A Reader-Friendly Biography of William Shakespeare

Copyright © 2023 P M Howarth.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotation in a book review.

Illustrations by Richard Buxton

www.richardbuxtonart.com

ISBN: 978-1-961017-43-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-961017-44-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-961017-45-0 (e)

Rev. date: 06/06/2023

Contents

List of Photos and Illustrations

30 SECOND BIOGRAPHY

Mystery Man

Prologue: Who Was Will?

ACT ONE: Childhood and Adolescence: 1564-1582

1. First the Infant, Mewling and Puking in His Mother’s Arms

2. Will’s family

In a Nutshell: Crime and Punishment

3. In my mind’s eye: The School Run 1575

4. O This Learning What a Thing it is!

In a nutshell: The 3 R’s: Reformation, Royalty & Renaissance

5. In my mind’s eye…What a Falling Off Was There.

6. The Actors are come hither!

In a nutshell: the Rise of Drama in England

ACT TWO: Marriage and Kids 1582-5

1. An o’er-hasty marriage

2. In my mind’s eye: Susanna’s baptism:

3. Anne hath her way

4. Early love poem

ACT THREE: The Road to London

1. In my mind’s eye: The Journey

2. The Gap Years

3. The City c.1592.

4. Making Waves

5. The play’s the thing…

In a nutshell: Early Hits

6. Enter – and exit – Kit Marlowe

INTERLUDE

ACT FOUR: The Naughty Nineties

1. 1594 Theatres reopen after huge death toll!

2. In my mind’s eye: A Pound of Flesh 1597

3. Variety is the spice of life

4. A Sense of History and a Sense of Humour

5. Public and private faces

6. Enter Ben Jonson

7. Sex and the City

8. My absent child

INTERLUDE

Will’s skills

Personality profile of Will Shakespeare

ACT FIVE: The Jacobean Playwright 1603-1616

1. Enter King James VI of Scotland

2. In my mind’s eye: London, 1604

3. Willpower

4. Why Tragedy?

5. Breaking News: Attempt on the King’s Life 5th November 1605:

6. Tales, Tempests and other such Drolleries.

7. Swansong

Epilogue

A very real fear

Was Ben there at the end?

Last Will and Testament

The last rites

Sir William

And finally… the legacy of the plays

Love’s Labours Won

Memory keepers

Not a moment too soon

The Shakespeare Industry

In my mind’s eye: Thoughts about Will Shakespeare by Ben Jonson

SHAKESPEARE’S LANGUAGE

Frequently Asked Questions

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Author

List of Photos and Illustrations

1.Title page of the First Folio 1623

2.Birth by Richard Buxton

3.The Birthplace Museum

4.Marriage by Richard Buxton

5.Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-on-Avon

6.Statue of William Shakespeare, Central Park, New York

7.The Journey by Richard Buxton

8.Queen Elizabeth I in procession

9.A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Richard Buxton

10.Building the Globe Theatre

11.James I

12.The Tower of London

13.The Tempest by Richard Buxton

14.The Globe Theatre 1997

15.The Royal Shakespeare Theatre

I wish I’d had this book when I was studying Shakespeare. Joe Farrell, Feb. 2019

In memory of my mother

who read and enjoyed this book in its early stages.

Peggy Blunson 1922-2015

Title page of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays, 1623.

30 SECOND BIOGRAPHY

Will Shakespeare left his home, wife and children, sometime between the years 1585 and 1592, to seek his fortune in London. He became an actor, playwright and theatre-manager at just the right time, when drama as an art form was really taking off. As a member of a highly successful company of players, he regularly entertained royalty at court, as well as the public in the newly built theatres. He quickly became established as their in-house writer, and completed thirty-seven plays (plus a few collaborations), comprising a mix of comedies, tragedies and histories. He also wrote five long poems and 154 sonnets. He eventually returned to his family in Stratford, where he died in 1616.

Much of his life is still a mystery today and likely to remain so.

Mystery Man

Will’s exact date of birth isn’t known, but it’s not the only mystery about him…

In no particular order, I’ve jotted down 20 questions which have puzzled me about Will Shakespeare. There are many more:

1.What did he look like?

2.How did he pronounce his name?

3.Was he a secret Catholic?

4.What was his relationship with his wife, Anne?

5.Was he intending to marry another woman?

6.Was he faithful to his wife?

7.Was he bisexual?

8.What happened to him in the lost years?

9.Did he go to Lancashire as a tutor?

10.Why and when did he go to London?

11.Did his family ever visit him in London or see one of his plays?

12.Did he ever go to Italy or travel anywhere abroad?

13.Did he have some kind of mid-life crisis or nervous breakdown?

14.Did he ever intend his sonnets to be published?

15.Who was the fair youth, Mr W.H.?

16.Who was the dark lady?

17.Why did he buy the Blackfriars house in London?

18.Did he have an illegitimate son?

19.Did he write the curse on his grave and has anyone ever defied it and moved his bones?

20.In his will, why does he itemize the second-best bed?

Prologue: Who Was Will?

Dear Reader,

This isn’t an easy question to answer, partly due to lack of hard evidence, partly due to time, and partly, I believe, due to the essential nature of the man called William Shakespeare. I have a feeling that even to his contemporaries – friends, family, lovers, theatre people, wealthy patrons and all the others he met – he was a bit of an enigma, a dark horse, a mystery man with many faces. He played lots of different parts in his life – as we all do – but, being a professional actor, he was probably extremely good at it and could assume different roles at will. (Pun intended – the Elizabethans loved puns and wordplay.)

He could also hide behind his writing. As a professional dramatist, Will wrote to entertain audiences, telling stories that would be enacted on a stage, but never speaking directly in his own voice. Today most people know more about the plots of well-known plays, like Romeo and Juliet, than they do about Will’s own fascinating life or the kind of person he was.

Will, the man, stands in the shadows, off-stage, as it were, behind his plays, the dauntingly huge body of writing we know as The Complete Works of Shakespeare, now so famous that they are going viral, as we speak. It’s a bit of a miracle that we have them at all, but more about that in due course…

If more of The Immortal Bard’s personal writing had survived – if, for example, there were some letters, diary entries, ideas scribbled on a bar bill even – then we’d have more insight into his private life, thoughts and feelings, so that cracking the Who-was-Will conundrum would be easier. But not a jot remains – there’s the rub – except for the cryptic and much more personal sonnets which will keep readers guessing until the end of time.

In Will’s day, only the lives of royalty and aristocrats were recorded for posterity: Will didn’t belong to either group, though he certainly got to mix with courtiers, nobles and two monarchs during his career. Of course, no one could look into the seeds of time and see that his fame would last for centuries or that scholars would devote years of research to finding out more about him! He may have only been alive for 52 years, but his work lives on and on.

Most of the evidence supporting Will’s life consists of public records like church and court documents, title deeds and tax returns: the Elizabethans were good at keeping meticulous records and an amazing number have survived. There are also some helpful comments from contemporaries, but the first biography wasn’t written till years after Will’s death, by which time no one was left who knew him, so some of the information was bound to be inaccurate, based on gossip and hearsay.

It’s also sad for us, in the age of instant photography, that we have no idea what Will looked like for much of his life and that few authenticated likenesses remain, mainly ones made in later life. Everyone has a mental picture of an old-ish, balding dude with a pointy beard and a fancy Elizabethan collar, but what did he look like as a boy, or on his wedding day or as a young, successful actor- writer, his star rising in the theatre firmament?

No original drafts of the plays have survived, either, except possibly one, a few scenes from a play about Sir Thomas More, which current scholarship believes that Will wrote in collaboration with others, and which is thought to be in his handwriting. Apart from this, there are a few original signatures – and that is all.

Treasure-hunting for anything related to our Will has been going on for ages, with some success, but nothing yet that definitely answers the big questions or fills the yawning gaps. People have even dug up the graves of those who knew him, in the hope of finding bundles of letters or missing plays, though they’ve probably not dared to touch Will’s grave, for reasons I’ll come to. It’s unlikely now that much more evidence will ever be found, but you never know: next time you’re in an antique shop, or at a country house sale, you might discover some papers mouldering away in an old chest, long-forgotten documents and manuscripts, that could be worth a fortune and change the course of Shakespearean scholarship.

So, one of the many paradoxes about Will is that he is a national and world icon, the genius everyone knows, but the man no-one knows. His awesome reputation has grown throughout the centuries but as a person he’s vague and insubstantial. It’s only natural to wonder why the works of his pen are treated like Holy Writ, while the human being behind them seems to get lost in the religious worship, the apotheosis of William Shakespeare. His legacy is for everyone: you don’t need a degree to read him – nor a well-paid job, nor a house with a hot tub in the garden! But first, read this biography and find out more about the life and times of Will Shakespeare.

Who’s afraid of William Shakespeare?

As the actor, Al Pacino, has said: What’s this thing that gets between us and Shakespeare? Probably the fear that his writing is too difficult, that we’re not going to understand it. The intention of this book is to get past the works to the person who wrote them, to bring Will, the man, into focus.

I’d like to give you a feel for his life and times, so that you can begin to understand, literally, where this mega-talented human- being was coming from.

For many years I prepared students in the UK (aged 15/16) for the General Certificate of Education and (aged 17/18) for Advanced Level English Literature. A play by Shakespeare was always on the curriculum. Of course we looked at context – you can’t study a writer in a vacuum – but there never seemed enough time to do the history adequately or fill in the significant details of Will Shakespeare’s amazing backstory. It was such an eventful time, when a whole new art-form, Drama, was born. In this book, I’m trying to remedy the situation. Throughout my research, I’ve been on my own journey of discovery – as you will, too, when you read on.

But this book isn’t just for students. I hope it will appeal to readers of all ages, everywhere, who would like to hear the unique story of William Shakespeare’s own life. Over four centuries have passed since he lived, and his fame shows no sign of ever diminishing.

Happy reading!

Pamela

Birth

ACT ONE

Childhood and Adolescence: 1564- 1582

ACT ONE: Childhood and Adolescence: 1564-1582

1. First the Infant, Mewling and Puking in His Mother’s Arms

Will lived in an age which feels like the dim and distant past to us today, though we’re very familiar with many of its images from books, film and TV. He came into this world in the middle of the 16th century, in the middle of England, in the middle of one of the most famous and turbulent periods of English history. He lived in eventful times between two incredible upheavals which affected everyone in society – the English Reformation and the English Civil War. In the first, the Roman Catholic religion was thrown out; in the second, the king was thrown out; revolution led to Charles I’s execution and Britain became a commonwealth for a period of eleven years before the monarchy was restored under Charles II. You’ll find these events in the history books, usually in a chapter headed Tudors and Stuarts.

Will was born in a town called Stratford-upon-Avon in Warwickshire, the post-code for Henley Street, where he lived, being CV37 6QW. You can visit it via Google Earth or travel there in reality, but I’ll help you to visualise it as it was when Will was born, over 450 years ago. Not, of course, that our playwright would have known anything about post codes, GPS signals, the Internet, or indeed, planes, cars and trains. Electricity hadn’t been discovered, never mind about electronics: candle-power and horsepower meant just what they said. A tablet for an Elizabethan would have been a little scrunched together pile of folded paper.

Lots of things were pretty vague – measurements, spelling rules, the calendar… The map of the world was incomplete and often wrong; the planetary system was little understood, all mixed up with astrological tables and superstitious beliefs. Having said this, the theory of the earth being the centre of the universe was about to be discredited, and new studies recognised that our planet in fact orbited the sun. The earth, itself, was being explored at a vast rate of knots – literally – as huge sailing ships went on voyages of exploration to chart the waters and find new lands, like America. Terrestrial globes were being crafted for the first time and must have been as wonderful in their time as the telephone has been for us. Great changes were afoot and new discoveries were being made by brilliant men: it’s always tempting to think of people from history as being less intelligent than we are, but the more you discover about the Elizabethans, the more you realise that this was far from true. They probably felt they were living in a brave new world, (one of Will’s multitude of new-minted phrases still in use today), much as we do now, with the rapid pace of technology affecting our lives at every turn.

Apart from the lack of technology that we take for granted, people in the 16th century weren’t so different: they probably felt pretty much as we do about the bedrock essentials of the human condition, running the same gamut of emotions, and being motivated by the same driving forces that make us what we are today. They needed to love and be loved, they valued family and friends, they, no doubt, had goals and aspirations; they battled with the problems of life, just as we do, only probably more desperately, because life was very tough for most of them.

Even though the country under Elizabeth I was called Merry England by historians, it wasn’t very merry at all for the majority of the population. Some people were extremely clever and learned, while many were totally uneducated and couldn’t even write their names, including, it is thought, Will’s parents. There was a huge gulf between the haves and have-nots, the nobles or upper classes and all the rest. The former were often extremely rich, while most of the latter were very poor, struggling to feed themselves, though a new middle class of merchants and prosperous tradesmen was beginning to emerge. Many, both rich and poor, died young; without modern medicines, one in ten survived to be forty, and only a few made old bones. The majority of people were deeply religious, holding strong Christian beliefs about life after death, believing in hell (along with witches, demons and fairies) and hoping that they would go to heaven; for many this represented the promise of a much better world than the one they lived in on earth. As you will discover, religious doctrine and practices were a key part of life – religion rules, ok – though they were far from fixed or settled, along with so many other things.

But to go back to the town of William Shakespeare’s birth, Stratford- on-Avon, in the heart of England… If you happen to visit, you’ll be directed by brown heritage signs to the Birthplace Museum. You’ll cross the river by Clopton Bridge with its views towards the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, and walk into town, past timber-framed buildings, including, nowadays, High Street chains, numerous gift shops selling souvenirs and the ubiquitous cafes, restaurants and pubs. In Henley Street, you’ll find a house, prettied up with well- tended gardens, where Will was, almost certainly, born and in which, it’s known that he grew up.

Not much is completely certain about the life of Will Shakespeare. You can get the dry facts from a website but, given the lack of evidence already mentioned, these only offer sketchy information without much narrative or context; I hope I can paint in some of the hinterland to Will’s life-story to give you a bigger and more colourful picture. But at times you’ll have to make up your own mind about what actually happened from several versions, often conflicting ones, rather like a multiple choice questionnaire, with no right answers. On the one hand…on the other hand sentences will be common. I’ll help you separate fact from fiction but you’ll require a bit of imagination, too, just as the first audiences did when they watched Will’s plays in the first London theatres all those years ago.

If you climb the stairs up to the main bedchamber in the Shakespeare family home, now the Birthplace Museum, you’ll find the room furnished much as it would have been in the spring of 1564 when Mary Shakespeare was anxiously awaiting the birth of her third child, after two previous children, both girls, had died as babies. With a bit of imagination, you can invent a few details. Perhaps it’s night time, perhaps the street is silent, or perhaps a light April shower beats against the casement window. Perhaps the moon and stars are unusually bright, the planets aligned significantly, portending the birth of a rare soul.

Mary may be murmuring prayers – whether Roman Catholic or Protestant prayers, we don’t know – she may not know either because the country has gone through such religious turmoil. It doesn’t matter when you’re desperate.

Please God, let the child live. Please God, a strong, healthy child this time…

The crib is ready once again and the strips of fabric to swaddle the new-born are washed and laid out in hope of a living baby. Dawn comes up over the horizon, creeping through the Forest of