SOURCE: "Such a Deadly Life," in The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth and the Reality, Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984, pp. 23-37.

[In this essay, Ogburn reviews the public documents connected with "Shakspere of Stratford, " suggesting that among the baptismal records, marriage licenses, legal proceedings and wills, there is a lack of evidence demonstrating that the man from Stratford was the literary genius behind the works attributed to Shakespeare.]

Orthodox writers assert that much is known about the man they conceive to be Shakespeare, more, indeed, than about all but one of his fellow playwrights. In two centuries, legions of scholar-sleuths (one of whom alone combed a collection of three million uncatalogued documents) have in fact, in a literary dragnet of unparalleled scope, come up with an extensive assortment of facts about the Stratfordian. We find it enlightening to review these to see what activities are indicated for the purported master poet and playwright and what kinds are notably missing, and to see what items are listed and what kinds not listed in the inventory of his life's effects recorded in his will.

In April 1973, the curator of manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library discovered that on 12 June 1593, Richard Stonley, a London businessman, had recorded in his diary his purchasing a copy of Venus and Adonis. The work had been licensed for printing two months earlier, but this was the first record of a copy of the work being purchased, the first of Shakespeare's to be published. Hence considerable interest attended the discovery. James G. McManaway, consultant emeritus and former assistant director at the Folger Library, described it as "sensational."

That was rather strong. Someone had to be the first on record to purchase a work of Shakespeare's, and, in fact, Stonley's having done so had been reported back in the 18th century. But Dr. McManaway, as quoted in the Washington Post, went on to declare that the find "provides . . . clues about the shadowy, early days of Shakespeare's writing career."¹ It does nothing of the sort. We see in Dr. McManaway's claim the eagerness of orthodox scholars to turn up something that will associate the Stratford man with literary activity.

"We know more about him than about any other dramatist of the time, with the exception of Ben Jonson, who lived rather later and had a longer life," says the flag-bearer of the Stratford academicians, Alfred Leslie Rowse of Oxford University.² Dr. McManaway himself, in his Folger booklet, asserts that "For a playwright of his time, Shakespeare's life is well documented."³ He goes on to cite gaps in the biographical data on Edmund Spenser, John Milton, and Sir Walter Raleigh to have us believe that these gaps are as significant as the gaps in Shakespeare's record. It is conventional among orthodox writers to contend that we know as much about the Stratford man as we could legitimately expect to know about Shakespeare, if not more than that. If they were being aboveboard with us their point would be an important one. If not, that also should tell us much. The facts will make clear the truth of the matter.

A considerable amount, certainly, is known about Shakspere of Stratford. After all, there has been let loose upon him a century-and-a-half-long investigation of an intensity, scope, and thoroughness unexampled in the history of literary research. Of its results, however, skeptics would say that never in the field of biography have so many labored so diligently and so long for so little, certainly so little of what they were seeking. "Of the person of Shakespeare," Walt Whitman declared, with warrant, "the record is almost a blank—it has no substance whatever."⁴ Writing on Shakespeare After 400 Years, J. Isaacs, professor emeritus of English literature at Queen Mary College, London, observes that "The last time anything of importance about Shakespeare personally turned up was in 1910, when Professor C. W. Wallace of Nebraska, who has never had much credit for it, looked through some three million uncatalogued documents in the basement of the Public Records Office and came up with a lawsuit in which Shakespeare was a witness, and showed him as a lodger in the house of a Huguenot wig-maker off Cheapside, helping in the romance of his landlord's daughter with a young apprentice."⁵ As Hugh R. Trevor-Roper, formerly Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, remarks, "One hundredth of the effort devoted to one of Shakespeare's obscure contemporaries would have produced a respectable biography."⁶ We come now to the biography of the famous Stratfordian, whom I have proposed we call William Shakspere (without an e after the k), which is consistent with the variety of spellings of the family name in and around Stratford and that of the man's own so-called signatures. This spelling shows that the first syllable of the name was pronounced with a short a.

He was christened on 26 April 1564, as "Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere," the final e being perhaps a Gothic flourish. Though the date of his birth is celebrated as April 23, we do not know when it occurred. We also do not know exactly where he was born—an uncertainty worth remarking only because of the assiduity of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust in directing the throngs of pilgrims to the house that the Trust asserts categorically was the birthplace. It is amusing, by the way, that when the Shakespeare Action Committee under Francis Carr applied for a summons against the Trust in 1968 under the Trade Description Act, contending that there was no evidence to show that Shakspere was born in the house on Henley Street, the Trust won a dismissal of the application by the town magistrates; the dismissal was granted on the grounds not that there was such evidence but that the trustees were not carrying on a trade or business as defined by the Act!⁷ Bernard Levin, well-known British literary columnist, writes: "Stratford permits—indeed encourages—one of the biggest frauds in England to rage unchecked. .. . I mean those two monumental frauds 'Shakespeare's Birthplace' and 'Anne Hathaway's Cottage.'"⁸

The father, presumably the John Shakspere of nearby Snitterfield, first appears in Stratford, in 1552, as having been fined a shilling for having a dunghill in front of his house. Evidently on the strength of his looking after his father Richard's lands, John Shakspere was described as a husbandman and yeoman. His father had held part of these lands as a tenant of Robert Arden of Wilmcote, and John had married Arden's daughter Mary. Orthodox scholars and critics, while accusing anti-Stratfordians of an unholy bias in favor of high birth ("An innate snobbishness is responsible for the recurring suspicion that the plays attributed to Shakespeare were actually written by someone else, preferably a nobleman," Richard Watts, Jr., assures us in the New York Post), like to link Robert Arden with the aristocratic Ardens of Park Hill.⁹ ("The Ardens were superior folk, probably related to the Arden gentry of Park Hill in north Warwickshire," A. L. Rowse avers.¹⁰) And Ivor Brown tells us that "The Ardens of the senior succession were lordly people indeed, pre-Conquest notables, accepted by William the Conqueror," and so on.¹¹ William Shakspere himself, along with his partisans, seems to have been guilty of just that predilection for aristocratic lineage of which those who question his credentials are accused. Having, as soon as his fortunes permitted, obtained a coat-of-arms in his father's name (by dubious means, as we shall later see), he sought to impale the arms of the Park Hill Ardens with those he had recently acquired—only, however, to be overruled by the Heralds' College.

John Shakspere's business in Stratford was apparently that of glover and wool-dealer. He had bought two houses in Henley Street in 1556 and two others within twenty years. Clearly these were years of some prosperity for him. By 1568, he had risen from chamberlain to burgess to alderman and bailiff. By 1577, however, his success, whatever its origin, was over. We find him proceeding against one of the Quineys—a family close to his own—for a debt of £50 and, upon his failing to meet a debt of his own, having a warrant outstanding for his arrest. He stopped attending meetings of the town council: "Mr. Shaxpere doth not come to the halls." Accordingly he was replaced by a new alderman. He failed to pay off a mortgage of £40 on his wife's property when due. Misbehavior seems to have been added to misfortune, for, in 1580, he was bound over at court to give security against a breach of the peace and fined the heavy sum of £40, half of it in default of payment by a partner in the offense, a Nottingham hatmaker. He became involved in the decline of his brother Henry, who died heavily in debt in 1596. In 1592, he was cited as one of those who "it is said . . . come not to church for fear of process for debt."¹²

The first records of William Shakspere following his christening come when he was eighteen. A license for his marriage to Anne Whately of Temple Grafton was issued in Worcester on November 27, 1582. The next day, a bond given by two sureties to protect the Bishop of Worcester from any untoward consequence from the insufficient posting of the banns (there had been only one asking in place of the prescribed three) names as bride Anne Hathwey of Stratford. The groom is called Shaxpere on one document, Shagspere on the other. Particularly because the next record of our subject refers to the christening of his daughter Susanna six months later, we are tempted to visualize a prospective marriage to the first Anne aborted by an irate father demanding that the bridegroom do right by the second, whom he had got with child. The orthodox biographers assure us that "Anne Whately of Temple Grafton" was a scribal error for "Anne Hathwey of Stratford."¹³ Although the slip could hardly be described as a natural one, let us not argue and merely take note of Joseph Hunter's report of "the entry in the parish register of Stratford, of the marriage of one Anne Hathaway of Shottery to William Wilson on Jan. 17, 1579."¹⁴ Whoever she was, Anne Shakspere was eight years her husband's senior, as we know from the inscription on her grave.

The marriage was only six months old when a daughter, Susanna, was baptized.¹⁵ In 1585, the baptism of "Hamnet and Judeth, son and daughter to William Shakspere," was recorded. Plainly the twins were named for a neighboring couple, Hamnet and Judith Sadler.¹⁶

In 1589, William and his father were named in legal proceedings aimed at recovering the property of Mary Arden on which John had failed to lift the mortgage.¹⁷

That is all we know about our subject until his thirtieth or thirty-second year. Of the playwrights other than Shakespeare by whom the age is known, most very inferior—Marlowe, Kyd, Lyly, Greene, Heywood, Nashe, Webster, and Jonson—only John Webster (whose genius went unrecognized until Charles Lamb discovered it) confronts us with such a blank. Even Webster left us the kind of testament we look for in vain from the conventional "Shakespeare": an epistle to one of his dramas, of 1612, in which he speaks in complimentary terms of seven of his fellow playwrights, including "M[aster] Shake-speare," who is one of three praised for their "right happy and copious industry" with the hope that "What I write may be read by their light."¹⁸ We have a richer acquaintance with the first three decades of the Venerable Bede, who died in 735 in the depths of the Dark Ages, than we have of Shakspere's.

What was Will doing in the years before his appearance in London? Various stories have filtered into the vacuum, the best known involving deer poaching, but they are without substantiation or even plausibility. He "may or may not have travelled in Europe, either as a touring actor or in the company of a noble patron," Ivor Brown theorizes.¹⁹ Louis P. Bénézet of Dartmouth College has garnered a fine crop of postulations, all designed to endow young Will in some measure with the range of knowledge and experience clearly possessed by the author of the dramas. Among the conjectures are: the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1894 edition), which suggests that Shakspere must have spent much time in the "forest of Arden, . . . picking up his remarkable knowledge of forest law"; J. Dover Wilson, who has him acting from 1581 to 1599, except when he was tutoring the Earl of Southampton ("in a country school") and taking a trip to Italy with the Earl and John Florio, a writer and teacher at Magdalen College; Joseph Quincy Adams, who also believes that he was teaching in a country school and in addition had been hunting to hounds and practicing falconry; Edgar I. Fripp, who is convinced that he was studying law till 1587; Karl Elze, who believes that he was travelling in Italy; Edward Garnett and Edmund Gosse, who favor his travelling and fighting in the Low Countries; Caroline F. E. Spurgeon, who sees him spending his time in deer-hunting, horseback-riding, hawking, bowling, tennis-playing, and engaging in other sports; Churton Collins, who is sure that he was working in an attorney's office; William Allen Neilsen, who is sure he filled his waking hours with the devouring of books.²⁰ To these, Samuel Schoenbaum adds Arthur Gray of Jesus College, according to whom the young Stratfordian was a page to Sir Henry Goodere of Poles-worth Hall and there acquired his knowledge of Latin and of polite society; Frances Yates, who has him teaching in a secret Catholic institution, and others more eccentric.²¹

Sir Edmund K. Chambers, in his monumental and definitive biography, is more noncommittal. "Who shall say," he asks, "what adventures, material or spiritual, six or eight crowded Elizabethan years may have brought him."²² Or who—if I may bring us back to the record, taking account of his having the financial burden of a wife and three children, no known business or profession to put money in his pocket, no advantageous connections that have ever come to light, and a father pursued by creditors—shall say what drab employment filled his days in those years? "It is," says Chambers, "no use guessing."

Guessing, however, is what his biographers resort to when they come to tell us when he went to London. They postulate the late 1580s but have no evidence to back them up. ("One fine day in the later 1580s," A. L. Rowse informs us, "He took the road to London."²³) They stake their case on the publication in 1592, when Will Shakspere was twenty-eight, of Greenes Groats-worth of Wyt, in which the author warned certain playwrights of an actor, an "upstart Crow" and "Johannes Factotum" who esteemed himself the only "Shakescene" in the country. They identify this actor as Shakspere but their faith in this, we shall see in Chapter 5, rests upon a characteristic failure to read the plain English of the text upon which it rests.

Two years passed after the Groats-worth appeared, during which Venus and Adonis was published with a gracious and courtly dedication to the Earl of Southampton signed by William Shakespeare—the first we hear of such a writer. Then, in December 1594, according to an entry added much later to an account of the following March, "Will Kempe, Will Shakespeare & Richard Burbage servants to the Lord Chambleyne" were paid £20 for two comedies or interludes acted before the Queen.²⁴ This is a peculiar record and suspect, as again we shall see.

In August 1596, "Hamnet, filius William Shakspere" was buried in Stratford.²⁵

In October 1596, a grant of a coat-of-arms seems to have been made to John Shakspere, doubtless at his son's instigation, though the grant may not have finally been made until 1599. The arms feature a spear in the diagonal of the shield and a falcon as the crest. In the upper left-hand corner of the draft of 1596 appear the words Non, Sanz Droict ("No, Without Right"), this being evidently the Heralds' judgment on the merits of the application. The words are crossed out but are again inscribed, just above the original notation. Then, in a larger hand and in upper-case letters the words NON SANZ DROICT are written across the top. Someone, it would seem, had taken the dismissal and by dropping the comma turned it into an endorsement: "Not Without Right." This became the motto for his arms, albeit rather a defensive one. William Dethick, Garter principal king of Arms, who authorized the grant and was already in bad odor for his greed, was in 1602 accused by Ralph Brooke, York Herald, of having made grants to base persons, among whom "Shakespeare" was named. Dethick's defense of his actions must have been successful, for he continued to hold his office and was even knighted in the following year, but shortly thereafter his transgressions led to his dismissal. In 1599, when Shakspere sought an "exemplification" of his coat of arms, [By an exemplification the Heralds accepted an applicant's claim of a right to bear arms without ruling on it. It was on this occasion that Shakspere sought to have his arms impaled with those of the Ardens of Park Hill on the basis of his mother's descent, but this joining was disallowed and a less aristocratic Arden coat substituted. So far as is known, however, Shakspere never quartered any Arden arms with his own, perhaps advisedly, for it has never been established that his mother was entitled to arms of any kind.] Ben Jonson in his Every Man Out of His Humor has a rustic character called Sogliardo who is ridiculed as one "so enamoured of the name of a gentleman, that he will have it though he buys it." For Sogliardo's coat-of-arms another character suggests, "Let the word be, Not Without Mustard"²⁶

In late 1596, it was recorded on the rolls of the Court of the Queen's Bench in London that William Wayte craved sureties of the peace against "William Shakspare" and three others "for fear of death and so forth."²⁷ We are assured by Stratfordians that there was nothing invidious in being so cited.

In May 1597, "Willielmum Shakespeare" bought the 260-year-old house known as New Place—the second largest in Stratford—from William Underhill, evidently for £60.²⁸ The price would be about equal to the amount an author would receive for ten plays and presumably does not represent the total cost of the house.

In November 1597, the tax collectors for the Ward of Bishopsgate, London, listed "William Shackspere" among those owing a tax that could not be collected because of their having died or left the ward.²⁹

In January 1598, Abraham Sturley of Stratford wrote to Richard Quiney that "our countriman [i.e., of the same county], Mr. Shaksper" may be moved "to deal in the matter of our tithes."³⁰

In February 1598, "Wm. Shackespere" of Chappie Street Ward, Stratford, was listed as holding "x quarters" (80 bushels) of grain.³¹ Three wet seasons had produced a great dearth of grain, and the "engrossers" who held large amounts, like Shakspere, despite orders from the Privy Council to sell the excesses, were termed by the council "wicked people . . . like to wolves or cormorants." As E. K. Chambers writes, "There was wild hope [among the people] of leading them in a halter and, 'if God send my Lord of Essex down shortly, to see them hanged on gibbets at their own doors."'

In October 1598, "William Shakespeare" was again listed as a tax delinquent, in the parish of St. Helens, London, the collectors having once more been unable to bring him to book.³²

Also in October 1598, Richard Quiney wrote "To my loving good friend & countryman Mr. Wm. Shackespere," asking him for £30 to help "me out of all the debts I owe in London." (The letter, the only one we know of ever to have been addressed to Shakspere, was evidently not delivered, for it was found in Quiney's papers.) A few days later Richard Quiney's father, Adrian, wrote to him that "If you bargain with Mr. Sha. or receive money therefor, bring your money home if you may. . . . " A few days after that, Abraham Sturley wrote to Richard Quiney referring to a letter from the latter indicating "that our countryman Mr. Wm. Shak. would procure us money," remarking that this "I will like of as I shall hear when, and where, and how. . . . "³³ When it came to getting money from William Shakspere it was apparently a matter of seeing is believing.

Also in 1598, the Chamber Account of Stratford for Christmas records ten pence paid to Mr. Shaxpere for one load of stone.³⁴

In February 1599, according to testimony given twenty years later by John Heminge and Henry Condell, "William Shakespere" was a shareholder in the Globe, erected in that year. He was one of those who held a 10 per cent interest, as against 50 per cent held by the Burbages.³⁵ Thirty-six years later, in 1635, Cuthbert Burbage testified that in building the Globe, "to our selves were joined those deserving men, Shakspere, Heminges, Condell, Philips and other partners."³⁶

In May 1599, an inventory of the property of Thomas Brend, father of Nicholas Brend, lessor of the land on which the Globe was built, listed a house newly built in the parish of St. Saviour "in occupacione Willielmi Shakespeare et aliorum."³⁷

In October 1599, "Willelmus Shakspeare" was listed as a tax delinquent from the parish of St. Helen who had moved to Sussex.³⁸

In October 1600, the tax owed by "Willelmus Shakspeare" was referred for collection to the Bishop of Winchester.³⁹ Later the Bishop accounted on his rolls for a lump sum received from persons referred to him by the sheriff.

In May 1602, William Shakespeare paid William Combe and John Combe £320 for 107 acres of land north of Stratford, the deed "Sealed and delivered to Gilbert Shakespere," William's brother. William was described as "of Stratford upon Avon."⁴⁰

In September 1602, "Shackespere," referred to also as "Shakespere," purchased a cottage on "Walkers Street alias Dead Lane" on the chapel side across from New Place for an undisclosed amount.

In late 1602, in another legal action respecting New Place, "Willielmum Shakespeare" was described for the first time as "generosus," gentleman.⁴¹

Circa 1603 to 1616, a lease of property east of New Place said that "The barn on the west side bounds by Mr. William Shaxpeare."⁴²

In May 1603, King James did "licence and authorize these our Servants lawrence ffletcher Willm Shakespeare Richard Burbage Augustyne Phillippes Iohn heminges henrie Condell Willm Sly Robt Armyn Richard Cowly and the rest of their associates freely to use and exercise the art and faculty of playing comedies tragedies," etc. "for the recreation of our loving subjects as for our solace and pleasure. In the following March, these same members of the King's Company were granted four yards of red cloth each in preparation for his Majesty's progess through the City of London. "William Shakespeare" headed the list. For reasons we shall come to, the identity of the Shakespeare in the two cases remains problematical.

At some time during 1604, our subject was lodging with the family of Christopher Mountjoy, a French Huguenot maker of women's headdresses, in Cripplegate Ward. This we know because a deposition was taken of "William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon" in connection with a suit brought by Mountjoy's sonin-law, Stephen Belott, charging that Mountjoy had broken promises with respect to his daughter's dowry. The deposition is signed "Willn Shakp," the first of the six signatures ascribed to the famous Stratfordian known to exist. Willn Shakp's inability to recall circumstances crucial to the case suggests to E. K. Chambers that he was perhaps then, at the age of forty-eight, "of failing memory."⁴⁵

In July 1604, "Willielmus Shexpere" brought a legal action to collect a debt in the amount of £1 15s 10d from an apothecary of Stratford, Philip Rogers, for malt with which he had supplied the debtor beginning in the preceding March.⁴⁶

In May 1605, Augustine Phillipps made a will, in which after a bequest to "the hired men of the Company which I am of," he named seven of his "fellows," the first being "William Shakespeare," to receive 20-30 shillings in gold. In standard usage, the term meant fellow shareholder. Shakspere could have been meant, or another.

In July 1605, "William Shakespear" purchased for £440 half the corn and hay tithes of three hamlets in Stratford parish—Old Stratford, Welcombe, and Bishopton.⁴⁸ (Following abolition of the monasteries under Henry VIII, the tithes formerly paid by the tenants on the vast monastery lands were made over to civil authorities and were leased out for collection.) Shakspere agreed to pay £5 a year to a creditor of the former leaser of the tithes and £17 to the Stratford Corporation. In 1611, his interest in the tithes was valued at £60 annually.

In June 1607, there appeared in the marriage register of Stratford the entry: "John Hall gentleman & Susanna Shaxpere."⁴⁹ Hall, a physician whose case-book was to be translated from the Latin and published in 1657 by the surgeon James Cooke, brought the Shaksperes their first recorded intellectual distinction.

In August 1608, according to testimony given in 1619 by John Heminge and Henry Condell (referred to above), Blackfriars Theatre was leased by seven men, among them the two Burbages, John Heminge, William "Shake-. speare," and Henry Condell.⁵⁰ In testimony given in 1635 (also referred to above), Cuthbert Burbage speaks of having "purchased the lease remaining from Evans with our money, and placed men Players, which were Heminge, Condall, Shakspeare, &c."⁵¹

Between December 1608 and June 1609, William "Shackspeare" was proceeding against John Addenbrooke, whom he had had arrested, to collect £6 that Addenbrooke owed him, plus £1, 5s costs.⁵² After having a fellow townsman stand surety for him, Addenbrooke left Stratford and Shakspere "avenged himself," as the orthodox biographer Sir Sidney Lee put it, by proceeding against the unfortunate surety.⁵³

In 1610, William "Shakespere" was involved in a further legal action with respect to New Place, evidently seeking additional assurance of title and possibly buying an additional twenty acres.⁵⁴

In 1611(?), "William Shackspeare, of Stratford uppon Avon" and two other leaseholders of the tithes submitted a bill of complaint in the Court of Chancery in Stratford seeking relief from having to make good the nonpayment of rents by fellow leaseholders. There are two documents, the second sworn to in February 1611.⁵⁵

In September 1611, seventy-one citizens of Stratford were listed as contributing to a fund for "prosecuting the bill in parliament for the better repair of the highways." In the margin is added "Mr William Shackspere."⁵⁶

In January 1613, John Combe of Stratford drew up a will in which he gave "to Mr William Shackspere five pounds."⁵⁷ Combe was evidently a money-lender who at one time held the Stratford Corporation's plate in pawn.

(In March 1613, the Earl of Rutland's steward paid "to Mr. Shakspeare in gold about my Lord's impreso, xliiij⁵" [44 shillings].⁵⁸ Because the same entry records payment of an equal amount to Richard Burbage "for painting and making it," Stratfordians consider the reference to be to their man. It is not clear, however, what a well-to-do businessman, even if he was also a famous dramatist, would be doing "about" a painted shield to be used in the tilt. Burbage, who was again paid three years later "for my Lord's Shield" [£14, 18s] was a skilled painter. Charlotte C. Stopes suggests, reasonably, that the payment was to John Shakespeare, maker of horses' bits for the King.⁵⁹)

On 10 March 1613, "William Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon . . . gentleman" bought a house in Blackfriars near Blackfriars Theatre (both once part of a large Dominican priory) for £140, obviously as an investment, since he never occupied it. The next day he mortgaged the property back to its previous owner for £60. The device barred inheritance of any part of the property by his wife, who would otherwise have been entitled to her dower right of a third of its value. The deed for the property is signed "William Shakspe," the indenture "W^m Shakspe." Neither of the cosigners of the two documents, William Johnson and John Jackson, had any difficulty signing his surname in full.⁶⁰

In 1614, the account of the Chamberlains of Stratford listed: "Item for one quart of sack and one quart of claret wine given to a preacher at new place. xx^d."⁶¹

Beginning in the fall of 1614, certain landowners, including William Combe (son of John Combe the money-lender), attempted to enclose for their own benefit the common lands of Welcombe belonging to the Stratford Corporation. Opposition from the Corporation and local citizens was intense. Shakspeare or Shackespeare, as he is called in documents bearing on the case, was involved both as owner of 106 acres in the area and as part owner with Thomas Greene of the tithes from neighboring lands. Thomas Greene, the Town Clerk, wrote in his diary for November 17 that "Shakspeare . . . told me that they assured him they meant to inclose no further than to gospel bush" and quoted from further observations of his on the intentions of the enclosers. This quotation, together with a memorandum of Greene's of "Shakspeares telling J Greene that J Greene was not able to bear the enclosing of Welcombe" is all that Shakspere ever said that has come down to us.⁶² Shakspere joined with Greene in obtaining a deed from Combe indemnifying both against any injury they might suffer from the enclosure.⁶³ For the rest, the orthodox biographers today characterize Shakspere's part in the complicated and long-drawn-out proceedings as peripheral. Unfortunately, the Town Council's correspondence with Shakspere, like so much else of possible incompatibility with the role in which he has been cast, has disappeared. Sir Sidney Lee, whose practice was to give Shakspere the benefit of every doubt, declares that "having thus secured himself against all possible loss, Shakespeare threw his influence into Combe's scale."⁶⁴ Later commentators are at pains to show how this was not so; but at best Shakspere was neutral in the dispute, and evidently he remained on good terms with the Combes.

In May 1615, "William Shakespere" is named in a suit aimed at clearing up the record of ownership of Blackfriars properties.⁶⁵

On 10 February, 1616, we quote again from Professor J. Isaacs in The Listener, this time basing his statements on new "startling information,"

Shakespeare finally got his thirty-one-year-old daughter, Judith, off his hands, married to a rather shifty person, Thomas Quiney. .. . He was twenty-six. The marriage took place within the period of prohibition when a special licence was required. They were married without a licence. The Bishop of Worcester summoned them to appear before the Consistory Court, they didn't turn up, and they were excommunicated. In January 1616 Shakespeare drafted his will, on March 25 he made a new one, crossing out his son-in-law's name. What caused Shakespeare to lose confidence in Thomas Quiney? The mystery is now solved. On March 25, 1616, Thomas Quiney is called before the ecclesiastical court and presented for incontinence with a certain Margaret Wheeler. He appeared and confessed that he had had carnal intercourse with the said Wheeler, and was sentenced to appear three Sundays in a penitential sheet in Stratford Church. But even more startling is an entry in the Stratford Burial Registers a month after the marriage, and ten days before Shakespeare altered his will. On March 15, 1616, the burial entry reads, "Margaret Wheeler and her child."⁶⁶

On 25 March 1616, "W mj Shackspeare" made his will, evidently a revision of one done in January. A bequest to his "son in L" is crossed out (see above) and evidence of displeasure with Judith seems to be indicated. The instrument, three pages long and most revealing, is minutely detailed in its bequests and in its planning for various contingencies of inheritance. Clearly the testator was looking forward to a dynasty through the line of Susanna and her husband, John Hall. Monetary provision is made for Judith, to be increased if she resigns her right in the testator's Rowington copyhold, but for the rest, all real property goes to Susanna—the freehold and dwelling, with appurtenances, called the New Place, "wherein I now dwell," the freeholds and dwellings, with appurtenances, in Henley Street, and "all my barns stablers Orchards gardens lands tenements & hereditaments" situated in the towns or grounds of Stratford-on-Avon, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe, together with the freehold and dwelling in Blackfriars. After bequeathing his broad, silver gilt bowl to Judith, he leaves "all the rest of my goods chattels Leases plate Jewels and household stuffs whatsoever . . . to my Son in Law John Hall gent & my daughter Susanna his wife." He gives 26 shillings 8 pence to four friends, two of them to buy themselves rings, and 20 shillings to his godson.⁶⁷ Following this comes an interlineation by which also 26 shillings 8 pence each for the purchase of rings are given "to my fellows John Hemynge Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell."⁶⁸ Evidently it had come to the testator as an afterthought (supposing that the thought was his) that, after all, the closest associates of his life were—were they not?—in the theatre!

Stratfordians are sensitive about the will on several counts. One is the famous interlineation near the end just before Judith comes in for the silver gilt bowl, "Item I give unto my wife my second best bed with the furniture."⁶⁹ The lone and slighting reference to his helpmeet and mother of his children has, Professor Gerald Eades Bentley of Princeton complains, "given rise to many romantic or lurid tales."⁷⁰ Chambers declares that "A good deal of sheer nonsense has been written about this." Stratfordians argue, with Chambers, that "Mrs. Shakespeare would have been entitled by common law to her dower of a life interest in one-third of any of the testator's heritable estates on which dower had not, as in the case of the Blackfriars property, been legally barred; and to residence in the principal mansion house."⁷¹ It is unkind of Sir Edmund to recall how Shakspere exerted himself to bar his wife's dower rights in the Blackfriars house. In any case a man well disposed towards his wife would surely not have made a point of bequeathing every scrap of real property over her head to the children, even her home itself, in which she would now be a mere tenant, for whom a place was required by law; it would have been as easy to give her lifetime possession of that at least. Far from being singled out to receive some object of special value, Anne was not even permitted to dispose of her husband's clothes; they, too, were willed away. Further, as Marchette Chute writes, "Most of the wills of this period are personal and affectionate"—and she cites as examples those of actors with whom Shakspere is associated—but "Shakespeare was one member of the company whose will does not show a flicker of personal feeling."⁷²

No mention appears in the will of shares in the Globe and in Blackfriars. Chambers thinks these would have been comprehended in "leases." But shares that he estimates would have brought in about £200 a year—enough today to meet the mortgage payments on a very expensive house—would, one supposes, hardly be dealt with so casually.⁷³ (Under the will, Judith received only £150 plus the yearly interest on another £150.) And, as Chambers concedes, the shares never turn up in the records of Shakspere's heirs. One wonders if the William Shakespeare who held shares in the two theatres was the Stratfordian after all.

Louis P. Bénézet writes:

The wills of Heminge, who died in 1630, aged 75, and of Condell, who was deceased in 1627, in literary style and clearness are so far above the rambling, unpunctuated scrawl that is today worshipped as the final literary composition of the world's greatest author-genius as to suggest that they belonged to a monde at least two strata above him. Heminge speaks of his books, specifies that five pounds shall be spent in purchasing volumes for the education of his grandchild, and writes again and again of his income from the Globe and Blackfriars playhouses and its disposal. Condell wills to his son his yearly dividend from the "Blackfriars" and the "Bankside."⁷⁴

No reference appears in Shakspere's will to books or manuscripts. The books, we are told, would have been lumped under "goods .. . & household stuff." Goods and household stuff—the beloved library on which the impoverished villager would have soared to the highest literary pinnacle! Ben Jonson was liberal in his gift of books. Had Shakspere no companions of shared interests to whom he might have willed some jointly treasured volumes, as he willed his sword to Thomas Combe, his wearing apparel to his sister Joan? "It does seem odd to us nowadays that objects of such affection as some of Shakespeare's books must have been to their owner were not specified but left to go in with the rest of his personal belongings," says Ivor Brown.⁷⁵ Very odd indeed. T. W. Baldwin, whose two-tome study of Shakspere's education is considered the ultimate on the subject, writes, "It is easy enough to find books once owned by Ben Jonson. Had Shakspere [as he calls both author and Stratfordian] purchased books as ardently as he did certain other forms of real property, we should certainly have more trace of his activities in that way." As it is, "we have no absolutely conclusive external proof, so far as I know, that he ever owned a book of any kind."⁷⁶

What about the manuscripts of his plays, which he had never shown any interest in having printed? They were "the property of the [theatrical] company," Gerald E. Bentley of Princeton tells us.⁷⁷ Even if this statement were warranted—and we shall see in due course why it is not—the manuscript copies the writer might be assumed to have had would be left out of account. Professor Bentley will allow him only "early drafts or 'foul papers,"' and these, he asserts, would have been embraced in—yes—those "goods . . . & household stuff."⁷⁸ As for why these and other papers a literary man would accumulate, or any books we may believe to have been his, have never turned up, neither he nor any other orthodox academician has anything to say. Did the alleged dramatist own no copies of his own works?

We are talking, let us recall, not of some harassed scribe living hand-to-mouth in a succession of London lodgings, but of a very substantial property owner dwelling during the last years of his life in one of the finest houses in the community. He is survived for seven years by his wife (the burial register for 8 August 1623 recording simply, "Mrs. Shakspeare"), and by the time she dies, publication of the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays has ensured the author's immortality. Shakspere's daughters live until 1649 and 1662 respectively, his granddaughter Elizabeth Hall, who marries John (later Sir John) Bernard, until 1670. By then, so popular and respected had Shakespeare's works remained, so clearly destined to live, that a third folio had been called for. Few persons in England had cause for as great pride of descent as Elizabeth Hall, who still retained New Place, as did her husband until his death in 1674. Circumstances could hardly have been more favorable to the preservation of the great writer's papers, if Shakspere were he. Yet Stratford has never produced a scrap of them, or anything in its illustrious son's hand but the three signatures on the will. Marchette Chute quotes from charming, affectionate letters written by the actor Edward Alleyn, Shakspere's contemporary, to his wife while on tour, but if Shakspere, who lived away from his family for far longer times (if what we are told of his London years is true) ever wrote a letter to his wife or daughters—or to anyone else, for that matter—we have nothing to show it.⁷⁹ Papers bearing the signatures or marks of the men with whom Shakspere did business in Stratford have survived, but none to which his hand was affixed. It is another case of important documentary evidence disappearing, and one wonders if the vanished papers showed the reputed literary genius signing them with a mark. The quality of the signatures on the will makes this possibility seem likely. These also have been an embarrassment to orthodoxy. Inasmuch as the signatory was only a month from his death when the will was executed, it is sometimes proposed that the palpable difficulty he had inscribing his name was attributable to a fatal malady, I believe by some of the very pleaders who would have us take seriously, as applying to their man, the Reverend Dr. Ward's report of a half-century later that he had died of a drinking bout with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton. But the allegation of debilitating affliction, somewhat gainsaid by the testator's solemn avowal to being "in perfect health," runs squarely afoul of the last sentence in the will, which includes the declaration "I have herunto put my Seal," with "Seal" crossed out and "hand" substituted. Are we to believe that the solicitor, being unaccustomed to having Mr. Shakspere sign papers, prepares the will for his seal, then, upon discovering him to be too ill to control his hand, elects to have him sign the three pages of the will after all? Or that Mr. Shakspere himself decides to reverse his practice now that signing has become almost impossible?

The signatures on the will are so damning that McManaway prudently omits them from the photograph of the subject's signatures in the Folger Booklet The Authorship of Shakespeare, though there is ample room for all six. .. .

The burial registers of Trinity Church in Stratford for 1616 contain this record:

Aprili 25 Will. Shakspere gent.

After Shakspere's son-in-law died, the burial register read:

Johannes Hall, medicus peritissimus.

Professor Bentley writes, "The parish clerk's unusual designation of 'medicus peritissimus,' most skillful physician, suggests a great respect for Dr. Hall in the town."⁸⁰ He does not say what he believes the designation of Will. Shakspere simply as "gent" suggests.

Notes

Note: Sources of quotations are indicated by the author's name and, where called for, the name of the publication in which they appear. The author's name alone is cited where only one of his publications is listed in the Bibliography or where one is predominantly drawn upon and is listed first in the Bibliography. For example, "Chambers, II, 147," refers to Sir E. K. Chambers's William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, volume II. A quotation from another of his listed books will be cited as, say, "Chambers, Sir Henry Lee, 95." . . .

¹ McManaway on Stonley's purchase of Venus and Adonis: Jean M. White, "Twelve Pence for the Bard," Washington Post, 23 April 1973, B 1.

² "We know more .. . a longer life": Rowse, Shakespeare the Man, 1.

³ For a playwright. . . well documented": McManaway, 1.

⁴ Whitman on the blankness of Shakspere's record: Traubel, 136.

⁵ "The last time .. . a young apprentice": Isaacs, 685.

⁶ "One hundredth .. . a respectable biography": Trevor-Roper, MS of an article cited in Bibliography.

⁷ Shakespeare Birthplace Trust as not carrying on a trade: Arthur Osman, London, Times, 2 October 1964.

⁸ The Stratford frauds: B. Levin, London, Daily Mail, 18 February and 30 November 1966.

⁹ The innate snobbishness of doubts about Shakspere: Watts, "Two on the Aisle," New York Post, undated clipping, April 1964.

¹⁰ Ardens as superior folk: Rowse, Shakespeare the Man, 7.

¹¹ Ardens as lordly people: I. Brown, Shakespeare, Time edition, 23.

¹² Sources of the statements in paragraph on John Shakspere are cited in Chambers, I, 11-15.

¹³ Shakspere's marriage license and bond of sureties: Chambers, II, 41; G. E. Bentley, 29-31.

¹⁴ Anne Hathaway's marriage to Wilson: Hunter, I, 48.

¹⁵ Christening of Susanna: Chambers, II, 1; G. E. Bentley, 32.

¹⁶ Christening of Hamnet and Judith: Chambers, II, 3; G. E. Bentley, 33.

¹⁷ Proceedings to recover property of Mary Arden: Chambers II, 35.

¹⁸ Shakespeare's "happy and copious industry": Webster, Epistle to The White Devil, 1612; Chambers, II, 218.

¹⁹ Shakespeare's having perhaps traveled in Europe: I. Brown, Shakespeare in His Time, 15.

²⁰ Postulations of Shakspere's activities during "lost years": Bénézet, "The Stratford Defendant Compromised by His Own Advocates," Shake. Fellow. Quar., V, no. 3, July 1944; VI, no. 1, January, no. 2, April, and no. 3, July 1945.

²¹ Quotations from Arthur Gray and Frances Yates: Schoenbaum, 727, 736.

²² "Who shall say . . . may have brought him": Chambers, I, 26.

²³ Shakspere's taking the road to London: Rowse, Shakespeare the Man, 38.

²⁴ Payment to Kemp, Shakespeare, and Burbage: G. E. Bentley, 99-100.

²⁵ Burial of Hamnet: Chambers, II, 4; G. E. Bentley, 33.

²⁶ Paragraph on Shakspere's coat-of-arms: Information from Chambers, II, 24; Scott-Giles, 29-31.

²⁷ Sureties of peace sought against "Shakspare": G. E. Bentley, 74.

²⁸ Shakspere's purchase of New Place: Chambers, II, 103; G. E. Bentley, 36.

²⁹ Failure to collect tax owed by "Shackspere": Chambers, II, 87; G. E. Bentley, 71-72.

³⁰ Sturley's letter about "Shaksper" and the tithes: Chambers, II, 103; G. E. Bentley, 37-38.

³¹ "Shackespere" as holding x quarters of grain: Chambers, II, 99-101; G. E. Bentley (who omits any mention of resentment of hoarders), 37.

32 "Shakespeare" again a tax-delinquent: Chambers, II, 87; G. E. Bentley, 72-73.

³³ Quiney's letter to "Shackespere," his father's letter about "Mr. Sha.," and Sturley's letter to Quiney: Chambers, II, 101-103; G. E. Bentley, 38-39.

³⁴ Payment to "Shaxpere" for load of stone: Chambers, II, 96; omitted by Bentley.

³⁵ "Shakespere" as a shareholder in the Globe: Chambers, II, 52-57; G. E. Bentley, 102-104.

³⁶ "Shakspere" among "deserving men" in building the Globe: Chambers, II, 65-69; G. E. Bentley, 106-107.

³⁷ "Shakespeare" as one of occupants of house in St. Saviour: G. E. Bentley, 105.

³⁸ "Shakespeare" as tax-delinquent moved to Sussex: Chambers, II, 88; G. E. Bentley, 73.

³⁹ Tax owed by "Shakspeare" referred to Bishop of Worcester for collection: Ibid.

⁴⁰ "Shakespeare" buys land from the Combes: Chambers, II, 107; G. E. Bentley, 42-43.

⁴¹ "Shakespeare" in legal action described as "generosum": Chambers, II, 96; G. E. Bentley, 42, neglects to point out that this record of 1602 is the first in which the Stratfordian is described as "gentleman."

⁴² Lease on barn east of New Place: Chambers, II, 96.

⁴³ "Shakespeare" listed among actors licensed to perform: Chambers, II, 72; G. E. Bentley, 93-94.

⁴⁴ "Shakespeare" listed among members of King's Company to receive cloth: Chambers, II, 73; G. E. Bentley, 111-112.

⁴⁵ Deposition by "Shakespeare" in the Belott-Mountjoy case: Chambers, II, 94; G. E. Bentley, 76-80.

⁴⁶ "Shexpere" seeks to collect debt for malt from Rogers: Chambers, II, 113; G. E. Bentley, 47.

⁴⁷ Phillipps names "Shakespeare" among beneficiaries in his will: Chambers, II, 73; G. E. Bentley, 114-115.

⁴⁸ "Shakespear's" purchase of tithes: Chambers, II, 119-120; G. E. Bentley, 43-44.

⁴⁹ Marriage of "Susanna Shaxpere" and John Hall: Chambers, II, 4; G. E. Bentley, 32, 46.

⁵⁰ "Shakespeare" among seven men leasing Blackfriars: Chambers, II, 58; G. E. Bentley, 115-116.

⁵¹ "Shakspeare" named among "men players" in connection with Blackfriars: Chambers, II, 65-66; G. E. Bentley, 116.

⁵² "Shackspeare" proceeds against debtor: Chambers, II, 114; G. E. Bentley, 47.

⁵³ "Shackspeare" proceeds against the debtor's surety: Chambers, II, 115. Chambers leaves this unsavory record in Latin and Bentley omits it altogether. See Greenwood, 185.

⁵⁴ "Shakespeare" in legal action about New Place: Chambers, II, 109; G. E. Bentley, 47-48.

⁵⁵ "Shackspeare" and the non-payment of rents by fellow leaseholders: Chambers, II, 114.

⁵⁶ "Shackspere" among those contributing to highway fund: Chambers, II, 152-153; G. E. Bentley, 48-49.

⁵⁷ "Shackspere" named in Combe's will: Chambers, II, 127; G. E. Bentley, 49.

⁵⁸ A "Mr. Shakspeare" paid for work on the Earl of Rutland's impreso: Chambers, II, 153; G. E. Bentley, 82.

⁵⁹ Suggestion that a John Shakespeare meant: Stopes, Burbage and Shakespeare's Stage, 109.

⁶⁰ "Shakespeare" buys a house in Blackfriars and mortgages it: Chambers, II, 157; G. E. Bentley, 83-86.

⁶¹ Shakspere duns town for claret given to preacher: Chambers, II, 153. G. E. Bentley passes over the record.

⁶² The Welcombe enclosure and Shakspere's remark to Greene: Chambers, II, 141-144; G. E. Bentley, 51-56. Bentley is an apologist of enclosure as representing modernization.

⁶³ Shakspere's indemnifying himself against injury: Chambers, II, 148.

⁶⁴ Shakspere sides with Combe: S. Lee, Life of William Shakespeare, 279-280.

⁶⁵ Suit to clear up ownership of Blackfriars properties: G. E. Bentley, 86.

⁶⁶ Judith's marriage to Quiney and Quiney's betrayal of Margaret Wheeler: Isaacs, 685-686.

⁶⁷ Shakspere's will: Chambers, II, 169-174; G. E. Bentley, 57-61.

⁶⁸ Bequest to the three actors: Chambers, II, 172; G. E. Bentley, 62.

⁶⁹ The second-best bed: Chambers, II, 173; G. E. Bentley, 63.

⁷⁰ Lurid tales consequent to the slighting bequest: G. E. Bentley, 63.

⁷¹ Mrs. Shakspere's dower rights: Chambers, II, 176-177; G. E. Bentley, 63.

⁷² Lack of personal feeling in Shakspere's will: Chute, 320.

⁷³ Lack of mention of theatrical shares in will: Chambers, II, 179.

⁷⁴ Bénézet on contrasting wills of Heminge and Condell: Shake. Fellow. Newsletter, IV, no. 6, October 1943, p. 78.

⁷⁵ Inclusion of books with personal belongings: I. Brown, Shakespeare, Collins, 320.

⁷⁶ Lack of evidence of Shakspere's ever owning a book: Baldwin, II, 666.

⁷⁷ Manuscripts as property of the company: G. E. Bentley, 62.

⁷⁸ Inclusion of "early drafts" with "household stuff: G. E. Bentley, ibid.

⁷⁹ Alleyn's affectionate letters to wife: Chute, 106.

⁸⁰ Respect shown Dr. Hall: G. E. Bentley, 68.

Bibliography

Baldwin, T. W. Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greek. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1944.

Bentley, Gerald Eades. Shakespeare: A Biographical Handbook. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961.

Brown, Ivor. Shakespeare. London: Collins, 1949.

——. Shakespeare. Time Reading Program edition, 1962.

Chambers, Sir Edmund K. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.

Chute, Marchette. Shakespeare of London. New York: Dutton, 1949.

Greenwood, Sir [G.] George. The Shakespeare Problem Restated. London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1908.

Hunter, Joseph. New Illustrations of the Life, Studies and Writing of Shakespeare. London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1845.

Isaacs, J. "Shakespeare after 400 Years." The Listener and BBC-Television News. London, 10 November 1966.

Lee, Sir Sidney. A Life of William Shakespeare. New York: Macmillan, 1909.

McManaway, James G. The Authorship of Shakespeare. Folger Booklet. Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1962.

Rowse, Alfred L. Shakespeare the Man. London: Macmillan, 1973.

Schoenbaum, Samuel. Shakespeare's Lives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Scott, Giles O. W. Shakespeare's Heraldry. London: Dent, 1950.

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Trevor-Roper, Hugh R., The Lord Dacre of Glanton. "What's in a Name?" Paris: Réalités (English-language ed.), November 1962.