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Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare

Page 46

by Stephen Greenblatt


  CHAPTER 9: LAUGHER AT THE SCAFFOLD

  In Shakespeare and the Jews (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), James Shapiro argues that there was a significant, if clandestine, Jewish community in London in Shakespeare’s time. Though this claim is debatable, Shapiro provides ample evidence for a widespread Elizabethan and Jacobean interest in Jews. See also David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), and Laura H. Yungblut, Strangers Settled Here Amongst Us: Policies, Perceptions, and the Presence of Aliens in Elizabethan England (London: Routledge, 1996).

  In “‘There Is a World Elsewhere’: William Shakespeare, Businessman,” in Images of Shakespeare: Proceedings of the Third Congress of the International Shakespeare Association, 1986, ed. Werner Habich, D. J. Palmer, and Roger Pringle (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988), 40–46, E. A. J. Honigmann analyzes Shakespeare’s own involvement in moneylending and other mercantile enterprises, as does William Ingram, “The Economics of Playing,” in A Companion to Shakespeare, ed. David Scott Kastan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999) 313–27.

  On the single surviving manuscript play that may contain scenes in Shakespeare’s handwriting, see Scott McMillin, The Elizabethan Theatre and “The Book of Sir Thomas More” (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), and T. H. Howard-Hill, ed., Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More: Essays on the Play and Its Shakespearian Interest (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). The dating of Sir Thomas More and of Shakespeare’s own participation in the project is uncertain. The script may have been drafted by Anthony Munday and others in 1592–93 or 1595, at the time of the agitation against “strangers”; Shakespeare could have been involved from the beginning or could, as seems more likely, have made his additions as late as 1603 or 1604 during a further attempt to have it approved for performance.

  Direct evidence of Shakespeare’s personal involvement with the community of “strangers” living in London dates from the early seventeenth century. In 1604, and probably for some time before, he was living in rented rooms on the corner of Mugwell and Silver Streets. His neighbors in the tenement were Christopher Mountjoy, a French Protestant, and his wife, Marie. Mountjoy had fled to England in the wake of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in 1572 and had prospered as a manufacturer of ladies’ wigs and other headgear. In 1612 Shakespeare was deposed as a witness in a lawsuit between Mountjoy and his son-in-law Stephen Belott. The latter claimed that his father-in-law had pledged to give him sixty pounds on marrying and to leave him a legacy of two hundred pounds. Both parties to the suit agreed that in 1604 Shakespeare had helped, at the parents’ request, to persuade the young man to marry Mountjoy’s daughter and therefore knew the terms that had to be agreed upon. In his testimony Shakespeare spoke well both of the Mountjoys and of Belott, whom he had known, he said, “for the space of ten years or thereabouts,” but he declared under oath that he did not remember the precise financial terms of the marriage settlement. The documents from the lawsuit were unearthed in 1909; there is a good account of them in Samuel Schoenbaum’s Records and Images and in Park Honan’s Shakespeare: A Life.

  CHAPTER 10: SPEAKING WITH THE DEAD

  For the development of the Shakespearean soliloquy, see Wolfgang Clemen, Shakespeare’s Soliloquies, trans. C. S. Stokes (London: Methuen, 1987). On Shakespeare’s working and reworking of Hamlet and other plays, see John Jones, Shakespeare at Work (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995). On the impact on Shakespeare of the death of Hamnet, see the sensitive psychoanalytic account by Richard P. Wheeler, “Death in the Family: The Loss of a Son and the Rise of Shakespearean Comedy,” in Shakespeare Quarterly 51 (2000): 127–53. In Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), I have written at length on the consequences for Shakespeare of the change in the relationship between the living and the dead. See also Roland M. Frye, The Renaissance Hamlet: Issues and Responses in 1600 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). On the larger historical, cultural, and theological issues, see Theo Brown, The Fate of the Dead: A Study of Folk-Eschatology in the West Country after the Reformation (Ipswich, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1979); Clare Gittings, Death, Burial, and the Individual in Early Modern England (London: Croom Helm, 1984); Julian Litten, The English Way of Death: The Common Funeral since 1450 (London: R. Hale, 1991); Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death; and Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars.

  CHAPTER 11: BEWITCHING THE KING

  Alvin Kernan’s Shakespeare, the King’s Playwright: Theater in the Stuart Court, 1603–1613 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) discusses Shakespeare’s relation to James.

  On the relation of Macbeth to the Gunpowder Plot, see Henry Paul, The Royal Play of Macbeth (New York: Macmillan, 1950), and Garry Wills, Witches and Jesuits: Shakesepare’s Macbeth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). On the Gowrie conspiracy, see Louis Barbé, The Tragedy of Gowrie House (London: Alexander Gardner, 1887). Kramer and Sprenger’s Malleus maleficarum is available in an English translation and edition (1928; repr., New York: Dover, 1971) by Montague Summers, who also edited Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft (1930; repr., New York: Dover, 1972). Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971), and Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), are particularly helpful on the place of the occult in the mentality of the period. In “Shakespeare Bewitched,” in New Historical Literary Study: Essays on Reproducing Texts, Representing History, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox and Larry J. Reynolds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 108–35, I discuss at greater length Shakespeare’s relation to witch hunting.

  CHAPTER 12: THE TRIUMPH OF THE EVERYDAY

  Bernard Beckerman, Shakespeare at the Globe (New York: Macmillan, 1962), and Irwin Smith, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars Playhouse: Its History and Its Design (New York: New York Universitiy Press, 1964), are both extremely useful introductions to Shakespeare’s principal theaters in the latter part of his career. On staging, Alan Dessen and Leslie Thomson’s A Dictionary of Stage Directions in English Drama, 1580–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) is illuminating, as is Dessen’s Elizabethan Stage Conventions and Modern Interpreters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). The account of the burning of the Globe, from a letter, dated July 2, 1613, written by Sir Henry Wotton to his nephew Sir Edmund Bacon, is cited in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, 4:419–20.

  Index

  The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.

  Aaron the Moor (char.), 34

  ABC with the Cathechism, The, 25

  actors, 166

  Greene’s disdain for, 204–6, 213

  Lancashire troupes of, 104–5

  low social standing of, 74–75, 79, 204, 205–6

  memory and improvisation among, 163, 295

  “rolls” and, 294–95

  skills and talents of, 73–74

  theatrical apprenticeships and, 73

  touring, 28–33, 40, 184, 188, 289, 365–66

  as vagabonds, 77–78, 88

  see also specific actors and companies

  Acts and Monuments (Foxe), 91, 159

  Adams, Joseph Quincy, 146

  Addenbrooke, John, 363

  Adonis (char.), 126, 241–45

  Adriana (char.), 130

  adultery:

  in court life, 234

  in sonnets, 143, 255

  Aesop, 213

  Agincourt, 223, 298, 309

  Aglionby, Edward, 42–43

  Aguecheek, Sir Andrew (char.), 70

  Alba (Burton et al.), 332

  Albany (char.), 127

  Albion’s England, 311

  Alchemist, The (Jonson), 167

  alderman

  John Shakespeare as, 60–61

  jurisdiction of, 60, 165, 182

  Aldgate, 164, 165

&n
bsp; Allen, Giles, 291–92

  Allen, William, Cardinal, 110

  Alleyn, Edward, 190–91, 198, 213, 273

  All is True, see Henry VIII

  All’s Well That Ends Well (Shakespeare), 123, 136, 221, 361

  America, 73

  Amleth (char.), 303, 305

  Angelo (char.), 33, 110, 136

  Anne, Lady (char.), 126

  Anne of Denmark, Queen of England, 224, 331–32, 346–47, 349

  Annesley, Cordell, 357

  Annesley, Sir Brian, 357–58

  Antigone (Sophocles), 200, 208

  Antigonus (char.), 84

  Antonio (Merchant of Venice, The) (char.), 82, 257, 271, 279, 281, 283, 285

  Antonio (Tempest, The) (char.), 375

  Antony (char.), 68, 143, 146–47, 248, 370

  Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare), 170, 248, 296, 369, 370, 389

  drunkenness in, 67–68

  in First Folio, 18

  Shakespeare’s greatest lovers in, 143, 146–47

  sources of, 193, 295

  archery, as public entertainment, 176

  Arden, Edward, 59, 157–58, 160, 173

  Arden, Mary, see Shakespeare, Mary

  Arden, Mary (wife of Edward), 160

  Arden, Robert, 58–59, 80, 101

  Arden family, 58–59, 75, 85–86, 101, 119, 158, 160

  Aretino, 208

  Ariel (char.), 373

  Arion, 46–47, 48–49, 53

  Ariosto, 342

  Aristotle, 297

  Armado (char.), 123

  Armin, Robert, 293

  Arraignment of Paris, The (Peele), 202

  Asbies (farm), 59, 61

  Ascham, Roger, 24

  Aspinall, Alexander, 55

  Astrophil and Stella (Sidney), 129, 233, 235

  As You Like It (Shakespeare), 40, 56–57, 176, 269, 290, 296

  pastoral themes in, 55, 64, 120, 298

  skepticism about love in, 134, 135

  Aubrey, John, 54–55, 70, 88, 143, 209, 330

  Aufidius (char.), 126

  Austen, Jane, 133–34

  Austin Friars, 165

  Autolycus (char.), 371–72

  Auvergne, Countess of (char.), 197

  Bacon, Francis, 207, 254, 274

  bailiffs, jurisdiction of, 60

  Baldwin, William, 195

  Bale, John, 90

  Ball, Cutting, 205, 216

  Ball, Em, 205, 216

  bandore, 73–74

  Bankside, 180, 200, 206, 236, 292

  banns, 120–21

  Banquo, 332–33, 335, 336, 339, 348

  Banquo (char.), 138, 335–36, 349, 350

  Barabas (char.), 258, 265–67, 270, 278, 282

  Bardolph (char.), 223

  Barnstaple, 365

  Bartholomew Fair (Jonson), 167, 182

  Barton-on-the-Heath, 61, 68–69

  Bassanio (char.), 135, 271, 280

  bass viol, 73–74

  bastardy, 34, 123, 358, 384

  Bath and Wells, bishops of, 164

  Battle of Alcazar, The (Peele), 202, 215

  bear baiting, 367

  Elizabethan enjoyment of, 177–78

  plays sharing venues with, 181–82

  as public entertainment, 177–78, 179

  suspension of, 237

  Beatrice (char.), 134, 135, 180, 259, 290, 298

  Bedford, Earl of, 114

  Beeston, Christopher, 88

  Beeston, William, 88

  beggars, classification of, 88

  Belch, Sir Toby (char.), 33, 40–41, 67, 70, 83

  Belleforest, François de, 295–96, 304

  Belott, Stephen, 405

  Benedick (char.), 134, 135, 180, 259, 260, 290, 298

  benefit of clergy, 171

  Bertram (char.), 123

  Bertram, Count (char.), 136

  Bible, 90–91

  Bishops’, 35

  Hebrew, 260–61

  New Testament, 91

  Birmingham, 59

  Bishopsgate, 165, 183, 362

  Bishopton, 383

  Black Friars, 165, 366

  Blackfriars, 194, 293

  Shakespeare’s house in, 379, 386

  Blackfriars Theater, 366–68, 379

  blank verse, 202

  in Tamburlaine, 191

  Blunt, Sir Walter (char.), 222

  Boleyn, Anne (char.), 56

  Bolingbroke (Henry IV) (char.), 33, 217, 300

  Book of Common Prayer, 61, 90, 91, 100, 193

  Book of Martyrs (Foxe), 91, 159

  Borromeo, Carlo, Cardinal, 101

  Bottom, Nick (char.), 34–36, 51–52

  bowls, imagery of 176

  box office, 185

  Brabanzio (char.), 127

  Bradley, William, 201

  Brayne, John, 182–85, 291

  Brazil, 201

  Bretchgirdle, John, 18, 93, 95, 102

  bridales, 41

  Bridewell prison, public punishments at, 178

  British Library, 263

  Brooke, Ralph, 80

  Bruno, Giordano, 193

  Brutus (char.), 128, 301–2, 303, 308

  Bryan, George, 105, 273

  bubonic plague, 153, 256

  Elizabethan beliefs about, 175

  in London, 163, 272

  in Stratford, 93

  theater closings and, 236–37, 241, 272, 366

  Bull, Eleanor, 267–68

  bull baiting, 181–82

  Elizabethan enjoyment of, 177–78

  plays sharing venues with, 181–82

  Burbage, James, 182–85, 291, 366–68

  Burbage, Richard, 185, 198, 210, 213, 273, 291–92, 366, 368, 386

  Burgess, Anthony, 125

  Burghley, William Cecil, Lord, 228–29, 236, 242, 273–75, 308

  Burton, Robert, 332

  Cade, Jack (char.), 41–42, 167–71, 173, 196

  Caesar, Julius (char.), 67–68, 147, 169, 302

  Caliban (char.), 373

  Calvin, John, 193

  Cambridge University, 26, 27, 64, 89, 96, 115, 228, 311, 342

  university wits at, 193, 202, 203, 206, 208, 219, 226, 257, 268

  Camden, William, 277, 280

  Campion, Edmund, 97, 101, 106–17, 118, 156, 388

  “Campion’s Brag,” 106–7, 115

  Canary Islands, 201

  Canterbury, 163, 176

  Canterbury, archbishop of, see Cranmer, Thomas

  Cardenio (Shakespeare), 370, 373

  Castle of Perseverance, The, 32

  Catesby, Sir William, 101

  Catherine (Henry V) (char.), 65–66

  Catholics, Catholicism, 59, 93–117

  alleged conspiracies of, 107, 160–61, 268, 274, 275, 336–37

  beliefs about death, 312–17

  Elizabeth seen as obstacle to restoration of, 92–93

  John Shakespeare and, 101–3, 113, 118, 160, 315–17, 318, 320–21

  Judaism and, 261

  and Mary Shakespeare, 100–102, 118–19, 160, 315–16

  persecution of, 100–102, 114–16, 157–62

  priests, 92, 99, 100, 107, 108

  priests hidden by, 103, 108, 157–58, 160

  Catholics, Catholicism (continued),

  Protestant destruction of rites and artifacts of, 89–90, 91

  rebellion incited among, 99–100

  religion tokens of, 100–101

  remaining, 89–90

  seen as taint, 25

  Shakespeare and, 89, 104, 108–9, 113–16, 149, 158, 161–62, 317, 318–21, 377, 387–88

  of Shakespeare’s schoolmaster, see Hunt, Simon; Jenkins, Thomas

  traditional festivals and, 37–38

  Cavendish, Thomas, 201–2

  Cecil, Robert, 273–75

  Celia (char.), 166

  Cesario (char.), see Viola (char.)

  Chapman, 233

  Charing Cross, 167

  Chark, William, 115

  Char
lecote, 60, 93, 150–51, 153, 159

  Charles, Prince, 333

  Chaucer, Geoffrey, 176

  Cheston, Joan, 344

  Chettle, Henry, 212, 214–15, 226, 262

  children, mortality rates of, 289

  Children of the Chapel Royal, 293, 367

  Chorus (Henry V) (char.), 309

  Christianity:

  in education, 26

  Jews and, 260–61

  witchcraft and, 345

  see also Catholics, Catholicism; Protestants, Protestantism

  Christmas, 39–40, 41

  Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, The (Holinshed), 169, 195, 335–36

  Church of England, 61–62, 100, 321

  Cinna, 169

  cittern, 73–74

  Clapham, John, 229, 230

  Claudio (char.), 135, 141, 180

  Claudius (char.), 34, 137, 215, 303, 305, 307, 310

  Cleopatra (char.), 143, 146–47, 170, 248, 369, 370, 389

  Clink, 362

  closet dramas, 11–12

  clothing, social restrictions on, 76

  Cobham, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord, 159, 229, 308

  Cobham, William Brook, Lord, 288, 308

  cockfighting, as public entertainment, 176, 369

  Coke, Sir Edward, 337

  Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 248

  College of Heralds, 75, 86

  Shakespeare family application to, 76–81

  Collins, Francis, 385

  Combe, Thomas, 386

  Combe, William, 76, 382–83

  comedy, 180, 290, 296, 298

  boundary between tragedy and, 34, 297

 

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