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The Man Shakespeare

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Dryasdust, of course, argues that there is no connection whatever
between these two events. He is able to persuade himself easily that the
William Shakespeare who got a licence to marry Anne Whately, of Temple
Grafton, on 27th November, 1582, is not the same William Shakespeare who
is being forced to marry Anne Hathaway on the next day by two friends of
Anne Hathaway's father. Yet such a coincidence as two William
Shakespeares seeking to be married by special licence in the same court
at the same moment of time is too extraordinary to be admitted. Besides,
why should Sandells and Richardson bind themselves as sureties in £40 to
free the Bishop of liability by reason of any pre-contract if there were
no pre-contract? The two William Shakespeares are clearly one and the
same person. Sandells was a supervisor of the will of Richard Hathaway,
and was described in the will as "my trustie friende and neighbour." He
showed himself a trusty friend of the usual sort to his friend's
daughter, and when he heard that loose Will Shakespeare was attempting
to marry Anne Whately, he forthwith went to the same Bishop's court
which had granted the licence, pledged himself and his neighbour,
Richardson, as sureties that there was no pre-contract, and so induced
the Bishop, who no doubt then learned the unholy circumstances for the
first time, to grant a licence in order that the marriage with Anne
Hathaway could be celebrated, "with once asking of the bannes" and
without the consent of the father of the bridegroom, which was usually
required when the bridegroom was a minor.

Clearly Fulk Sandells was a masterful man; young Will Shakespeare was
forced to give up Anne Whately, poor lass, and marry Anne Hathaway, much
against his will. Like many another man, Shakespeare married at leisure,
and repented in hot haste. Six months later a daughter was born to him,
and was baptized in the name of Susanna at Stratford Parish Church on
the 26th of May, 1583. There was, therefore, an importunate reason for
the wedding, as Sandells, no doubt, made the Bishop understand.

The whole story, it seems to me, is in perfect consonance with
Shakespeare's impulsive, sensual nature; is, indeed, an excellent
illustration of it. Hot, impatient, idle Will got Anne Hathaway into
trouble, was forced to marry her, and at once came to regret. Let us see
how far these inferences from plain facts are borne out from his works.

The most important passages seem to have escaped critical scholarship. I
have already said that the earliest works of Shakespeare, and the
latest, are the most fruitful in details about his private life. In the
earliest works he was compelled to use his own experience, having no
observation of life to help him, and at the end of his life, having said
almost everything he had to say, he again went back to his early
experience for little vital facts to lend a colour to the fainter
pictures of age. In "The Winter's Tale," a shepherd finds the child
Perdita, who has been exposed; one would expect him to stumble on the
child by chance and express surprise; but this shepherd of Shakespeare
begins to talk in this way:

"I would there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that
youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but
getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.
Hark you now! Would any but these boiled brains of nineteen and
two-and-twenty hunt this weather?"

Now this passage has nothing to do with the play, nor with the
shepherd's occupation; nor is it at all characteristic of a shepherd
boy. Between ten and three-and-twenty a poor shepherd boy is likely to
be kept hard at work; he is not idle and at a loose end like young
Shakespeare, free to rob the ancientry, steal, fight, and get wenches
with child. That, in my opinion, is Shakespeare's own confession.

Of course, every one has noticed how Shakespeare again and again in his
plays declares that a woman should take in marriage an "elder than
herself," and that intimacy before marriage is productive of nothing but
"barren hate and discord." In "Twelfth Night" he says:

"Let still the woman take
An elder than herself: so wears she to him,
So sways she level in her husband's heart."

In "The Tempest" he writes again:

"If thou dost break her virgin knot before
All sanctimonious ceremonies may
With full and holy rite be minister'd,
No sweet aspersions shall the heavens let fall
To make this contract grow; but barren hate,
Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly
That you shall hate it both."

These admonitions are so far-fetched and so emphatic that they plainly
discover personal feeling. We have, besides, those quaint, angry
passages in the "Comedy of Errors," to which we have already drawn
attention, which show that the poet detested his wife.

The known facts, too, all corroborate this inference: let us consider
them a little. The first child was born within six months of the
marriage; twins followed in 1585; a little later Shakespeare left
Stratford not to return to it for eight or nine years, and when he did
return there was probably no further intimacy with his wife; at any
rate, there were no more children. Yet Shakespeare, one fancies, was
fond of children. When his son Hamnet died his grief showed itself in
his work--in "King John" and in "The Winter's Tale." He was full of
loving kindness to his daughters, too, in later life; it was his wife
alone for whom he had no affection, no forgiveness.

There are other facts which establish this conclusion. While Shakespeare
was in London he allowed his wife to suffer the extremes of poverty.
Sometime between 1585 and 1595 she appears to have borrowed forty
shillings from Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been her father's
shepherd. The money was still unpaid when Whittington died, in 1601, and
he directed his executor to recover the sum from the poet, and
distribute it among the poor of Stratford. Now Shakespeare was rich when
he returned to Stratford in 1595, and always generous. He paid off his
father's heavy debts; how came it that he did not pay this trifling debt
of his wife? The mere fact proves beyond doubt that Shakespeare disliked
her and would have nothing to do with her.

Even towards the end of his life, when he was suffering from increasing
weakness, which would have made most men sympathetic, even if it did not
induce them completely to relent, Shakespeare shows the same aversion to
his poor wife. In 1613, when on a short visit to London, he bought a
house in Blackfriars for £140; in the purchase he barred his wife's
dower, which proceeding seems even to Dryasdust "pretty conclusive proof
that he had the intention of excluding her from the enjoyment of his
possessions after his death."

In the first draft of his will Shakespeare did not mention his wife. The
apologists explain this by saying that, of course, he had already given
her all that she ought to have. But if he loved her he would have
mentioned her with affection, if only to console her in her widowhood.
Before the will was signed he inserted a bequest to her of his
"second-best bed," and the apologists have been at pains to explain that
the best bed was kept for guests, and that Shakespeare willed to his
wife the bed they both occupied. How inarticulate poor William
Shakespeare must have become! Could the master of language find no
better word than the contemptuous one? Had he said "our bed" it would
have been enough; "the second-best bed" admits of but one
interpretation. His daughters, who had lived with their mother, and who
had not been afflicted by her jealousy and scolding tongue, begged the
dying man to put in some mention of her, and he wrote in that
"second-best bed"--bitter to the last. If his own plain words and these
inferences, drawn from indisputable facts, are not sufficient, then let
us take one fact more, and consider its significance; one fact, so to
speak, from the grave.

When Shakespeare died he left some lines to be placed over his tomb.
Here they are:

"Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare
To Digg the dust enclosed heare.
Blessed be ye man yt spares thes stones
And Curst be ye yt moves my bones."

Now, why did Shakespeare make this peculiar request? No one seems to
have seen any meaning in it. It looks to me as if Shakespeare wrote the
verses in order to prevent his wife being buried with him. He wanted to
be free of her in death as in life. At any rate, the fact is that she
was not buried with him, but apart from him; he had seen to that. His
grave was never opened, though his wife expressed a desire to be buried
with him. The man who needs further proofs would not be persuaded though
one came from the dead to convince him.

The marriage was an unfortunate one for many reasons, as an enforced
marriage is apt to be, even when it is not the marriage of a boy in his
teens to a woman some eight years his senior. Shakespeare takes trouble
to tell us in "The Comedy of Errors" that his wife was spitefully
jealous, and a bitter scold. She must have injured him, poisoned his
life with her jealous nagging, or Shakespeare would have forgiven her.
There is some excuse for him, if excuse be needed. At the time the
marriage must have seemed the wildest folly to him, seething as he was
with inordinate conceit. He was wise beyond his years, and yet he had
been forced to give hostages to fortune before he had any means of
livelihood, before he had even found a place in life. What a position
for a poet--penniless, saddled with a jealous wife and three children
before he was twenty-one. And this poet was proud, and vain, and in love
with all distinctions.

But why did Shakespeare nurse such persistent enmity all through his
life to jealous, scolding Anne Hathaway? Shakespeare had wronged her;
the keener his moral sense, the more certain he was to blame his partner
in the fault, for in no other way could he excuse himself.

It was overpowering sensuality and rashness which had led Shakespeare
into the noose, and now there was nothing for it but to cut the rope. He
had either to be true to his higher nature or to the conventional view
of his duty; he was true to himself and fled to London, and the world is
the richer for his decision. The only excuse he ever made is to be found
in the sonnet-line:

"Love is too young to know what conscience is."

For my part I do not see that any excuse is needed: if Shakespeare had
married Anne Whately he might never have gone to London or written a
play. Shakespeare's hatred of his wife and his regret for having married
her were alike foolish. Our brains are seldom the wisest part of us. It
was well that he made love to Anne Hathaway; well, too, that he was
forced to marry her; well, finally, that he should desert her. I am
sorry he treated her badly and left her unsupplied with money; that was
needlessly cruel; but it is just the kindliest men who have these
extraordinary lapses; Shakespeare's loathing for his wife was
measureless, was a part of his own self-esteem, and his self-esteem was
founded on snobbish non-essentials for many years, if not, indeed,
throughout his life.

There is a tradition preserved by Rowe that before going to London young
Shakespeare taught school in the country; it may be; but he did not
teach for long, we can be sure, and what he had to teach there were few
scholars in the English country then or now capable of learning. Another
tradition asserts that he obtained employment as a lawyer's clerk,
probably because of the frequent use of legal phrases in his plays. But
these apologists all forget that they are speaking of men like
themselves, and of times like ours. Politics is the main theme of talk
in our day; but in the time of Elizabeth it was rather dangerous to show
one's wisdom by criticizing the government: law was then the chief
staple of conversation: every educated man was therefore familiar with
law and its phraseology, as men are familiar in our day with the jargon
of politics.

When did Shakespeare fly to London? Some say when he was twenty-one, as
soon as his wife presented him with twins, in 1585. Others say as soon
as Sir Thomas Lucy's persecution became intolerable. Both causes no
doubt worked together, and yet another cause, given in "The Two
Gentlemen of Verona," was the real causa causans. Shakespeare was
naturally ambitious; eager to measure himself with the best and try his
powers. London was the arena where all great prizes were to be won:
Shakespeare strained towards the Court like a greyhound in leash. But
when did he go? Again in doubt I take the shepherd's words in "The
Winter's Tale" as a guide. Most men would have said from fourteen to
twenty was the dangerous age for a youth; but Shakespeare had perhaps a
personal reason for the peculiar "ten to twenty-three." He was, no
doubt, astoundingly precocious, and probably even at ten he had learned
everything of value that the grammar school had to teach, and his
thoughts had begun to play truant. Twenty-three, too, is a significant
date in his life; in 1587, when he was twenty-three, two companies of
actors, under the nominal patronage of the Queen and Lord Leicester,
returned to London from a provincial tour, during which they visited
Stratford. In Lord Leicester's company were Burbage and Heminge, with
whom we know that Shakespeare was closely connected in later life. It
seems to me probable that he returned with this company to London, and
arrived in London, as he tells us in "The Comedy of Errors," "stiff and
weary with long travel," and at once went out to view the town and
"peruse the traders."

There is a tradition that when he came to London in 1587 he held horses
outside the doors of the theatre. This story was first put about by the
compiler of "The Lives of the Poets," in 1753. According to the author
the story was related by D'Avenant to Betterton; but Rowe, to whom
Betterton must have told it, does not transmit it. Rowe was perhaps
right to forget it or leave it out; though the story is not in itself
incredible. Such work must have been infinitely distasteful to
Shakespeare, but necessity is a hard master, and Greene, who talks of
him later as "Shake-scene," also speaks in the same connection of these
"grooms." The curious amplified version of the story that Shakespeare
organized a service of boys to hold the horses is hardly to be believed.
The great Doctor was anything but a poet, or a good judge of the poetic
temperament.

The Shakespeares of this world are not apt to take up menial employs,
and this one had already shown that he preferred idle musings and
parasitic dependence to uncongenial labour. Whoever reads the second
scene of the second act of "The Comedy of Errors," will see that
Shakespeare, even at the beginning, had an uncommonly good opinion of
himself. He plays gentleman from the first, and despises trade; he snubs
his servant and will not brook familiarity from him. In "The Two
Gentlemen of Verona," he tells us that he left the country and came to
London seeking "honour," intending, no doubt, to make a name for himself
by his writings. He had probably "Venus and Adonis" in his pocket when
he first reached London. This would inspire a poet with the
self-confidence which a well-filled purse lends to an ordinary man.

I am inclined to accept Rowe's statement that Shakespeare was received
into an actor-company at first in a very mean rank. The parish clerk of
Stratford at the end of the seventeenth century used to tell the
visitors that Shakespeare entered the playhouse as a servitor; but,
however he entered it, it is pretty certain he was not long in a
subordinate position.

What manner of man was William Shakespeare when he first fronted life in
London somewhere about 1587? Aubrey tells us that he was "a handsome,
well-shap't man, very good company, and of a very readie and pleasant
smooth witt." The bust of him in Stratford Church was coloured; it gave
him light hazel eyes, and auburn hair and beard. Rowe says of him that
"besides the advantages of his witt, he was in himself a good-natured
man, of too great sweetness in his manners, and a most agreeable
companion."

I picture him to myself very like Swinburne--of middle height or below
it, inclined to be stout; the face well-featured, with forehead domed to
reverence and quick, pointed chin; a face lighted with hazel-clear vivid
eyes and charming with sensuous-full mobile lips that curve easily to
kisses or gay ironic laughter; an exceedingly sensitive, eager speaking
face that mirrors every fleeting change of emotion....

I can see him talking, talking with extreme fluency in a high tenor
voice, the reddish hair flung back from the high forehead, the eyes now
dancing, now aflame, every feature quick with the "beating mind."

And such talk--the groundwork of it, so to speak, very
intimate-careless; but gemmed with thoughts, diamonded with wit,
rhythmic with feeling: don't we know how it ran--"A hundred and fifty
tattered prodigals.... No eye hath seen such scarecrows, ... discarded,
unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters,
and ostlers trade-fallen: the cankers of a calm world and a long peace."
And after the thought the humour again--"food for powder, food for
powder."

Now let us consider some of his other qualities. In 1592 he published
his "Venus and Adonis," which he had no doubt written in 1587 or even
earlier, for he called it "the first heir of my invention" when he
dedicated it to Lord Southampton. This work is to me extremely
significant. It is all concerned with the wooing of young Adonis by
Venus, an older woman. Now, goddesses have no age, nor do women, as a
rule, woo in this sensual fashion. The peculiarities point to personal
experience. "I, too," Shakespeare tells us practically, "was wooed by an
older woman against my will." He seems to have wished the world to
accept this version of his untimely marriage. Young Shakespeare in
London was probably a little ashamed of being married to some one whom
he could hardly introduce or avow. The apologists who declare that he
made money very early in his career give us no explanation of the fact
that he never brought his wife or children to London. Wherever we touch
Shakespeare's intimate life, we find proof upon proof that he detested
his wife and was glad to live without her.

Looked at in this light "Venus and Adonis" is not a very noble thing to
have written; but I am dealing with a young poet's nature, and the
majority of young poets would like to forget their Anne Hathaway if they
could; or, to excuse themselves, would put the blame of an ill-sorted
union upon the partner to it.

There is a certain weakness, however, shown in the whole story of his
marriage; a weakness of character, as well as a weakness of
morale, which it is impossible to ignore; and there were other
weaknesses in Shakespeare, especially a weakness of body which must
necessarily have had its correlative delicacies of mind.

I have pointed out in the first part of this book that sleeplessness was
a characteristic of Shakespeare, even in youth; he attributes it to
Henry IV. in old age, and to Henry V., a youth at the time, who probably
never knew what a sleepless night meant. Shakespeare's alter ego,
Valentine, in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," suffers from it, and so do
Macbeth and Hamlet, and a dozen others of his chief characters, in
particular his impersonations--all of which shows, I think, that from
the beginning the mind of Shakespeare was too strong for his body. As we
should say to-day, he was too emotional, and lived on his nerves. I
always think of him as a ship over-engined; when the driving-power is
working at full speed it shakes the ship to pieces.

One other weakness is marked in him, and that is that he could not
drink, could not carry his liquor like a man--to use our accepted
phrase. Hamlet thought drinking a custom more honoured in the breach
than in the observance; Cassius, Shakespeare's incarnation in "Othello,"
confessed that he had "poor unhappy brains for drinking": tradition
informs us that Shakespeare himself died of a "feavour" from
drinking--all of which confirms my opinion that Shakespeare was delicate
rather than robust. He was, also, extraordinarily fastidious: in drama
after drama he rails against the "greasy" caps and "stinking" breath of
the common people. This overstrained disgust suggests to me a certain
delicacy of constitution.

But there is still another indication of bodily weakness which in itself
would be convincing to those accustomed to read closely; but which would
carry little or no weight to the careless. In sonnet 129 Shakespeare
tells us of lust and its effects, and the confession seems to me purely
personal. Here are four lines of it:

"Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad."

Now, this is not the ordinary man's experience of passion and its
effects. "Past reason hunted," such an one might say, but he would
certainly not go on "No sooner had, Past reason hated." He is not moved
to hate by enjoyment, but to tenderness; it is your weakling who is
physically exhausted by enjoyment who is moved to hatred. This sonnet
was written by Shakespeare in the prime of manhood at thirty-four or
thirty-five at latest.

Shakespeare was probably healthy as a young man, but intensely sensitive
and highly strung; too finely constituted ever to have been strong. One
notices that he takes no pleasure in fighting; his heroes are, of
course, all "valiant," but he shows no loving interest in the game of
fighting as a game. In fact, we have already seen that he found no
wonderful phrase for any of the manly virtues; he was a neuropath and a
lover, and not a fighter, even in youth, or Fulk Sandells might have
rued his interference.

The dominating facts to be kept ever in mind about Shakespeare are that
he was delicate in body, and over-excitable; yielding and irresolute in
character; with too great sweetness of manners and inordinately given to
the pleasures of love.

How would such a man fare in the world of London in 1587? It was a wild
and wilful age; eager English spirits were beginning to take a part in
the opening up of the new world; the old, limiting horizons were gone;
men dared to think for themselves and act boldly; ten years before Drake
had sailed round the world--the adventurer was the characteristic
product of the time. In ordinary company a word led to a blow, and the
fight was often brought to a fatal conclusion with dagger or sword or
both. In those rough days actors were almost outlaws; Ben Jonson is
known to have killed two or three men; Marlowe died in a tavern brawl.
Courage has always been highly esteemed in England, like gentility and a
university training. Shakespeare possessed none of these passports to
public favour. He could not shoulder his way through the throng. The
wild adventurous life of the time was not to his liking, even in early
manhood; from the beginning he preferred "the life removed" and his
books; all given over to the "bettering of his mind" he could only have
been appreciated at any time by the finer spirits.

Entering the theatre as a servitor he no doubt made such acquaintances
as offered themselves, and spent a good deal of his leisure perforce
with second-rate actors and writers in common taverns and studied his
Bardolph and Pistol, and especially his Falstaff at first hand. Perhaps
Marlowe was one of his ciceroni in rough company. Shakespeare had
almost certainly met Marlowe very early in his career, for he worked
with him in the "Third Part of Henry VI.," and his "Richard III." is a
conscious imitation of Marlowe, and Marlowe was dissipated enough and
wild enough to have shown him the wildest side of life in London in the
'80's. It was the very best thing that could have happened to delicate
Shakespeare, to come poor and unknown to London, and be soused in common
rowdy life like this against his will by sheer necessity; for if left to
his own devices he would probably have grown up a bookish poet--a second
Coleridge. Fate takes care of her favourites.

It was all in his favour that he should have been forced at first to win
his spurs as an actor. He must have been too intelligent, one would
think, ever to have brought it far as a mummer; he looked upon the
half-art of acting with disdain and disgust, as he tells us in the
sonnets, and if in Hamlet he condescends to give advice to actors, it is
to admonish them not to outrage the decencies of nature by tearing a
passion to tatters. He had at hand a surer ladder to fame than the
mummer's art. As soon as he felt his feet in London he set to work
adapting plays, and writing plays, while reading his own poetry to all
and sundry who would listen, and I have no doubt that patrons of the
stage, who were also men of rank, were willing to listen to Shakespeare
from the beginning. He was of those who require no introductions.

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