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| A portrait by Gerard Soest who died in 1588 believed by some to be Shakespeare as a young actor. | |
For those who have
complained that I have snubbed British poets and classic writers in favor of
Americans and moderns, today I give you the classic English writer of all time,
William Shakespeare himself. Are you happy now?
We are taking advantage
of the anniversary of the Bard's
death back home in Stratford-upon-Avon
on April 23 1616 at the age of almost exactly 52. I say almost exactly because his birthday is
lost, but we know he was Baptized on
April 26, 1584. Since baptisms in such
rural villages usually occurred within days of birth, lots of folk think he may
have been born on the 23rd as well which would make for a tidy story
indeed. To make matters even more
interesting this is also the Feast of
St. George—a Greek dragon slayer
who morphed into a shining knight on horseback and became the Patron Saint of England. If Will had written a play about that, it
would have been perfect.
Amazingly little is
known about Shakespeare’s life. Which
means you will be spared another tedious blow-by-blow of his career. We do know he was born into a prosperous
provincial family. His father was a
successful glover, a career which in
the days when both men and women of the better classes wore gauntlets or
dancing gloves year around was evidently was quite profitable. His mother’s family were landowning
farmers. They had a handsome, half
timbered home in the village and his father was an alderman.
Will was the third of
eight children and the oldest son.
Although no records confirm it, he was almost surely given an education
at Kings New School in the
village. Such Grammar Schools offered a rigorous course in Latin grammar and studied from classic Latin texts. While well short of what the son of a
nobleman or prosperous London merchant
might receive or the instruction at Oxford
or Cambridge, this still would
have been a better education than 80 % of the boys in England.
Any chances for further
education were squashed when he was 18 and had to enter a rushed marriage with
26 year old Anne Hathaway, who we
can assume looked nothing like her modern movie star namesake. We know it was rushed because the local Vicar
read only the first of the three required bans
and because six months later daughter Susana
was born. A couple of years later there
were twins, Hammet and Judith.
The children were born in February 1585 and their baptism is the last
record of Shakespeare’s life in the Village until he returned there in
retirement.
No one is clear on what
he did, or how he made a living. Some surmised
that he clerked for his father or tutored the children of the local gentry yet
no trace is left behind.
We do know he had a
roving eye. The evidence lies in his Sonnets which include ardent praises of
“his coy mistress” and raptures on the beauty of a black haired girl. Likely this made home life less than idyllic for
all concerned.
For whatever reason—an apocryphal
but
oft told tale has it that we was escaping a Sheriff’s warrant for poaching a deer on a local gentleman’s estate—sometime
between 1685 and 1592 Shakespeare decamped for London.
The latter years finds
reference to him as an already established writer dabbling in play writing. It seems an astonishing career choice with no
hint of it is his background. He was a
member and minority owner of a troop of actors known as The Lord Chamberlin’s Men.
Based largely on the success of Shakespeare’s early plays, mostly those
known as the Histories, the troop prospered enough that they were able to erect
the Globe Theater on the banks of
the Thames in 1699. With three tiers of box seats in circle under
a thatched roof and an open, uncovered pit surrounding a thrust stage for the
rabble, up to 3000 customers could view a production. In the winter months the company performed
more intimately at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre, converted from a part of a priory, in
1608.
After Elizabeth I died in 1603 theater loving James I gave
the company a Royal Patent and afterwards they were known at The King’s
Men.
With Shakespeare as their primary playwright the company thrived even
bettering companies featuring the work of established, university educated
writers like Christopher Marlowe, Robert Greene, and Thomas
Nash. Some of them, Greene in
particular did not take well to completion from a cloddish upstart.
Like Shakespeare, these men began as actors themselves. But as they met with success they retired
from the boards. Not Shakespeare. He evidently never stopped acting until he
retired from London altogether. In fact,
evidence suggests that he may always have considered himself to be, first and
foremost, an actor. What roles he played
is not clear except for surviving cast lists of a couple of play by the company
not written by him. He is thought to
have played the ghost of Hamlet’s father.
There is passing reference to him playing “kingly roles.”
In all, Shakespeare is thought to have written about 38 plays, the last
few probably in collaboration. They
included the Histories, comedies, tragedies, and the latter romances. A few of his plays were published in his life
time, but probably without his consent. These
were probably loosely transcribed from the audience as there are considerable
differences with the canonical versions.
An early form of video piracy, you might say.
From time to time plays, or fragments of plays, pop up that are suggested
to be the unknown work of the master.
Just as frequently his claim to this or that play is challenged. But by far the biggest game in the world of
Shakespeare scholarship is denying that he wrote the plays at all. Several candidates have been suggested and
new ones seem to pop up every few years.
Among the suspects have been Francis Bacon, Marlowe who would
have had to be so prolific that he could keep two theater companies provided
with fodder, and assorted noblemen up to and including members of the Royal
family.
I for one don’t buy any of it. It
is all rooted in the deep class bias of the English upper classes, who could
never admit that a commoner with a rude education could have the widest vocabulary
of any Englishman ever; an encyclopedic knowledge of classic literature, myth,
and folklore; a firm grasp on English history and the political sense to write
about it in ways that kept his head attached to his torso; plus an unparalleled
fluidity of style. They discount native
genius as impossible. But such great
genius, exploding from unexpected sources erupts from time to time in history
in all of the arts and sciences. I, for
one, prefer to think that the son of a glover could lay quill to parchment and
create say Macbeth.
The success of his plays and the troop made Shakespeare a moderately
wealthy man. He purchased property in
London and sent money back home to buy the second grandest house in Stratford, New
House. He ostentatiously generously
subscribed to the tithes of the local parish were wagging tongues had probably
once gossiped about his sexual offenses.
The original Globe burned down when cannon fired in a production of Henry VII in 1613 ignited the
thatched roof. Although the company
rebuilt the theater on the old foundations, the fire may have hastened
Shakespeare’s retirement. So might ill
health.
At any rate, he returned to Stratford and the perhaps not so loving arms
of his wife not long after. He died of
unknown causes in 1616 leaving the bulk of his estate to his daughter
Susanna. His wife, Anne, was
automatically under English law, entitled to a third of the estate, so it might
not have been quite as mean as it looked when the bard left her only “his
second best bed” in his will.
After his death two of his comrades in the King’s Men arranged for the
publication of the famous First Folio
of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623. It
contained all but two of the plays now commonly attributed to him. It also featured a cover woodcut of a balding
man with a sharp beard which, in the absence of any verifiable contemporary
image, is how we picture him today.
Of course Shakespeare is best remembered for his plays, which are
perpetually in production in theaters large and small around the world. But this is National Poetry Month so
today we salute his verse. Of course
there is plenty of memorable and highly quotable poetry in the plays
themselves. But most folks think of the Sonnets, 154 poems written over most
of his adult life. But he had earlier
published, with some success two long erotic poems, Venus
and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece while
London theaters were closed down during the plague years of 1593 and’94. Another long poem, The Lover’s Complaint was added as a kind of bonus to the first
edition of the Sonnets.
Today we pick from the Sonnets.
From
you have I been absent in the spring
Sonnet 98
From you have I been
absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him,
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odor and in hue,
Could make me any summer's story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew.
Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.
—William
Shakespeare
