Of course the production of the play had not gone unnoticed by the authorities. Augustine Phillips, who seems to have been equivalent to the business manager of the company, was ordered to appear before an examining committee of three chief justices. There he explained the circumstances, and the payment of 40 shillings. It should be remembered that, four years before, the actors and writers of The Isle of Dogs had been summarily imprisoned and perhaps even tortured for performing a “seditious” play. On this hypothetically more dangerous occasion, however, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were relieved of any fine or penalty. They were effectively “let off” with perhaps a reprimand.
Many theatrical historians have puzzled over this lenity. But if the Lord Chamberlain’s Men had indeed been threatened and cajoled by the plotters, the members of the committee may well have decided to exercise clemency. Tudor law is often regarded as inconsistent and draconian, but there was still a measure of fair play and common sense in its decisions. The players also had a reliable patron in the Lord Chamberlain, a loyal and trusted servant of the queen to whom he was also closely related. If they had been charged with treachery would not the shadow of suspicion, however unjustified, have fallen upon him also? That was unthinkable. Others have suggested that the good report of Francis Bacon, a friend of the players, saved the company. It is also evident that Elizabeth herself regarded the Lord Chamberlain’s Men with particular favour — especially, perhaps primarily, because of their Shakespearian repertoire. So, by the grace of God and Her Majesty, Shakespeare and his fellows avoided the prison or even the gallows. In fact, a week after Phillips’s interrogation, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men were once more playing before the queen. On the day after that performance, Essex was beheaded.
CHAPTER 70
Cut I Am in Their Bosomes
The affairs of Stratford also claimed Shakespeare’s attention. For a moment his wife, Anne, re-enters the historical record in a minor role. The will of a neighbouring husbandman, Thomas Whittington of Shottery, left 40 shillings to the poor of Stratford “that is in the hand of Anne Shaxspere, wyf unto Mr. Wyllyam Shaxpere, and is due debt unto me.” 1 It has been suggested that Anne Shakespeare had been forced to borrow money from Whittington, whom she had known since childhood, because her husband was not maintaining her in proper fashion. This is most unlikely. She was ensconced in New Place, one of the most valuable properties in the town, and it would have been a disgrace to the name and reputation of the whole Shakespeare family if she had not been given the means both for its upkeep and for her standing in the town. All the evidence suggests that Shakespeare, far from being a negligent or parsimonious husband, regularly sent relatively large sums of money to his family. What other way would there have been of maintaining appearances, one of the essential characteristics of a sixteenth-century gentleman? The will in fact means only that Anne Shakespeare owed Whittington 40 shillings in a technical sense; it is likely that he gave the sum to her for safe-keeping, confirming the impression of her as a reliable and trustworthy housekeeper.
There is one small episode of the period that also merits attention. At a slightly later date William Shakespeare sued a Stratford apothecary, Philip Rogers, for non-payment upon a consignment of malt. He had sold 20 bushels, at a price of 38 shillings, and then lent Rogers a further 2 shillings. Rogers himself had repaid only 6 shillings of the total amount, and so Shakespeare went to court for the remainder with a further demand for 10 shillings in damages. Nothing more is known of the case, and so it is likely that Rogers made reparations. It testifies, if nothing else, to Shakespeare’s strong sense of financial justice. It also suggests that Anne Shakespeare, in charge of domestic arrangements, ran something of a small household business in Stratford itself.
There were in fact alarms and excursions in the town which find a strange reflection in the drama that Shakespeare was about to compose. At the beginning of 1601 the lord of the manor of Stratford, Sir Edward Greville, had challenged the rights of the borough by enclosing some common land. Six of the town’s aldermen, among them Shakespeare’s acquaintance Richard Quiney, then levelled the hedges that marked the enclosures; whereupon Greville accused them of riot. Quiney and Shakespeare’s cousin, Thomas Greene, travelled to London to enlist the advice and assistance of the Attorney General; among those who had signed a statement concerning the town’s rights was John Shakespeare. But no immediate aid was forthcoming. Quiney was elected bailiff that autumn, against the wishes of Greville, and the whole affair turned into an aggressive confrontation between the two parties. There are reports of “minaces” and of “braweling,”2 and in the spring of 1602 Quiney was attacked in an affray and wounded. He died soon after. It is a nasty story of rivalries between the local people and the avaricious lord. It has its counterparts in other country towns where the problem of enclosures had arisen, but in this case it implicated people well known to Shakespeare. It is not stretching credulity too far to see something of this local drama in the plot of Coriolanus, whereby the tribunes of the people are matched against a haughty and domineering patrician.3 Yet, even here, it is impossible to say that Shakespeare takes “sides.” He needed this detachment from the events around him in order to invest so much energy in his imagined drama.
CHAPTER 71
And So in Spite of Death
Thou Doest Suruiue
On 8 September 1601, John Shakespeare was buried in the old church at Stratford. His son was undoubtedly present, and walked in procession with the new bailiff Richard Quiney. John Shakespeare was in his seventies but seems to have left no will. By natural right, therefore, Shakespeare inherited the double-house in Henley Street as well as agricultural land belonging to his father. John Shakespeare was in fact more prosperous than is generally assumed. He may have characterised himself as a man of small wealth in the Westminster courts, but the reality was very different. In the following year, Shakespeare began to invest a great deal of money amounting to approximately £500.
He kept the house, where his widowed mother continued to live in the company of her daughter, Joan Hart, and her daughter’s family. Joan Hart had married a local hatter, William Hart, but remained in the family dwelling to look after her mother. Shakespeare seems to have left his mother’s affairs in her hands, since the Harts looked after Mary Shakespeare’s estate upon her death seven years later.
The death of John Shakespeare himself has been considered a defining event in his son’s progress. It has been characteristically associated with the writing of Hamlet, for example, a play that was composed during the obligatory period of mourning. In the first scene the ghost of Hamlet’s father comes back from the flames of purgatory, a wholly Catholic territory, in order to haunt the earth. The available evidence supports the belief that Shakespeare himself played the part of the dead father. It is a suggestive impersonation, adding to the fact that the title of the play invokes the name of his own dead son. In this period fathers and sons are deeply implicated in the workings of his imagination. In this play, too, the inheritance from father to son is riven and brutally distracted. It is also Shakespeare’s longest play, and it has been calculated to require a playing time of four and a half hours — far too long to be performed entire in the sixteenth century, even if the playing time were stretched to the maximum. It suggests that he wished, or was determined, to include all its connections and associations. We must not use the anachronistic vocabulary of obsession or compulsion in this matter. We can only say, with certainty, that there was much for Shakespeare to dramatise.