Chapter 1 : Early Life

Birth

William Shakespeare is also spelled as Shakspere, Shaksper and Shake-spears as spellings in Elizabethan times were liable to change. What is more, the Englishperson of the time bothered little about maintaining biographical information which had nothing to do with either the church or the State. It could also have been possible that his countrymen did not realise his capability and eminence as a leading playwright or maybe they looked down upon mere dramatists.

Though recognised as one of literature’s greatest influences, very little is known about William Shakespeare. Whatever is known has been culled from registrar’s records, court records, wills, marriage certificate and his tombstone. The register of Holy Trinity, the parish church in Stratford, records that William Shakespeare’s baptism was done on Wednesday, April 26th, 1564. Since the infants at that time were baptised three days after their birth, it is generally accepted that Shakespeare was born on April 23rd, which happened to be St. George’s Day.

Let us look at the picture of the world into which William was born. Queen Elizabeth I had been queen for six years. She was thirty-one-years old with no interest in war. Under “Good Queen Bess”, as Elizabeth was popularly known, England grew more and more prosperous.

Artists in Europe, especially in Italy, were creating some of the most beautiful paintings and sculptures the world had ever seen. The printing press, invented in the 1400s, had made many more books available. Earlier the books had to be copied by hand. More and more people had taken to learning to read and write. In 1514, Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, first wrote that the sun was the centre of the universe. Prior to that people believed that the Earth was the centre around which the sun and other planets circled. It was also the time of discovery of new places and ideas. In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer, set out to sail all around the world. The trip took him three years.

Parents and Siblings

William Shakespeare was born in Stratford, which had only eight or nine streets and fewer than 1,500 inhabitants. It was a market town, where the local farmers could bring their crops, animals and other goods to sell. William was the third child of John and Mary Shakespeare, who had eight children in all. The first two were daughters, Joan (1558-1635) and Margaret (1562-1563), before William. Joan married a local hatter named Hart and lived to be seventy-seven. Gilbert (1566-1612) was born after William who became a successful haberdasher. Then came another daughter, also named Joan (1569-1646), who was followed by Anne (1571-1579), Richard (1574-1613) and Edmund (1580-1607). Edmund became an actor in London but how successful he was is not known as he died at the age of twenty-seven. He is buried in Southwark Cathedral, the only one of the eight siblings not to rest at Holy Trinity in Stratford.

William’s eldest living sister, Joan, outlived her famous playwright brother. Thus out of his seven siblings, only one sister and four of his brothers survived to reach adulthood.

The Shakespeare family enjoyed considerable local prominence. William’s father, John, is often said to have been illiterate. Illiteracy was the usual condition in the 16th-century England, because according to one estimate, at least 70 per cent of men and 90 per cent of women of the period couldn’t even pronounce their names. Literary or not, John was a popular and respected fellow. In 1556, he took up the first of the many municipal positions when he was elected borough-ale taster. Two years later he became a constable—a position that, as now, argued for some physical strength and courage. The next year he became an “affeeror”, one who assessed fines for matters not handled by existing statutes. By 1560, he was one of the fourteen burgesses which constituted the town council. In 1565, John became an alderman and three years later, he was elected bailiff (mayor), the highest civic honour that a Stratford resident could achieve. His authority was symbolised by an ornamental staff called a mace. This was carried before him in processions by an officer, called a sergeant-at-mace. This was in 1568 by when he had become a local businessman, who dabbled in tanning, leather work and whittawering (a process in which white or soft leather is tanned to make items like purses and gloves). He also dealt in grain and was often described as a glover by trade.

John was eligible for a coat of arms and applied to the College of Heralds for one, but his worsening financial status prevented him from obtaining it. It is said that later he held several other civic posts but in 1576, something severely unpleasant seems to have taken place in his business life, possibly participation in black market of wool. When his son, William, was twelve-years old, he abruptly withdrew from public affairs and stopped attending meetings.

John Shakespeare successfully renewed his application for the coat of arms in 1596, most probably at the instigation of William himself, as he was more prosperous at the time. However, as an actor, William was not eligible and the application still relied on his father’s qualification. It wasn’t enough to be well-off in Shakespeare’s England. To move up in social class and to be thought of as gentlemen, men wanted to acquire a coat of arms. It was a shield-shaped design that bore the Shakespeare family motto that read: “non sanz droit” in Latin, meaning, “not without right”. It showed a certain defensiveness and insecurity on the part of its author, most likely William. It is thus no surprise that the theme of social status and restoration runs deep through the plots of many of Shakespeare’s plays and seems to mock his own longing.
A coat of arms was usually granted based on family status and noble deeds but sometimes it was bought at a high price. Once John Shakespeare was granted a coat of arms, he could pass it down to William and future generations of the Shakespeares.

John was listed among the nine Stratford residents who were thought to have missed church services “for fear of processe for debtte”. He even lost his position as an alderman. His colleagues repeatedly reduced or excused levies that he owed to them. They also kept his name on the roll for another ten years in the hope that he would make a recovery. He never did. When he died in 1601, he left William only a little real estate. 

William’s mother was Mary Arden, a daughter of the gentry. She married John Shakespeare in 1557 and set up house at Henley Street, some 100 miles northwest of London. She came from a minor branch of a prominent family. Her father farmed and the family was comfortable, but probably no more than that. Apparently she came from a wealthier family than her husband. Being the youngest daughter in her parental family, she inherited much of her father’s landowning and farming estate after his death. Some evidence points to possible Roman Catholic sympathies on both sides of the family. It is said that the Ardens were Roman Catholics but Shakespeare publicly belonged to the Church of England, the State church.

Boyhood and Schooling

Stratford-upon-Avon, in Warwickshire, is called the heart of Eng-land and was well farmed and heavily wooded. The town itself was not only prosperous and progressive, but proud of its King Edward’s New School, a free grammar school. The king, honoured in the school’s name, had nothing to do with the original founding of the school which had Roman Catholic origins.

Some say that at about the age of four, William would have gone to a “petty school” to learn to read. It was a small private school for boys and girls. At six, girls left the petty school to be taught at home by their mothers or, if they were rich, by private tutors. At the same age, if their parents could afford not to send them out to work, sons of middle-class men, like John Shakespeare, were given free education at the local grammar school.

The school was chartered in 1553 and was situated about a quarter mile away from his home. Young William went to it with other boys of his social class, though when or for how long is not known. He may have been a pupil of the school from his seventh to thirteenth years.

Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the curriculum was dictated by law throughout England. It is quite possible the school provided intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics. Knowledge of Latin was necessary for a career in medicine, law or the church. Besides, Latin was considered a sign of education. William probably began learning it when he was seven. Church services were held in Latin; laws were written in Latin. As William grew older, he and the other boys were not allowed to speak in English at school and if they did, they were spanked. William learned not only Latin grammar, he knew famous speeches in Latin by heart and he could write in Latin. Students spent about nine hours daily at school, attending classes the year round except for their brief holiday period.

It is assumed that young William learned to read from a hornbook—a board with the letters of the alphabet and the Lord’s Prayer printed on it. He also learned many other prayers. He may have read outstanding ancient Roman authors as Cicero, Ovid, Plautus, Seneca, Terence and Virgil. One of William Shakespeare’s earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors, bears similarity to Plautus’s The Two Menaechmuses which could well have been staged at school.

Four of the six schoolmasters at the school during William’s boyhood were graduates of Oxford University and were Catholic sympathisers. Simon Hunt, who was likely to have been one of William’s teachers, later became a Jesuit.

By modern standards, the Stratford grammar school must have been demanding, dull and strict. There is no evidence available to show that there could have been a teacher who could have stirred his imagination and made routine studies interesting.

On the basis of the plays Shakespeare has written, it has been assumed that he must have learned early about the woods and fields, about birds, insects and small animals. The fields and woods around Stratford provided opportunities to hunt and trap small game. River Avon running through the town had enough fish to catch. William’s writings reveal accurate descriptions of flowers, trees, wild birds and animals, clouds and the changing seasons, which undoubtedly are based upon his childhood experiences and love of the countryside. In Macbeth, William Shakespeare describes night falling with the words: “Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood.” In Romeo and Juliet, Capulet, hearing of his daughter’s death, says, “Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower in all the fields.” He uses images of crops, plants and wild flowers to bring his writing to life. In Hamlet, the mad Ophelia makes “fantastic garlands” of “crow flowers, nettles, daisies and long purples”. The wicked queen in Cymbeline sends her ladies to gather violets, cowslips and primroses, in order to make poison.

The 16th century was a time of bitter religious divisions. All English people were Christian, but there were two rival versions of the faith—Catholicism and Protestantism. In 1534, King Henry VIII broke with the Catholic Church and declared himself head of the Anglican or English Church. Under his son Edward VI (1547-53), the Anglican Church became Protestant. There was a swing back to Catholicism under Queen Mary (1553-58) but Queen Elizabeth restored Protestantism (1588-1603), fining anyone who refused to worship in an Anglican Church. The Protestants were split into Anglicans and Puritans. The latter wanted to strip away all features of Christian worship that did not appear in the Bible. They thought that the Anglican Church should get rid of bishops, vestments, or church clothes and all elaborate ceremonies, which they called “Popish practices”. Many Puritans rejected the use of the crucifix, a cross depicting the crucifixion of Christ, as a Christian symbol. They disapproved of jewelled crosses.
In 1587, Queen Elizabeth had her cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, executed. Mary, a Catholic, was kept a prisoner in England since 1568, when she fled from Scotland after being defeated in battle by the Scottish Protestants. She was beheaded after becoming the focus of a series of plots by English Catholics. They had planned to murder Elizabeth and replace her with Mary. Such plots were encouraged by the Pope, the head of the Catholic Church, who had declared in 1570 that Elizabeth was no longer the rightful queen.

William knew something about trade and outdoor sports too. He must have gathered enough about hunting, hawking, fishing, dance, music and other arts and sports. In Henry VI, Part Three, Queen Margaret compares the enemies pursuing her to two greyhounds: “Edward and Richard, like a brace of greyhounds having the fearful fleeing hare in sight… are at our back.” A Lord in The Taming of the Shrew asks the question, “Dost thou love hawking?” William Shakespeare certainly did as he mentions it more often in his plays than he did any other sport. When the heroine of Romeo and Juliet wants to call back her departing lover, she cries, “O! For a falconer’s voice, to lure this tassel-gentle back again.” A “tassel-gentle” was a name for a male peregrine falcon. William Shakes-peare’s Scottish king, Macbeth, compares himself to a baited bear: “They have tied me to the stake; I cannot fly, but bear-like I must stay and fight the course.”

Shakespeare also seemed to know about alchemy, astrology, folklore, medicine and law. This information could have either been collected by reading books or through daily observation of the world around him. There is no evidence that his education extended beyond the grammar school. This lack of evidence makes one presume that William, whose works are today studied usually at universities, never attended one himself.

Despite the long hours spent at school, William’s boyhood was probably not confined to studies alone. As a market centre, Stratford was a lively town. In addition, holidays provided pageants and shows, including plays about the legendary outlaw Robin Hood and his merry men. By 1569, travelling companies of professional actors were free going in Stratford, which held two large fairs every year, attracting visitors from other countries too. Moreover, the nearby town of Coventry was famous for staging mystery plays based on stories from the Bible. Stages were set up on wagons. A different scene from the mystery play was performed on each wagon as they rolled through. People came to Coventry from all over to watch. Perhaps, young William travelled there to see them.

William’s father John liked actors and as high bailiff, he gave the professional actors permission to perform in town. He paid them 9 shillings from the Stratford treasury to put on a show. That was a lot of money then. The plays were performed in town halls, inns and squares mainly. There were no theatres. William must have watched the actors build stages in the town square and hang thick rolls of fabric for backdrops before pulling out fancy costumes from their trunks for the play to begin. William must have been spellbound at sword fights, battles, love scenes, tears and laughter. It must have been pure magic for a youngster like him!

Moreover, traders came to London from all over the world to buy and sell goods—gold from Africa, silks and spices from Venice, tobacco from America, hand-painted wallpaper from China. Moreover, as William ate supper in crowded inns, he mingled with people from faraway places who had different news to give. Lectures were a popular pastime. William could hear explorers and scientists describe their travels and discoveries. And as he shared glasses of ale with soldiers in noisy taverns, he enjoyed tales of England’s recent victory over Spain. However, there are some historians who counter that for young William, Stratford could not have been an exciting place to live in.

Physical Appearance

Although it is difficult to tell from the portraits that survive, William Shakespeare might have been considered quite handsome in his days. His most famous likeness—the one that appears on souvenir bags and on book covers, is known as the “Droeshout engraving”. The face seems somehow a little too somber and stiff for a clever man like Shakespeare to be.

We have no written description of William Shakespeare pen-ned in his own lifetime The first textual portrait saying, “He was a handsome, well-shap’t man: very good company, and of very readie and pleasant smooth witt” was written sixty-four years after his death by a man, John Aubrey, who was born ten years after Shakespeare’s death.

Marriage and Children

At the age of eighteen, he married the twenty-six-year old Anne Hathaway, who bore him three children. William Shakespeare married the pregnant Anne Hathaway on November 28th, 1582. Anne was the daughter of a yeoman farmer, Richard Hathaway, who lived in Shottery, a village about a mile from Stratford. Richard Hathaway died in September 1581, bequeathing Anne a sum of 6 pounds, 13 shillings and 4 pence to be paid “at the day of her marriage”. From the difference in their ages, it was rumoured that William and Anne were unhappy together. Some historians say that this was a “shotgun wedding” forced on a reluctant William by the Hathaway family. There is, however, no reliable evidence for this inference.

Here it may be pointed out that the age difference between William and Anne was typical of couples of that time. Women, such as the orphaned Anne, often stayed at home to care for younger siblings and married in the late twenties, often to younger eligible men. Furthermore a “handfast” marriage and pregnancy were frequent precursors to legal marriages at the time. Certainly William was bound to marry her having made her pregnant, but there is no reason to assume that that had not always been his intention. It is likely the bride and groom’s families had known one another and forged the alliance.

The marriage is supported by documents from the Episcopal Register at Worcester, which records in Latin the issuing of a wedding licence to “Wm Shaxpere” and one “Anne Whatley” of Temple Grafton. A day afterwards, Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, relatives of Hathaway from Stratford, signed a surety of 40 pounds as a financial guarantee for the wedding of “Willam Shagspere and Anne Hathawey”. Frank Harris, in The Man Shakespeare (1909), argues that these documents were evidence that Shakespeare was involved with two women. He had chosen to marry Whatley, but when this became known, he was immediately forced by Hathaway’s family to marry their pregnant relative. According to the Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, most modern scholars take the view that the name Whatley was “almost certainly the result of clerical error.”

The playwright’s marriage to Anne Hathaway may have been officiated, amongst other candidates, by John Frith in the town of Temple Grafton, a few miles from Stratford. Some surmise that Shakespeare wed in Temple Grafton rather than the Protestant Church in Stratford so that the wedding could be performed as a Catholic sacrament. The couple may have arranged the marriage in haste since the Worcester Chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once, instead of the usual three times or probably Anne’s pregnancy was the reason for this.

Six months after her marriage, Anne gave birth to a daughter Susanna who was baptised on May 26th, 1583. On February 2nd, 1585, twins, a son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed and were baptised. But Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of eleven and was buried on August 11th, 1596. Hamnet and Judith were named after William’s close friends, Judith and Hamnet Sadter. William’s family was unusually small in an era when many children were given birth to ensure that parents were cared for in later years, what with the high mortality rates of children and the life expectancy in the 1500s.

Following the birth of the twins, there are few historical traces of William. Indeed, the period from 1585 (when his three children were born) to 1592, when due to his twenty years of life apart from Anne and brief mention of her in his will, it is assumed that this was not a happy marriage. Anne never left Stratford, living there her entire life.