.

Adjacent to Allesley parish is the hamlet of Little Packington and it is in this tiny rural parish that the Shakespeare arms are again clearly displayed, on a memorial to George Shakespeare, who died in 1658. Nearby is Fillongly, which was the home parish of another George Shakespeare, who died in 1699. His descendants proudly claim they were descended from ‘a brother of everybody’s Shakespeare’. Their claim is of descent from a Phillipa Shakespeare, whose family originally came from Stratford-upon-Avon.

    

Monuments to Shakespeares at Little Packington and Fillongly – with the coat of arms – KHB

The story of a link to Phillipa Shakespeare goes something like this.

Reverend John Dyer married Sarah Ensor (1712 -1760), the sister of John Strong Ensor, and amongst the papers of an Ensor family historian, in America, is this quote:

 ‘In 1756, Rev. John Dyer, wrote to a friend, ‘My wife’s name was Ensor, whose grandmother was a Shakespear, descended from ‘a brother of everybody’s Shakespear.’

Phillipa’s father was called Adrian, who was supposed to have been a ‘gent’ from Stratford-upon-Avon. So, was Adrian the son of Philip Shakespeare and so feminising the name of a daughter, to Phillipa? It was not unusual, to feminise a father’s name, if there were no boys. The Dyers and Ensors were people of some repute and the Shakespeare tradition remained in different branches of the family for several generations.

So we have the possible descendants of Ursula and Phillip displaying the coat of arms prominently and claiming a direct line back to the Bard. What about Humphrey?

Well, Humphrey is a family name that both pre-dates and post-dates, John the Stratford shoemaker’s family. An early Humphrey name turns up in the family of Christopher Shakespeare, who had nine children in the early 16^th century and was a member of the Knowle Guild. He moved the short distance from Rowington to Lapworth and one of the nine was John Shakespeare, whose children were, called Humphrey, George and William. The Humphrey name continued in Lapworth, into the 17^th century.

This also gives a good reason for Georges to appear later, in Little Packington and Fillongly, as it was a Shakespeare family name. You might suspect that John the shoemaker is more likely to be a direct descendant of Christopher Shakespeare, but there is no obvious place to fit him in the tree, and then how do you explain the use of the coat of arms in the 17^th century. I think what it does suggest is that the Shakespeare families of Balsall, Wroxall and Rowington were a small close-knit group, who maintained contact and allegiances during the dark days of the destruction of Wroxall Priory.

Perhaps, more interestingly, the Humphrey name turns up in Clerkenwell, London, in a family that gets much closer to the literary Shakespeare than most observers realise. This may also be another family which uses the coat of arms in later generations. Could the Humphreys help us to unscramble these different lines of Shakespeares?

According to the conventional genealogy, these displays of the Shakespeare shield should be totally impossible. The male line of William’s tree died out with his death and only his sister Joan outlived him. There should be no direct male offspring from John Shakespeare the glove-maker, and there should be no subsequent bearers of arms, as displaying them would be totally illegal.

BUT if John the shoemaker was William’s elder brother, things would be very different, and these claims do seem to have great validity. This evidence suggests that all the descendants of John Shakespeare the shoemaker, genuinely believed they were entitled to display the coat of arms.

There also seems an obvious leather and bailiff, cum William and Joan connection, between the Warwick and Stratford families. Thomas, the elder shoemaker, and John the glove-maker could be brothers or step-brothers and this fits well into a line in Mousley End, Rowington, where there is a Thomas and a John who had a widowed mother Joan, who in 1548 was occupying two copyholds, at Haseley and Hatton, parishes on the outskirts of Warwick. Hatton was a charity holding, a detached part of Wroxall Priory, which was where the bailiff and sub-prioress fled, after the Priory closed down..

These notes were made by historian E. K. Chambers (1866-1954) about the Wroxall Shakespeares.

 ‘I take Joan to have been the widow of John (i) and mother of John (ii), and the Johanna who, with a husband John, joined the Guild of Knowle in 1526-7. Joan made a will, now lost, in 1557,and died a little later, as her son Thomas continued to pay rent for ‘Lyance’ (Moat Farm, Haseley) up to 1560.’

Is this the Thomas that went to Warwick and died as a shoemaker in 1577? Chambers thinks it might be, as Haseley was not too far from Warwick. Actually, Lyance (Moat Farm) is only half a mile from Wroxall Priory and on the boundary of Haseley parish. Shakespeares might have been expelled from the Priory, but they didn’t wander too far away from their home patch.

Investigators also need to look closer at John ‘Shakeshaft’, recorded in Balsall from 1543-49. The spelling is very much a one-off, but the timings suggest this could actually be the Bard’s father, who then moved on to Stratford-upon-Avon, after the Knowle Guild closed in 1550, and was in situ to clean up his dunghill, in 1552.

Do we have ‘lots of undocumented Johns’ or is this just the same person mentioned by Chambers?

Was this ‘John Shakeshaft’, also the son of one of the two Williams of Rowington, (older and younger), associated with the Knowle Guild. They have an interesting pedigree and one that has a familiar ring to it.

The Archers – an everyday story of Shakespeare folk

A William Shakespeare had moved from Wroxall to Rowington in 1504 and it may be his son, William Shakespere, with a wife Agnes and an unnamed son, who took a copyhold for three lives in 1530. William is traceable to subsidy rolls up to 1546 and maybe the William, in Rowington, in 1548. It is probably also this couple who joined the Guild of Knowle, in 1526-7 and interestingly, he is described as an archer in a muster roll of 1536-7. The other military item to note is that Richard the bailiff of Wroxall was rostered as a billman in 1536 (a bill was a short pike carried by soldiers), so further evidence that the Wroxall Shakespeares were still fighters, as well as farmers and priestesses.

So, we have Johns and Williams all residing close to each other at Wroxall, but for Thomas we have to go back to Balsall, in 1486, when Thomas and Alice of Balsall, joined the Knowle Guild, and in 1511, when Alice paid for the soul of Thomas, indicating he had died.

This provides potential dating to be the Thomas, who was with Lord Grey and his 300 archers in Ireland. However, the man, who failed to take Dublin Castle, in 1478, is, perhaps, more likely to be his father, Thomas, who died in 1486, just after Henry VII and his Tudor dynasty arrived on the scene. Either way, could it be that archer is an inherited occupation, passed down to sons and grandsons, with William from Rowington, also recorded as a bowman. William Shakespeare of Stratford mentioned lands in Rowington in his will, no doubt passed down from his father, John, and so was William the Rowington bowman, the Bard’s grandfather?

The ‘great grandfather’ mentioned in the coat of arms application, must come from a generation that lived towards the end of the 15^th century, maybe during the time when the Plantagenets became Tudors.

Now add all this, to the other information about Wroxall, with William the copyholder and archer and Thomas making an abortive attempt to take Dublin Castle. We also have a Joan for a mother of Thomas and John, making it an obvious choice for both the two sons. As you can see below, the fit isn’t perfect and there are options..!

What seems to be missing are ‘second spouses’, because they were the norm, rather than the exception at this time, so just adding an extra wife to one of these Shakespeare men might allow the jigsaw to be completed, with a degree of confidence.

This family group from Wroxall appears to be the family of John of Stratford and Thomas of Warwick, with all the right names beginning to appear and all having a similar status in their society. However, this pair might be cousins, with their fathers being John from Lyance Farm and William of Rowington. Nothing is confirmed, because the records are not complete, but it makes much more sense than the one accepted by the Shakespeare Trust in Stratford.

Evidence for John, shoemaker of Stratford as elder brother of William Shakespeare.

1. Ten children not eight
2. Missing name ‘John’, in the Bard’s family
3. Eldest son named William, in both Stratford and Warwick
4. The family tradition of using the coat of arms
5. The continuation of official roles in Stratford; ale-taster and constable
6. Same surname, same place. (Bryan Sykes rule)
7. Similarity in occupations, glove-making and shoemaking
8. Anecdotal butcher connections in Stratford and Warwick
9. Marriage and apprenticeship records in Stratford & Warwick
10. John Shakespeare, the ‘elder’, on Henry Field’s inventory

So, if you disconnect John the glovemaker from Richard of Snitterfield, and add in another son, John the shoemaker, then things begin to flow more easily. Tracing your family line back to the Wroxall Priory and to the time of the Balsall commanderie and the Knights Hospitallers, would give plenty of credibility, making you a good choice to be bailiff of any Warwickshire medieval town.

John Shakespeare the shoemaker had moved away from Stratford by 1596, to where we don’t know, and with William (the poet?) already having deserted the town by the late 1580s, this may have been connected with the sorry place the town had become at the latter end of the century.

‘In October 1590 the Corporation petitioned the Lord Treasurer for the nomination of the Vicar and schoolmaster and an additional fair. The petition speaks of the town as ‘now fallen into much decay for want of such trade as heretofore they had by clothinge and making of yarn’.’

John Shakespeare, from Warwick, also went missing after 1596, and so there are two Johns on the loose. There might even be three, if John and Thomas Roberts had become John and Thomas Shakespeare, after they were adopted in 1588. We know William Shakespeare went to London to seek his fortune, so that might be an obvious place to look for the missing Johns, two from Stratford and one from Warwick. There was one John Shakespeare, who we know did make that journey, and he went to work for a famous printer.

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Yet more Shakespeares

The name Shakespeare is not unique to Warwickshire and versions of the Shakespeare/Shakeshaft name are found spread right across England. Genealogists do try to make a decision whether these are spelling variations of the Warwickshire clan or different, unrelated families.

The uncertainty did send Michael Wood scurrying up to Lancashire, checking out a large family group of ‘Shakeshafts’, who may have had a country schoolmaster among their number. He might also have been hoping to find long lost copies of ‘Hamlet’ and a ‘Midsummer Nights Dream’ in the outside ‘privies’ of terraced houses in Blackburn and Bolton. He found nothing.

In the South of England other examples of the Shakespeare name are more random and don’t lead to a recognisable family group. Most just appear as single names in a military or church record.

Selected entries, which were all recorded in London:

William Schakesper by his will of 1413 desired burial in the Hospital of St. John. (Clerkenwell)

Peter Shakespeare witnessed a deed in Southwark in 1484.

John Shakesper had a lease in the sanctuary at Westminster shortly before 1506.

William Shakesper was buried at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, on 30 April 1539.

Roger Shackespere was appointed a Yeoman of the Guard in 1547.

Now that we know that the Shakespeare family has Templar and Hospitaller origins, then nothing in these records should be a surprise. The knights originally served the military and the church, whilst some became accomplished copyhold farmers. Their self-sufficient estates meant they needed multi skilled craftsmen, to provide all the necessities of life. Therefore, the Shakespeare line of bailiffs, traders and leather workers, ready to serve the monarch in times of military need, was very much in the Hospitaller mould and these traditions of service were passed on down through the generations.

In Dr Chapman’s study of the Bard, made in the early 20^th century, he believed the only Shakespeares recorded in London were William and his brother, Edmund. He was totally unaware there was a whole family, known as the ‘Stepney Shakespeares’, hiding in the wings. This is a well documented group, who established themselves in East London, from 1620 onwards. The Stepney Shakespeares also proudly claimed the family coat of arms and so they too must have believed they were direct descendants of John Shakespeare. This family became rope makers in the 1640s, but they weren’t just any old ropemakers, gaining the Royal warrant from the King, with extensive facilities, along side the Thames, at ‘Rope Walk’, in Shadwell.

Then there is a Thomas Shakespeare, gent, married in St Giles, Cripplegate, in 1618 and with two children, John and Thomas, baptised in St Gregory by St Paul, in 1619 and 1620. St Giles Church was next door to the Barbican Tower, part of the original London Wall. It is this John, born in 1619, who seems to be the ropemaker, but the father, ‘gentleman’ Thomas, is more problematic.

Thomas calls himself a gent, in 1618 and that would concur with the Shakespeare coat of arms turning up in Shadwell. The only Thomas Shakespeare who fits the bill, is John’s adopted son, Thomas Roberts, who would be in his forties, by this time. Could adopted sons use the coat of arms? Probably, but it does add an interesting aspect to solving the problem.

The church at St Giles, Cripplegate claims on their website, today, that Edmund Shakespeare, brother of the Bard, was a resident there and that he also had two children. Was one called Thomas, and therefore does he provide the link and the legitimacy to the ropemaker family? This does seem the most likely scenario, although the perceived wisdom has been that none of William Shakespeare’s brothers produced any offspring. Is anyone sure this is correct?

Edmund Shakespeare – buried 31 Dec 1607 – St Saviour’s, Southwark

The belief that the Bard had more nephews and nieces, also extends to another of the Bard’s brothers, Gilbert, who was thought to have died childless, in 1612. However, family tradition, in the Stepney line, has it that Gilbert died an old man, not a 48 year old. Do we need to rethink that scenario too?

There is also a Roger in Christopher of Lapworth’s family and he fits beautifully to be that oddball entry, as ‘Yeoman of the Guard’, in London. This corps was created by Henry VII and they are still a familiar site today as they are the famous ‘beefeaters’, who continue to wear Tudor style uniform, as they protect the Tower of London, with the help of their ravens.

On the scene much later is a Leonard Shakespeare, living to the west of London. He was married in Sunningwell, Berkshire in 1614, and brought up a family in Isleworth, for the next decade. This parish, then in rural isolation on the banks of the River Thames, was dominated by the Syon Monastery, which in Leonard’s time was in the hands of Henry Percy, Duke of Northumberland and his wife, Dorothy Devereux, youngest sister of the Earl of Essex.

There is a John and William at the top of Leonard Shakespeare’s family of eight children, but no indication of where he hailed from previously. Lest we forget that the Wroxall Priory was dedicated to St Leonard.

The other intriguing family group, in London, is that of John Shakespeare, the King’s ‘bitmaker’. This seems to be an occupation making ornate harnesses for the Royal household, and gives another leather-making connection. There were actually two generations of ‘bitmaker’, with the earlier one marrying in February 1604/05 and having a son, yet another John, a year later. ‘John the bitmaker’ (senior), died in 1633, the year after his son had married and taken over the business.

This could be John the shoemaker of Stratford moving up in the world, and with yet another new wife, because he had disappeared from the records in Stratford, in the mid 1590s. Could it instead be his adopted son, John Roberts, using the Shakespeare name, born about 1574, putting him in his late 20s, in 1604.

Gold State Coach, London Mews – photo by Mandy Hill

The Shakespeare ‘bitmaker’ family did extremely well for themselves, because at the death of the younger, John Shakespeare, the Kings treasurer owed him, the princely sum of £1612, over half a million pounds in today’s currency. A warrant for that amount was signed by the Earl of Denbigh, Master of the Wardrobe, and delivered to his widow.

The only Shakespeares I have found in similar trades to ‘bitmaker’ are the leather workers from Warwick and Stratford. Discovering who ‘John the bitmaker’ was and where he came from, would fill in some mighty gaps, but this is another example of the Shakespeare clan becoming a family of substance, but mainly AFTER the family began to use the term, ‘gentleman’.

Charlotte Carmichael Stopes gets the credit for the original research into the London Shakespeares, back in 1901, but others have since picked over her findings and annotated, in places. She discovered more Shakespeares than any other researcher of the period, but she was again greatly confused by an excess of Johns. She tried to tie in her findings with the biography of Shakespeare, as written by French and others, but doesn’t seem to have questioned, too much, either the Stratford family tree or William’s ability to write the plays. What is beyond doubt is that she did discover several families of pedigree, who were doing very well for themselves in London, during the reign of James I and beyond. This information has been around for over a century, but mainstream Stratfordians seem to have totally ignored this important aspect of the Shakespeare story.

We are, now, getting towards the business end of this chapter, and there are a couple of surprising, even remarkable stings in the tail.

The authors of the Stratford guidebook might suggest these few words as a resume of the Shakespeare family you know and love.

 ‘Snitterfield farmer sires a leatherworker cum trader cum bailiff cum moneylender, who becomes wealthy and then loses it all. All turns out well in the end as, he in turn sired a genius son who becomes a prolific writer, buys a big house and becomes one of the most famous names in history’.

This sounds like a public relations consultant’s dream scenario, creating a rags to riches story, based on someone’s inate abilities as a genius author. Too good to be true some would say..!!

My scenario is very different.

‘William Shakespeare was directly descended from a line that leads straight back to the early days of the Knights Templar and the Knights of St John. The family mixed all the skills and qualities of those Orders and they were always a respected part of their Warwickshire community.

 Life changed for all the Shakespeares when Henry VIII dissolved Wroxall Abbey, shattering their ordered way of life, forcing the family to look elsewhere for their future prosperity. The majority remained in Warwickshire, in the vicinity of Rowington, Packwood, Warwick and Stratford, whilst others did what so many other Englishmen did during the Tudor period, they headed for the square mile of the City of London.’

It is now clear that the Shakespeares weren’t ‘ne’r do wells made good’, but an established family, with Templar traditions, which suddenly had to regroup and start their lives again. What is obvious is that they couldn’t have done this without a fair degree of help, and this would seem to have come from members of the noble community, who wanted the Templar and Hospitaller traditions to carry on, just as they had after the first local difficulty, back in 1312.

So what has any of this wider Shakespeare genealogy got to do with ‘The Comedy of Errors’, ‘Titus Andronicus’, ‘Henry V’ or any of the other works of the Bard?

Well, there are two extra pieces of information you need to know.

Firstly, that John Shakespeare, the young son of Thomas the butcher, from Warwick, undertook his printing apprenticeship in London, and for none other than William Jaggard, the man who printed the false folio in 1619 and the genuine article in 1623. John Shakespeare was an apprentice in the Jaggard print shop between March 1610 and May 1617.

Although, there is no confirmation that he continued to work for the Jaggards after the end of his apprenticeship, he is recorded as receiving a Stationers Company pension in the 1640s, and so he must have continued in the printing trade, working somewhere.

That piece of information is well known, but generally ignored, in true Halliwell-Phillips tradition, and John Shakespeare is usually labelled in the literary history books, as ‘probably not a close relation’.

Well, first cousin to the Bard sounds a pretty close relation to me..!

There were around twenty licensed printing businesses in London to choose from, so why chose the Jaggard press, indeed why not choose Richard Field, born in Stratford-upon-Avon, and already a family friend of the Shakespeares, and printer of those two early poems composed by the Bard.

Surely, it cannot be just yet another coincidence that John Shakespeare left his home area, to end up 100 miles away working with the very people, who eventually printed the First folio. Why choose to break with the family tradition of leather and butchery anyway? There must have been a reason for this dramatic change of occupation and that catalyst might also have caused master printer, Richard Field, to leave his roots and head south, some years before.

Everyone seems to know that Richard Field was the first printer of anything to do with Shakespeare, but no-one seems to have asked the question as to why Richard Field, son of a Stratford tanner, made that initial move to London to become a printer. The possible answer to that question has interesting ramifications for the whole Shakespeare saga, but you will have to wait till we reach my musings about ‘printers’, to find the answer, although you have already passed a couple of clues in the text.

The second, extra, piece of information, you need to know, is that Mathew Shakespeare of Clerkenwell married Isabel Peele, at Christ Church, Newgate, London, on 5^th February 1566/67, or possibly, 1569/70. There have been alterations to several of the year dates in this section of the parish record, and it seems that a copy scribe got confused, became three years out in his transcription, and someone later attempted to rectify the error.

The parish record itself is definitely open to closer scrutiny and has other anomalies. It is a transcript of the original ledger and it is clearly fire damaged, but we are lucky to have the central sections still very readable. The Peele entry is badly mis-spelt on the ‘Mormon IGI family history index’, making it difficult to trace, and very curiously, is one of only four entries on that particular page, which have NOT been transcribed by the London Metropolitan Archives.

That means, I have been very lucky to find it.

Now, that is definitely one for the conspiracy theorists to ponder…!!

 Remnants of Christ Church records showing the marriage of a Peele to a Shakespeare

 

Marriage of Mathew Shakespeare and Isabel Peele

If the 1569/70 date is correct, this appears to have been slightly late in the day, as the couple in question had a daughter, Joan Shakespeare, baptised at St James, Clerkenwell, a few days earlier, although sadly the child died, only surviving three days. However, I have found another reference to the same marriage record, which uses the 1566/67 date, and so makes young Joan quite legitimate.

The status of the bride, in this Newgate community, means that the earlier date is far more likely to be correct. This was a special marriage because the church was part of Christ’s Hospital School, and the clerk of the school and the parish, was the bride’s father, James Peele. He was also well known in other fields, as a merchant, teacher, accountant, writer and organiser of City of London pageants. Mathew Shakespeare must have been deemed suitable material to be the son-in-law of this high profile figure.

Mathew and Isabel were unlucky with their children, as the first six died within weeks of birth and only the last one, Thomas, appears to have survived. They were all born and died in St James, Clerkenwell, a parish which has already featured in this story, as Clerkenwell Priory was the headquarters of the Knights Hospitallers in England. The remnants of the Priory can still be seen today in the impressive structure known as St John’s Gate.

The name of the place, Clerkenwell, also gives a clue to its origins, because this was a meeting place for the clerks of London, ‘by the well’. The name ‘clerk’ meant clergyman or literate person, not the jobsworth pen-pusher, we associate with the name today. The London Parish clerks performed their Biblical ‘Morality’ plays, at Clerkenwell, which were the first plays to be performed in London.

Queen Elizabeth installed Edmund Tilney, as her Master of the Revels, and he was based in the Clerkenwell Gatehouse. Tilney’s title meant he was the censor and overseer of all drama and banned anything that contained political or lewd content of a controversial nature. Tilney’s career (1579–1610) spanned some of the most eventful years of Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, with almost the entire writing career of William Shakespeare, being under his jurisdiction. Tilney licensed over thirty of Shakespeare’s plays, so you would have thought he might have known the author, quite well.

St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, survived the Dissolution – photo KHB

 Restored in Victorian times, by John Oldrid Scott, son of George Gilbert Scott. (Scott alert!)

The English clergy were given permission to marry, by Edward VI, in 1549, and in the first year it is thought over 1000 clerics took advantage of the new law. The avalanche of married clergy was stopped in its tracks by the arrival of Queen Mary on the scene and the newly conjugated clerks were not made welcome into the celibate Church of Rome, and all were expelled from their parishes.

The records for that Marian period are scant indeed, as the Protestant registers were left to gather dust in many parishes, with a number being destroyed. Therefore, we don’t know the sequence of events, but it must be likely that Mathew Shakespeare, or maybe his father was a clerk, and so had an introduction to Isabel Peele, a clerk’s daughter. Finding ways in which Mathew Shakespeare ended up marrying a cleric’s daughter in London, doesn’t seem too difficult.

A Shakespeare remnant from Wroxall Priory might have easily ended up at Hospitaller headquarters during Queen Mary’s time of Catholic renewal. Mathew must have been born some time around 1545, and the two unusual names in his family, Humphrey and Francis, point to him being from Christopher Shakespeare’s line, possibly via his son, John Shakespeare of Lapwood, who had a Humphrey in his family. There was also a Robert amongst the short lived family, and he may well have been named after Robert Shakespeare, a trustee and brewer from Wroxall, in the 1550s

The name, Mathew, was unique in the Shakespeare family, till that point, although it was recreated, much later, in the Stepney line. Obviously he could have been named after St Mathew the Evangelist, or perhaps someone with a surname Mathew, and yes, there was a prosperous family bearing that surname, in Rowington, in the mid 16^th century. Finding just one more record for Mathew Shakespeare would be extremely useful in mapping out the connection between London and Warwickshire.

Now, James Peele had a more famous child than Isabel, and he was George Peele, one of the best catalogued writers of the Elizabethan era. He was one writer who was never afraid to add his name to his work, and he also boasted one of the widest literary portfolios of anyone of the period. George was right at the heart of Elizabethan drama and is right at the heart of this Shakespeare story, even acknowledged by some of the most loyal Stratfordians, to have written a section of ‘Titus Andronicus’, one of the earliest plays attributed to Mr William Shakespeare. George Peele was the brother-in-law of Mathew Shakespeare, and that should start bells ringing in the minds of all literary scholars.

So, although I can’t find a single word to link William Shakespeare with his plays, I do have a member of his extended family working in the Jaggards’ print room and another living and marrying into a perfect environment for any budding author. No longer is William Shakespeare just an apprentice butcher, who ran away with a troupe of wandering actors. The family already had excellent connections, down in the growing metropolis, all this at a time when the young William Shakespeare was only a two year old, toddling round his father’s leather shop, in Stratford-upon-Avon.

John Shakespeare’s home and business, Henley Street, Stratford – photo KHB