William Shakespeare

                                    

 

 

                                            William Shakespeare

 

 

The Birth

 

 

In the eighteenth century a serious study

of Shakespeare’s works                                                                 All the world’s stage,

was  started  and  that, in turn, led to                         And all the men and women merely players;

a study of his life.                                                         They have their exits and their entrances;                                                    

A good many facts were discovered                            And one man in his time plays many parts,

but a lot is still unknown.                                        His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,    

                                                                                   Mewling and puking in the nurse’s armes.

William Shakespeare was born                                

on 23 April   1564,  six years                                           As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7.

after Elizabeth I  became Queen.                                     Jaques speaking.

 The date coincides

with the Feast of St George, the patron saint of England-

so two great symbols  of  English culture and nationalism 

are traditionally celebrated on the same day.

 

His baptism is recorded in the registerof Holly Trinity Church in 1564: ‘April 26: Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare.’

 

He was born in the upstairs bedroom at Henley Street, and was one of eight children. Mary Arden, his mother, had been brought up in the countryside in Wilmcote , with her seven sisters; her father, Robert Arden, was a successful farmer and landowner.

 

John Shakespeare , William’s  father, came from Snitterfield, a village some miles away from Stratford,and was  a  successful tradesman. He worked with soft leather , making belts, purses, aprons and gloves, and he also sold wool and barley. It is not surprising that he did well- the most important  of  England’s  products during the 16th century were woolen cloth and barley. The barley was used to make beer and ale – and , as this was Stradford’s principal industry , John did very well. John Shakespeare was a respected man who took an active part in the civic life of the town. In  1568   he was made  bailiff , a position corresponding to mayor.

    

 

             The Schoolboy  

  

    William Shakespeare went to the local Grammar School in Stratford – upon – Avon. It was

   then called the King’s New School (now changed to King Edward 6  Grammar School). It is               believed that the schoolroom was on the fist floor.

 

                                                        

                                                                

                                                                      -1-

 

 

 

 

 

William didn’t go on to University and, judging from what he says about  schools in his plays, he doesn’t seem to have had a very happy time! ‘Love goes towards love, as schoolboys from their books,’ sighs Romeo beneath Juliet’s window.

 

 

     Even though the great religious houses were closed down during the Reformation, the number of people who could read  grew during the mid-16th century.                                                

 

   

    William’s education was typically  Tudor. The ‘grammar’ schools were the most common   form of education, and they were free. He would have been taught  Latin by a well-paid Oxford graduate. Apparently  he didn’t  learn very much because his friend and admirer, Ben Jonson, said he had ‘small Latin and less Greek’. However, he would have read Cato, Aesop, Virgil and Horace.

               

                  An Elizabethan  Schoolday

        The schoolday was tough for a young boy.

        An early start - 6 a.m. in the summer and

         7 a.m.  in winter. A break for lunch  at

           11 a.m.  and then back again at 1 p.m.

        For another 4 hours with only a 15-minute 

           rest. Discipline would have been strict

     and the use of the birch was not uncommon.   

 

 

 

    He would also have learnt the Catechism in English and Latin.

The Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and the Homilies

( sermons published in 1547 and 1563)

would have guided his thoughts.                                 …the wining school-boy, with his satchel,

The Bible had by then been                                      And shining morning face, creeping like snail

translated into English                                               Unwillingly to school.   

by the two great protestants                                       As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7.   

William Tyndale  and                                                  Jaques speaking.

Miles Coverdale.

It presented an English version

of Christianity which  to the puritan mind laid  down the law on the way life should  be lived. They believed everything that was written in it and , as far as they were concerned, it needed no interpretation – anyone could read and understand it. This meant that the sense of  mystery captured  by the use of allegory  and metaphor in the Bible were lost.

 

 

 

           Although Shakespeare was brought up with these orthodox protestant teachings, and although he conformed outwardly, he managed to remain open-minded  and inwardly  a free-thinker. The Bible is a constant source of inspiration to him, yet his plays lack the rigidity of dogma.

           

 

                                                                     -2-

 

         

         Growing  Up

 

 

   Stradford-upon-Avon  was a flourishing market town with about 300-400 houses, and at the time that Shakespeare lived had been granted a Royal Charter.

 

   It wasn’t busy place, but on fair days farmers, weavers, dyers, carpenters and shoemakers would bring their goods into the town to sell to locals and passers-by. Travellers who were on their way to Brimingham, clothmaking Coventry (famous for itscaps), and the great ports of London and Bristol would stop at the Bear or Swan for a glass of famous Stradford beer or ale.They would arrive hungry and thirsty, but, once rested, they would join the crowds exchanging news, and buy and sell merchandise in the market-place.

 

   The Tudors had changed the old moral order created by the Catholic Church. William lived in a society where people were told that Queen Elizabeth l  was God’s  deputy on earth, and rebellion against the crown was considered a sin against God. Imprisonment, torture or execution were punishments for not going along with these beliefs. People had by law to go to church on Sunday, and were fined if they didn’t.

  Later, plays were used by some to teach people that rebellion was evil and to spread ideas that would encourage the nation to accept royal authority as legitimate. Others, however, who disagreed with these ideas, used the theatre to undermine authority in the hope that they could change people’s ideas. Theatres were therefore accused of being places where sinful people, who were against the state, could gather.

 

    Anyone  who challenged the existing order                             We were, fair queen,

would have been called subversive                                        Two lads that thought there was no

and Shakespeare knew this. However,                                             more behind

he showed how rulers would make and keep                       But such a day to-morrow as to-day,

themselves great and powerful and                                         And to be  boy  eternal…

at the same time he managed to expose                              We were as twinn’d lambs  that did 

their characters, their fears,                                                             frisk i’ the sun,

their strengths and weaknesses.                                            And bleat the one at the other:

     Even though Henry 8 had broken                                               what we chang’d

with Rome some time ago, Catholics                                    Was innocence for innocence;

and Protestants continued to quarrel.                                               we knew not

There were still English nobles                                       The doctrine of ill-doing, no nor dream’d 

who wanted to remove Elizabeth                                                                             That any did. 

and replace her with the                                                 The Winter’s Tale, Act 1, Scene 2. 

Catholic Queenof Scotland, Mary.                                  Polixenes  speaking.    

 

During this time the hatred of everything

Catholic grew, and it is though that

William’s father suffered financially because he disagreed about the break with Rome. This may not be the true cause- there was a general economic recession and he may also have spent too much time on his duties as bailiff.

 

 

                                                                       -3-

 

 

 

   Theatre is an ancient art: in England, in the middle ages, when most people couldn’t read or  write, monks would act out scenes from the Bible with a storyteller explaining what was happening. After a while the actors would make up their own words. You can imagine the plays taking place in the churches underneath the wonderful staind-glass windows and sculptures.

 

  In Elizabeth times, England was not known as Merry England for nothing! Marriage, a birth , a wake or one of the different festivals such as Candelmas, Shrove Tuesday, Hocktide , May Day, Whitsuntide, Midsummer Eve ,Harvest, Hallow’en and the twelve days of the Christmas season ending in Twelfth Night demanded some form of celebration. There were sports and feast days, morris dances, sword dances , wassailings , mock ceremonies  of summer kings and queens, lords of misrule, mummings, pageants and masques.

    Acting was part of local village culture, and this did not just mean studying a part, but also allowed the player to become a vessel through which something else could be expressed. The celebrations and rituals gave people a release from the controls and conventions of everyday life, where the distinctions between life and art, and the stage and life, could merge and disappear.

 

   Amateur actors from the surrounding villages, in search of an audience, would come to town on market-day, and the theme of the amateur actor and his good-natured yet clumsy performances is used in Shakespeare’s plays.

     In the 16th century plays were performed in the courtyards of inns. The actors would put up a temporary stage opposite the main entrance and the audience could then sit around the three sides of the stage. If you had enough money you would be able to pay the innkeeper for the privilege of sitting in a balcony overlooking the courtyard.

  As a young boy, and later as a young man, William would help his father with his work. In those days glovers had a privileged position. Their trade was protected against foreign competition by an Act of Parliament. On market-day they would stand underneath the clock of the Market Cross, the most important place in the town. While he was there William would have had plenty of opportunity to see plays and meet players who traveled around the country, perhaps escaping from London when there was an outbreak  of the plague.

  All this must have been a wonderful experience for a small boy whose imagination would have been stirred by what he saw and heard. The village celebrations; strange tales told by sailors coming back from foreign lands; arguments about the struggle for the freedom of speech. Last but not least, William would  have been able to watch play after play, an on-going delight for any small child, especially one with his imagination.

 

 

 Marriage

    In spite of a busy life William still find time for romance. He married Anne Hathaway in November 1582. Anne was the daughter of John Hathaway, a farmer who lived in Shottery, a  mile outside Stratford-upon- Avon. When they married, William probably took Anne to live with him at his father’s house in Henley Street: it was not unusual for two families to live together.

  William was only eighteen and a half, Anne was eight years older. The marriage was rushed as Anne was three months’ pregnant: Susanna was born in May 1583. It was most unusual for a man of William’s age to get married, and as she was so much older than him, it would be nice to know whether they married because they fell in love, or because Anne was carrying a child. No one will ever really know the truth, and sadly we do not even know if he ever composed any ballads for her.

 

 

                                                         -4- 

 

   It must have been a relief for                                     Let me not to the marriage of  true minds

the Hathaways to see their daughter                              Admit impediments. Love is not love

safely married- and not only because                             Which alters when it alteration finds,

she was pregnant. It was unlikely that                           Or bends with the remover to remove:

Anne could read or write and in a                                  O,   no! it  is an ever-fixed mark,

world made for men she would have                               That looks on tempests

found it difficult to earn a living                                            and is never shaken;   

because women were excluded from                               It is the star to every wandering bark,        

public life.                                                                        Whose worth’s unknown,     

    Unmarried woman had traditionally                                    although his height be taken .

gone to the church, but after the                                       Love’s  not Time’s  fool,                         

English Reformation, when Henry 8                                      though rosy lips and cheeks     

clothed the monasteries and took their                               Within his bending sickle’s

wealth, many women took to the road.                                    compass come;   

The most an unmarried woman could                                 Love alters not with his brief

hope for was to be a servant in someone                                   hours and weeks,

else’s house, or to be kept by her own                            But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

family. Shakespeare was aware of the                            If this be error, and upon me prov’d,   

difficulties women faced and in many                            I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.     

of his plays he shows how they are       

ill-treated, abused and bartered                                         Sonnets, 116

to the highest bidder. He also shows them

dressing up as men in order to be treated on an equal basis. However, in the tragedies he describes men as being dominated and destroyed by women. If you take the footpaths across the fields to reach Anne’s house you will be able to enjoy the same scenes that surrounded the courting couple. Make sure that when you visit  Anne Hathaway’s cottage you imagine Anne and William in front of the fire sitting on the settle.

 

 

  Family Life

 

We don’t know what Shakespeare did before he went to London. Some say he stayed in Stratford, led a domestic life and helped his father to run the family business. Some say he worked in a lawyer’s office, others say he was a country schoolmaster or that he worked in a great household or as a soldier in the Low Countries. Whatever he did it is something of a mystery, and it is impossible to say whether the characters of his plays are speaking from Shakespeare’s own experiences or from his imagination.

  Family life did not seem to dampen William’s spirits, and gossip, that appears to have survived to this day, reports (and this may not be true!) that he was friends with a rowdy set of young men who would steel deer from Sir Thomas Lucy’s park at Charlecote. Sir Thomas even threated to prosecute William. However, William’s reply to the threat was a mischievous note which he tied on to the park gates:

                          

                                   A parliament member,

                                       A justice of peace

                                   At home of poor scarecrow,

                                      In London an asse

                                   If Lucy is Lowsie as some

                                           folk miscall it

                                   Sing Lowsie Lucy whatever

                                            befall it.

 

                                                                                                          

 The Shakespeare fortunes were at a low ebb, and with all the extra little mouths to feed,  the               Henley Street house must have felt quite crowded. William and Anne had three children; Susanna was born three month after their marriage. Two years later, in 1585, the twins were born- a boy, Hamnet, and a girl, Judith. In spite of his love for his family, it must have been quite frustrating for a man with his creativity and intelligence to live under these circumstances. It was only in London that a man with his talents could get ahead and make a career for himself.

                                                               

It was probably in 1587                                             No: as a walled town is more worthier 

that he went to London. Five                                                 than a village

companies of actors visited                                             so is the forehead of a married man

Stratford that year; some people                                            more honourable than the bare

say that he made friends with                                                 borrow of a bachelor.

a number of actors and either                                            

went off with them to London or                                     As you like it, Act 3, Scene 3.

got in touch with them when he                                       Touchstone  speaking.

arrived in the city. With the family business

in difficulties he may not have had enough money

for a horse.  He would have walked south via

Banbury or Oxford; it would have taken him at least

4 days to reach London and that would be going at a brisk

25 miles a day.

       Shakespeare’s life in London can be traced from 1592 onwards, first as an actor, then as a reviser and writer of plays.  

 

 

      The Struggle to Succeed

 

     When Shakespeare arrived in London it was a most exciting time. Mary Queen of Scots had just been executed, Phillip ll  of Spain was building up the Armada and London was preparing for the invasion. Drake was the terror of the Spanish Main, Raleigh was at Court and contemporaries included Marlowe, Bacon, Spenser and Jonson.

     Although puritanical dislike of the theatre was slowly growing into the hostility which, just over half a century later, overwhelmed English drama completely, the theatres were still very popular. The puritans had already started harassing actors to try and stop them from performing. The theatre was the only place where people could go and hear honest comments about life, and audiences must have gone with a sense of mischief, keen to spot hidden meanings.