On the occasion of the Shakespeare Jubilee, in the summer of 1769, a painting was hung before the windows of the room where the dramatist was supposed to have been born; it displayed the image of the sun breaking through clouds. It is a wonderful emblem of birth. But it also suggests revival and return. If at a later date that sun had shone through another window of the house in Henley Street its rays would have been refracted through a score of different names, where distinguished nineteenth-century visitors had scratched or scored their signatures upon the glass. Among them are Sir Walter Scott, and Thomas Carlyle, William Makepeace Thackeray and Charles Dickens, all of them registering the fact that they were shining within the light of Shakespeare himself.
The Folio or collected volume of his plays followed some seven years after his death. It was assembled by two of his fellows, John Heminges and Henry Condell, and was dedicated to the two Pembroke brothers. The Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain and the direct superior of the Master of the Revels. It served its purpose very well, and was for three centuries believed to represent the Shakespearian “canon” of thirty-six plays with the notable exclusion of certain collaborative ventures such as Pericles (later added) and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The fact that a list of the actors was added at the beginning suggests that this was as much a theatrical as a literary celebration. It may have been the subject of discussion among Shakespeare and his colleagues before his death, and it is even possible that some of the plays were printed from a revised transcript by the playwright himself. Many of them, however, are in the hand of a professional scrivener named Ralph Crane who was often employed by the theatrical companies. The volume is adorned by the Droeshout engraving of the dramatist, which is indeed the only generally accepted likeness of William Shakespeare.
Acknowledgements
For ease of reference I have quoted line numbers from The Complete Works, Original-Spelling Edition, published by Oxford University Press (1986), easily the best modern edition of Shakespeare’s plays. I would also like to express my obligation and gratitude to its editors, Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, for providing the closest possible transcription of Shakespeare’s printed words.
I would like to register a more private debt to my assistants, Thomas Wright and Murrough O’Brien, for their help in research and elucidation.
I would also like to thank Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jenny Overton for their invaluable suggestions and emendations and my editor, Penelope Hoare, for her patient work upon the typescript. All surviving errors are, of course, my own.
Notes
Chapter One
1 Quoted in David Cressy: Birth, Marriage and Death, page 81.
2 Jeanne Jones: Family Life in Shakespeare’s England, page 93.
3 Robert Bearman (ed.): The History of an English Borough, page 92.
Chapter Two
1 Richard Wilson: Will Power: Essays on Shakespearian Authority, page 71.
2 ibid.
3 ibid.
Chapter Four
1 Caroline Spurgeon: Shakespeare’s Imagery, page 93.
2 ibid., page 98.
3 Jeanne Jones: Family Life in Shakespeare’s England, page 22.
4 ibid, page 33.
5 Keith Wrightson: English Society 1580–1680, page 149.
Chapter Five
1 Quoted in E.K. Chambers: William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, Volume Two, page 247.
2 Quoted in Samuel Schoenbaum: Shakespeare’s Lives, page 5.
3 Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems, Volume Two, page 19.
4 P. Hanks and F. Hodges: A Dictionary of Surnames, page 482.
5 Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems, Volume Two, page 375.
6 Quoted in Samuel Schoenbaum: William Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, page 27.
7 Wrightson: English Society, page 52.
8 Quoted in E.I. Fripp: Shakespeare’s Stratford, page 64.
9 Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, page 14.
Chapter Six
1 Quoted in Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, page 15.
2 Quoted in Nathan Drake: Shakespeare and His Times, page 99.
3 Quoted in Mark Eccles: Shakespeare in Warwickshire, page 17.
Chapter Seven
1 Quoted in Mark Eccles: Shakespeare in Warwickshire, page 39.
2 Heinrich Mutschmann and Karl Wentersdorf: Shakespeare and Catholicism, page 147.
3 Information in Fripp: Shakespeare’s Stratford, page 31.
4 Quoted in P. Collinson (ed.): “William Shakespeare’s Religious Inheritance and Environment,” in Elizabethan Essays, page 246.
5 Alexandra Walsham: Church Papists, page 78.
Chapter Nine
1 Quoted in Drake: Shakespeare and His Times, page 116.
2 Quoted in Wrightson: English Society, page 19.
3 Quoted in Schoenbaum: Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, page 36.
4 Quoted in E.I. Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist, Volume One, page 74.
Chapter Ten
1 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist, Volume One, page 65.
Chapter Eleven
1 Quoted in Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems, Volume Two, pages 252-3.
2 John Palmer: Molière, His Life and Works (London, 1930), page 35.
Chapter Twelve
1 Quoted in Chambers: Shakespeare: Facts and Problems, Volume Two, page 264.
2 Quoted in Fripp: Shakespeare: Man and Artist, Volume One, page 83.
3 Quoted in B.L. Joseph: Elizabethan Acting, page 28.