by Park Honan
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Records Office, Stratford-upon-
Avon
PRO Public Record Office, London
SR Stationers' Register
SS, DL. S Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare: A Compact Documen-
tary Life ( Oxford, rev. edn., 1987)
Worcs. Worcester County Record Office
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I. Birth
1. John Leland, Itinerary, ed. Lucy Toulmin Smith ( 1907-10), ii. 48.
2. The parish and manor had been extensive. In the 13th century the name Old Stratford distinguished the chief manor from its various hamlets such as Shottery, Bishopton, Welcombe, Dodwell, and Drayton. In later times, 'Old Stratford'came to be applied to an area around the church including the street known as Old Town. A document purporting to be a grant by Berhtwulf, King of the Mercians, gives the monastery of Ufera Stretford to the diocesan church of Worcester in AD 84.5 In 872 Waerferth, Bishop of Worcester, leased land belonging to the monastery partly in order to pay tribute money to the Vikings; W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum ( 1885-93), nos. 450, 533, 534. The last bishop to possess the manor transferred it in 154 to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick.
3. For Stratford and county history -- our knowledge of both improves almost year by year -- I have found of special use M∧A (and other council reports at the Birthplace Records Office), Robert Bearman Stratford-upon-Avon: A History of its Streets and Buildings (Nelson, Lancs., 1988) and Records ( Stratford-upon-Avon, 1994), the papers of the Dugdale and Stratford-upon-Avon societies, and, among older works, Levi Fox The Borough Town of Stratford-upon-Avon ( Stratford-uponAvon, 1953), Sidney Lee Stratford-on-Avon: From the Earliest Times to the Death of William Shakespeare ( 1902), and Philip Styles entry on the borough in The Victoria History of the County of Warwick ( 1904-69), iii. 221-82.
4. Foxe's book, in its first ( 1563), expanded second ( 1570), or in a later edition, was often chained in Elizabethan churches. But it was costly and the law did not require every parish to have it.
5. For the will of "John bretchegyrdle Clercke Vicar of Stretford" ( 20 June 1565) and inventory, see E. I. Fripp, Shakespeare Studies Biographical and Literary ( Oxford, 1930), 23-31.
6. Eliz. I, 19 Sept. 1560, and her comments in 1561.
7. See the pulpit evidence cited in R. L. Greaves, Society and Religion in Elizabethan England ( Minneapolis, 1981).
8. And in other spellings in MS SBTRO, BRU 2/1.
9. MȧA i. p. xlix.
10. It is probable that she died in 1559 or 1560, when the town's register was badly kept.
11. J. H. Bloom, Shakespeares Church ( Stratford-upon-Avon, 1902); and Clifford Davidson , The Guild Chapel Wall Paintings at Stratford-upon-Avon ( New York, 1988). The old verses are faintly visible; I modernize the couplet's spelling.
12. MS SBTRO, "Burialls", 14. Mar. 1564.
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2. Mother of the Child
1. M∧A i. 103, 5 Oct. 1560.
2. [bid. iv. 96.
3. Some Trussells left Billesley; one Thomas Trussell (among several of the same name) did well at the law at Stratford and once drew up an inventory with John Shakespeare ( 21 Aug. 1592).
4. Citing his 'youngste dowghter Marye' first among his children, in his will of 24 Nov. 1556, Robert Arden leaves her the land at 'Asbyes' in Wilmcote and the crop growingon it. She inherited even more, such as valuable reversionary shares in Snitterfield property.
5. MS SBTRO, ER 30/1-2. She wrote neatly on the deed, but scrawled her mark on the much narrower parchment bond. (The deed measures 57.5 X 30 cm., and the bond 37X13-5 Cm.)
6. EKC, Facts, i. 12-13.
7. Ibid. ii. 1-2.
8. ME 19-22.
9. Hilda Hulme, "Shakespeare of Stratford", Review of English Studies, 10 ( 1959), 24.,
10. M∧A iii. 25.
11. Leeds Barroll summarizes what has been learned, in an era of microbiology, about forms and symptoms of bubonic and pneumonic plague in modern epidemics, in Politics, Plague, and Shakespeare's Theater ( Ithaca, NY, 1991), ch. 3.
12. This follows the 'old tale' ( Much Ado, 1. i. 203-4) in Halliwell-Phillipps's version, but variants exist.
13. Cf. Book of Days, ed. R. Chambers ( 2 vols., 1864), i. 332.
14. Phillip Stubbes describes the ideal of courtesy within a household in A perfect Pathway to Felicitie ( 1592), and I have found especially useful on Tudor notions of decorum Lacey Baldwin Smith "Style is the Mail", in J. F. Andrews (ed.), Shakespeare, 3 vols. ( New York, 1985), i. 201-14.
15. EKC, Facts, ii. 20.
16. MS SBTRO, ER 30/1,
17. Eleven painted cloths are numbered, but only one is assessed (at 26s. 8d.), at his inventory on 9 Dec. 1556.
18. Richard Mulcaster, The First Part of the Elementarie which Entreateth. . . of our English tung ( 1582; facsimile, Menston, UK, 1970), 25-6.
3. John Shakespeare's Fortunes
1. 'Thaccompt of Willm tylor & Willm Smythe Chamburlens made by John Shakspeyr ye, xvt day of february in ye eight yere of. . . lady elyzabeth' ( 1566; MS at Stratford). This is transcribed in M∧A i. 148-52, but p. 149 n. 1 is not quite clear as to
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the length of his service. The dates matter, if only because his ability to read sums has been questioned. Council elections were held within a few days of St Michael's feast (29 Sept.). Elected as one of the two chamberlains for two years on 3 Oct. 1561, John Shakespeare also served as a director of accounts that were passed in halls on 21 Mar. 1565 (for 1563-4.) and on 15 Feb. 1566 (for 1564-5). His senior colleague, John Taylor, supervised the report for 1561-2; even so, John Shakespeare did some chamberlaincy work for at least three years and four months. The council's last recorded debt to him, of 7s. 3d., is marked on 12 Jan. 1568 as paid. The official copies of these reports are in the hand of the town clerk, Richard Symons.
2. MS SBTRO, 3 Sept. 1567.
3. M∧A ii. 14 and 41.
4. Timon, iv. i.
5. ME 8.
6. See Nora Leyland and J. E. Troughton, Glovemaking in West Oxfordshire: The Craft and its History (Woodstock, 1974.); I have also found helpful, on the craft in the Midlands, D. C. Lyes, The Leather Glove Industry of Worcester ( Worcester, 1973), and, for glovers turned wool-dealers, Peter J. Bowden, The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England ( 1962).
7. Cf. W. G. Hoskins, "Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480-1619", Agricultural History Review, 12 ( 1964.), 28-46.
8. Act Books for Stratford parish, which are in the Kent County Archives Office; they cover parts of 1590-1616 and 1622-4.. See E. R. C. Brinkworth, Shakespeare and the Bawdy Court ( 1972), 121, 128, 134-6, 166.
9. ME 39.
10. M∧A ii. p. xxi.
11. Itinerary[c. 1540].
12. Since Lucy was well known to the borough council, it is of interest that the 'players' sponsored at Charlecote were performing in WS's youth. The Coventry wardens record in 1584 a payment of 10s. to 'Sir Thomas Lucies players' ( Coventry Record Office).
13. David Thomas summarizes the evidence, now at the PRO, in Shakespeare in the Public Records ( 1985).
14. Musshem is called 'yoman' and John Shakespeare 'whyttawer' at Easter term 1573 (Common Pleas); M∧A ii. 70.
15. Evidently, eleven big-fleeced Midlands sheep yielded a tod (28 lb.) of wool, and Peter Temple, a mid-16th-century sheep farmer at Burton Dassett, paid 21s. for a tod at Stratford. As Roger Pringle points out in ' John Shakespeare: Principal Craft of Glovemaking' (typescript), the Old Shepherd's son seems to reflect these figures in mythical Bohemia: 'Let me see. Every'leven wether tods [every eleven rams yield a tod], every tod yields pound and odd shilling [or 21s.].' ( Winter's Tale, IV. iii. 31-2.) Moreover, the shepherds in Act IV appear to be authentic, whereas Greene's pastoral people do not.
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16 SS, DL38
17 The 'Seconde Certificat' of recusancy (c. Sept. 1592) rewords the wardens' first text (c. Mar. 1592); F. W. Brownlow, "John Shakespeare's Recusancy: New Light on
an Old Document'", Shakespeare Quarterl, 40 ( 1989), 186-91. M & A iv. 149, 161.
18 Bowden, The Wool Trade, 135-6.
19 M&A iii. 24.
20 Ibid. 170.
21 EKC, Facts, ii. 247.
4. To Grammar School
1 Levi Fox, The Early History of King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers 29 ( Oxford, 1984), 16-17; EKC, Facts, ii. 264. In formal local records, the King's New School appears for example as 'the free scole' ( 1565), 'the free schole' ( 1624), and 'the Kynges ffree Schoole' ( 1614).
2 MS SBTRO, BRU 7/1. Written in ink (now badly faded) on the flap of the rent roll of 10 Jan. 1561.
3 Bequeathed in 1565.
4 Leicester's school statutes, approved in 1574, are transcribed in M. C. Cross, The Free Grammar School of Leicester ( Leicester, 1953); see also J. W. Binns, Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and Jacobean England: The Latin Writings of the Age ( Leeds, 1990), pp. xvii and 2-4.
5 William Lily, A Shorte Introduction of Grammar ( 1567).
6 "Of Scholemasters'", in A Booke of certaine Canons ( 1571), sig. D1v.
7 Sententiae Pueriles . . . per Leonardum Culman ( 1639), 1-9; C. G. Smith, Shakespeare's Proverb Lore ( Cambridge, Mass., 1968), and G. V. Monitto, Shakespeare and Culmann Sententiae Pucriles', Notes and Queries, 230 ( 1985), 30-1.
8 Loeb edn.
9 On Shakespeare's schooling I have found of special use T. W. Baldwin basic William Shakspere's Small Latine & Lesse Greeke, 2 vols. ( Urbana, Ill., 1944) and four works which, in different ways, expand on Baldwin's research: V. K. Whitaker, Shakespeare's Use of Learning ( San Marino, Calif., 1953); Emrys Jones, The Origins of Shakespeare ( Oxford, 1977); A. F. Kinney, Humanist Poetics ( Amherst, Mass., 1986); and Binns, Intellectual Culture.
10 This is to judge from biblical allusions in the plays, a topic illuminated by Richmond Noble's Shakespeare's Biblical Knowledge and Use of the Book of Common Prayer as Evemplified in the Plays of the First Folio ( 1935), as well as by Naseeb Shaheen Biblical References in Shakespeare's Tragedies ( Newark, Del., 1987) and Biblical References in Shakespeare's History Plays ( Newark, Del., 1989).
11 Alexander Nowell, A Catechisme, or first Instruction and Learning of Christian Religion, trans. T. Norton ( 1571), sigs. C4, E3r-v.
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12 A Perambulation of Kent Conteining the description, Hystorie, and Customes of that Shyre ( 1576), sig. ¶v ( Thomas Wotton's epistle).
13 Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scot-lande, and Ireland, 3 vols. ( 1577), i. 243.
14 'Of Scholemasters', sig. D1v.
15 If 'Rec. of mr hunt towardes the repayringe of the schole wyndowes vijs xjd' refers to a 'barring out' (in which the master was locked out and glass was broken) then boys in Hunt's class or their parents would have had to pay the 7s. 11d. (borough account of 17 Feb. 1574, for 1572-3). That sum compares with 5s. 6d. and 10s. collected from Leicester schoolboys for window repairs somewhat later: Cross, Free Grammar School of Leicester, 25.
16 ME 56.
17 MS SBTRO, BRU 2/1.
18 M& A iii. 150, and iv. 18; Baldwin, Small Latine & Lesse Greeke, i. 471.
19 The xv bookes . . . entytuled Metamorphosis, translated . . . by Arthur Golding ( 1567), 'The Eight Booke', sig. 05.
20 See Baldwin, Small Latine & Lesse Greeke, ii. 183-4.
21 Camden refers to the year 1574, with respect to this passage in Latin, in his Annales Rerum Anglicarum ( 1616), sig. R7r.
22 W. Raleigh on attire, in Shakespeare's England, ed. C. T. Onions ( Oxford, 1917), i. 21.
23 Phillip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses ( 1583), ed. F. J. Furnivall ( London, 1877-9), 147.
24 At least in Essex, where poaching was incessant; F. G. Emmison, Elizabethan Life: Disorder ( Chelmsford, 1970), 232-43.
25 3 Henry VI, iii. i. 6.
26 EKC, Facts, ii. 264.
27 ME108.
28 'Of Scholemasters's, sig. DIv.
5. Opportunity and Need
1 MS Bodleian, Arch. F. c. 37.
2 Lost Years, 28-9.
3 MS Lancs., WCW 1581. The will was proved 12 Sept. 1581.
4 The possibility that 'William Shakeshafte' was the poet has been discussed often, notably in Oliver Baker In Shakespeare's Warwickshire and the Unknown Years ( 1937), E. K. Chambers Shakespearean Gleanings ( Oxford, 1944), and Robert Stevenson's Shakespeare's Religious Frontier ( The Hague, 1958), and, with a strong negative answer, by Douglas Hamer in Review of English Studies, 21 ( 1970), 41-8. In 1985 Honigmann, in Lost Years, replied to Hamer with fresh research, and in part
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focused on Stratford's series of Lancashire-bred schoolmasters in WS's time, in particular on John Cottom in relation to Lancashire recusants such as the Hoghtons. But families of 'Shakeshafte' lived in the north (as the Preston Burgess Rolls show), and the identity, with Shakespeare, so far, has not been capable of proof or disproof. Richard Wilson adds a lively essay to the debate (in TLS, 19 Dec. 1997, pp. 11-13), but settles nothing.
5 C Broadbent comments on topographical images in "Shakespeare and Shakeshaft'", Notes and Queries, 201 ( 1956), 154-7.
6 M&A iii. 39.
7 See E. I. Fripp, Shakespeare's Haunts Near Stratford ( Oxford, 1929), 30-1; John Pace , in fact, figures as a creditor (not a 'witness') in Richard Hathaway's will.
8 This occurred on 20 Nov. 1589.
9 J. K. Walton, Lancashire: A Social History, 1558-1939 ( Manchester, 1987), 13; J. J. Bagley , The Earls of Derby 1485-1985 ( 1985), 64.
10 6 Dec. 1571; Ferdinando, Lord Strange was then about 11 or 12; he was born in London in 1559 or 1560.
11 Francis Peck, Desiderata Curiosa ( 1779), 116 ( 15 Mar, 1582), 141-2 ( 16 Dec. 1583), and 147 ( 21 Mar. 1584).
12 Cf. Stevenson, Shakespeares Religious Frontier, 75.
13 Joseph Gillow, The Haydock Papers ( 1888), 3-5; Peter Aughton, North Meols and Southport. A History ( Preston, 1989), 42-3.
14 MS Lancs., DDHe 11. 93 and DDHC 28. 44. The signatures are in witness to a feoffment of 1591 and to a conveyance of 1608, both with Robert Hesketh, Esq. as recipient.
15 Inventory of 16 Nov. 1620.
16 Cf. Broadbent, "Shakespeare and Shakeshaft'", 155-7.
17 Lost Years, 34.
18 Sir Thomas Hesketh (d. 1588), his son and heir Robert, and Ferdinando, Lord Strange appear in household books of the fourth Earl of Derby: 'Sondaye Sr Tho. Hesketh & his sone'; 'on Wednesday my L. Strandge' ( 1587); 'Sondaie Mr Robte Hesketh at dinner and many others'; 'Thursdaie my L. & Lady Strange went to dinner at Rufford' (early in 1589). These social relationships had long antecedents; though often in London, the player-patron Ferdinando was intimate with the Heskeths; The Stanley Papers, pt. 11, The Derby Household Books, ed. F. R. Raines, Chetham Society xxxi ( Manchester, 1853), 47, 75-6.
19 Bagley, The Earls of Derby, 74; Lost Years, 34-5.
6. Love and Early Marriage
1 W. G. Hoskins, "Harvest Fluctuations and English Economic History, 1480-1619" Agricultural History. Review, 12 ( 1964), 28-46.
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2 M&A iii. 129.
3 Richard Hathaway's will was made on 1 Sept. 1581; he was buried on the 7th. A pun on 'Hathaway' in Sonnet 14.5 was first suggested by Andrew Gurr, in Shakespeare's First Poem: Sonnet 145', Essays in Criticism, 21 ( 1971), 221-6.
4 M&A ii. p. xiii; ME68.
5 M&A iv. 149 and 162.
6 Transcribed and edited by C. J. Sisson, in "Shakespeare's Friends: Hathaways and Burmans of Shottery'", Shakespeare Surpey, 12 ( 1959), 95-106, esp. 96-7; ME78 emends 'Bordon' to 'Baldon Hill' ('Balgandum'in a Saxon charter). Still useful on the Shottery milieu is E. I. Fripp "Neighbours of the Hathaways'", in his Shakespeare's Haunts Near Stratford ( Oxford, 1929), in connection with the borough Minutes and Accounts.
7 This is so in the probate copy of his will.
8 EKC, Facts, ii. 42, 25 Mar. 1601.
9 Whittington, in 1601, leaves 20s. to 'John Pace, of Shottre, the elder, with wh
om I sojorne', and this seems to be the 'John Pace of Shottery' who had wed Annys Debdale on 20 Oct. 1578.
10 MS SBTRO, "Baptismes'"; ME69.
11 ME 31.
12 EKC, Facts, ii. 44.
13 Legally boys could marry at 14, and girls at 12. Parents could arrange for espousals, but we have no sign that WS's marriage was so arranged.