The saying and the spelling being so mutable, you might conclude that all this speaks of a quality of mystery in the man himself. I'd not deny this. But I spell it Shakespeare. Why? Because that's how Mr Shakespeare spelt it himself in the printed signatures to the dedications of his two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, when his mind must have certainly been on the job. It is in fact the form in nearly all the printings of his plays in my possession. And it is also the way his name is spelt in the text of all the legal documents relating to his property that I have seen, and in the royal licence granted to him in 1603 in his capacity as a player.
So while I must admit that you could find his father's name spelt sixteen different ways in the Council books at Stratford (the commonest being Shaxpeare), it is my firm conclusion that all these variaments express the way that other people said the family surname. As such, each variance bespeaks how these others perceived a member of the family. (Shagsper, for instance, tells what the miller's daughter had in mind.)
But, in sum ...
SHAKESPEARE is how our poet wrote it (for the most part).
SHAKESPEARE is also how he said it.
SHAKESPEARE is finally how I always knew and called him.
Quod erat demonstrandum, gentlemen.
Ladies, you may take it that SHAKESPEARE is how to spell Shakespeare.
By the way, a whittawer is a white-tawyer, which is to say one who taws skins into whitleather. (I love these old country words.) This tawing was the second side of the senior Mr Shakespeare's trade in Henley Street, though in his later life it became his main line, so that some have spoken of him as a glover. The truth is that he was always a man with different coloured hands. For instance, he dealt in wool from the sheep he slaughtered, as well as their meat.
I confess to a certain disease at having told you that the sign above his shop said BUTCHER & WHITTAWER. This seems to me unlikely, even though the building was quite commodious - in fact it was two premises knocked into one, as can still be seen. However, I have been assured of that BUTCHER & WHITTAWER wording by several ancient citizens of Stratford, including Mr William Walker, the present Bailiff, who is Mr Shakespeare's godson, and who was remembered in the poet's will with the gift of twenty shillings in gold.
The disposition of having meat and leather for sale in the same shop is scarcely salubrious. But then things were ordered differently a hundred years ago, and not always for the better. Perhaps all that needs to be remarked, for our present purpose, is that Mr John Shakespeare made such a success of his various trades in the first two acts of his life that he rose to be Bailiff himself in 1568, and then in 1571 Chief Alderman. It was while he was Bailiff, and his son William still a boy, that the players first came with their plays to Stratford, at the town's expense. His fortunes declined in acts three and four, but more of that later.
Wincot, let me also tell you, is the way that Mrs Anne Shakespeare used delightfully to say the name of the village her mother-in-law came from. I have retained that particular spelling in affectionate memory of the many happy hours I spent in her company while she divulged to me little or nothing concerning her late husband. The proper spelling of the place is Wilmcote. However you spell Mary's place of origin, as an Arden she might have been descended from the Ardens of Park Hall, a family mentioned in the Domesday Book. Mary Arden was certainly something of a minor heiress, her father having left her lands at Wincot, as well as money, so we may suppose that it was not just the miller's daughter's conversational shortcomings which put off Mr John Shakespeare from her marrying.
Speaking of the Domesday Book, and suchlike records, I have turned up a pretty pair of Shakespeares who managed to make their marks before our man. The first is one William Saksper, of Clopton, in Kiftesgate Hundred, Gloucestershire (about seven miles from Stratford), who in 1248 was hanged for robbery. At the other extreme, consider that Isabella Shakspere who was prioress of Wraxall Abbey at the start of the last century. There is no evidence whatsoever that either of these was related to our poet. Yet I must say I relish the fact of them.
The late Mr Shakespeare remarked more than once in my hearing that he held within himself a devil and an angel, and that his life was their warring together, and his work the resolution of that war. So it pleases me to picture a young abbess picking apples in his family tree, her skirts kilted high to show a plump leg perhaps, while a robber dangles executed from one of the branches. Of such confusions is the best poetry made.
Before we resume our story, permit me lastly to explain to you how I can write conversations which I did not overhear. (I anticipate your criticisms, madam.)
The truth is Mr Shakespeare lessoned me. Do you think I learnt nothing from all that playing in his plays? And had you supposed he listened to King Lear?
Chapter Six About the begetting of William Shakespeare
So Mr John Shakespeare married Miss Mary Arden. But just as Mary was nearly not William Shakespeare's mother, so John was nearly not his father, or thought he wasn't. How so? Listen and you'll find out.
It happened, you see, that John was a very jealous husband. He was so jealous that he couldn't bear another man to be so much as looking at the ground where Mary's shadow had passed. She had already borne her husband two daughters, though neither lived long after christening. John was still jealous. And he desired a son.
One night in the year before our poet's birth there was a great storm that raged across all England. It was unseasonably cold. Sleet blew in the wind. People lit fires and huddled in their houses. Standing at the window of the room over the shop in Henley Street, Mary calls to John to come and look out and see something else that's strange in this unnatural night. A fine coach has turned over on the road below, its axle broken, its horses run off, harness trailing.
Then there's loud knocking at their big front door.
John Shakespeare goes downstairs and opens it.
It's a tall, dark-haired man in a black cloak that's asking for shelter. John says he can give him food and a bed for the night.
The man is obviously of gentle blood. Some say it was Edward de Vere, the young Earl of Oxford. (I doubt this myself - the Earl was too young at the time.) Whoever, the man has great presence, and fills the room up with his charm. He wears his hair long, with ribbons tied in it. His sword swaps between his legs like a monkey's tail.
As this man sits there warming his long, thin hands by the fire and looking at the lady of the house, it comes into John Shakespeare's head that anyone glancing in at the mullioned window just now would think what a splendid married pair they make, Mary and the stranger, and himself no more than an interloper thrown up by the storm where he doesn't belong.
You have to understand that the Ardens had for a long time been somebodies. The Shakespeares were not nobodies, but they were still over-eager to make that known. As for the stranger, Lord Oxford or not he was certainly a Somebody with a capital S.
Now, as John Shakespeare rubs his temples with this line of thinking, the stranger leans back his head and yawns. He has an uncommonly pretty red mouth and a most artful style of yawning. The next moment, almost as if to answer him, Mary yawns too.