PREVIEW： Epochs #251 ｜ The Life of Shakespeare
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Summary
The life and career of William Shakespeare, or as some refer to him as The Great Englishman of the 16th Century is a bit different from the usual biography of a famous writer. He was not as obscure as some people try to make him out to be, and we actually know a fair bit about his life.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to Epochs. As you noticed I'm recording in the first studio again today just
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for technical reasons but let's just jump straight into it. Today I thought I'd do sort of a one-off
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it might be a two-parter we'll see all about the life of William Shakespeare. Something a little
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bit different because as a lot of people might know that the history isn't exactly full about
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Shakespeare who he was. There's various ideas about who he might have been or if it was an
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amalgam of different people like Homer. The ancient Greek poet Homer not Homer Simpson. Anyway talking
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about Shakespeare. So I've got a lovely quaint little book here which I've read from before
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Great Englishman of the 16th century by Sidney Lee. It's a it's a very very early very early 20th
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century book and it's very quaint you know super super pre-woke or anything like that. So I thought
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we could just talk about it I'll read it and we'll I'll interrupt myself as usual and talk all about
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everything about the life and career of Shakespeare. Okay let's just jump straight in. We're told the
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obscurity with which Shakespeare's biography has been long credited is greatly exaggerated. The mere
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biographical information accessible is far more definite and more abundant than that concerning
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any other dramatist of the day. In the case of no contemporary dramatist are the precise biographical
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dates and details dates of baptism, burial, circumstances of marriages, circumstances of children,
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the private pecuniary transactions of his career, the means of determining the years in which his
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various literary works were planned and produced. Equally numerous are based on equally firm documentary
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foundation. Okay so right away you see there that they're saying it's not he's not as opaque as some
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people try and make out. He definitely was a real person for a start not many people and that we know we
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actually know a fair bit about his life. I mean you know it's not a very very very well documented life
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but we can say a fair few things with certainty. Okay he carries on. Shakespeare's father John
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Shakespeare was a dealer in agricultural produce at Stratford-upon-Avon, a prosperous country town in
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the heart of England. John Shakespeare was himself the son of a small farmer residing in the neighbouring
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Warwickshire village of Snitterfield. The family was of yeoman stock. Shakespeare's mother Mary Arden was
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also daughter of a local farmer who enjoyed somewhat greater wealth and social standing than the poet's
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father and his kindred. William Shakespeare the eldest child that survived infancy was baptized
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in the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon on the 26th of April 1564 and the entry may still be read
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there in the parish registers. Again this was being written at the very beginning of the 20th century
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just to remind you. The more closely one studied Shakespeare's career the plainer it becomes that
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his experiences and fortunes were very similar to those of many who came in adult years to follow
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in his day his own profession. Sprung from yeoman stock of a family moderately supplied with the
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world's needs he had the normal opportunities of education which the grammar school of the town
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of his birth could supply. Elizabethan grammar schools gave boys of humble birth a sound literary
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education. Latin was the chief subject of their study. The boys talked Latin with their master in
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simple dialogue. They translated it into English. They wrote compositions in it. A boy with a native bent for
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literature was certain to have his interest stimulated if he went to an Elizabethan grammar school and
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mastered the Latin curriculum. Few of Shakespeare's school fellows at Stratford, whatever their adult
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fortunes, lost in later life familiarity with the Latin which they had acquired at school. Friends and
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neighbours of Shakespeare at Stratford who were educated with him at the grammar school and passed their
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days as grocers or butchers in the town were in the habit of corresponding with one another in copious and
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fluent Latin. Of Shakespeare's great literary contemporaries few began life in a higher social
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position or with better opportunities of education than he. Marlow who was the first writer of literary
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blank verse in England and was Shakespeare's tutor in artistic tragedy was son of a shoemaker and was
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educated at the King's Grammar School in Canterbury. Spencer the poet of Fairy Queen was son of an
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impecunious London tailor and began writing poetry after passing through the Merchant Tailors School.
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These schools were of the same type as the school of Stratford-upon-Avon. They provided an identical
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course of study. While Shakespeare was a schoolboy his father was a prosperous tradesman holding the
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highest civic office in the little town of Stratford. Unfortunately when the eldest son William was little
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more than 14 the father fell into pecuniary embarrassment and the boy was withdrawn from school
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before his course of study was complete i.e. he went broke. The father went broke. He was deprived of the
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opportunity of continuing his education at a university. His further studies he had to pursue
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unaided. Nothing peculiar to this experience is to be detected in the fact that his pursuit of knowledge
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went steadily forward after he left school. I must admit just to interrupt this is me talking now I must
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admit that I've done much much much more reading and learning since I finished my formal education my
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undergrad at least. I've read way way more about the ancient world since I finished my undergrad
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dissertation my undergrad studies in in ancient history. If you're someone that's sort of inquisitive
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or just enjoy reading and learning for the sake of it it will probably be the way. Okay the narrative
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goes on saying many men of the day whose education suffered similar abbreviations became not merely men of
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wide reading but men of immense learning. Ben Johnson whose erudition in the Latin and Greek classics
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has for range and insight very rarely been equalled in England was according to his own account taken
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from school and put as a lad to the trade of bricklaying the least literary of all trades. Sir Walter
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Riley had a very irregular training in youth. He left Oxford soon after joining the university without
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submitting to regular discipline there yet after a career of great activity in all departments of
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human effort he wrote his History of the World a formidable compendium of learning and recondite
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research. Other great writers of the day owed little or nothing to academic teaching. Their wide
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reading was the fruit of a natural taste. It was under no teacher's control. It was carried forward at the
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same time as they engaged in other employment. Shakespeare owing to his interrupted education was never a
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trained scholar. He had defects of knowledge which were impossible in a trained scholar but he was clearly an
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omnivorous reader from youth to the end of his days. He was a wider reader than almost all of those who
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owed deeper debts to schools or colleges. Shakespeare's father intended that he should assist him in his
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own multifarious business of Glover, Butcher and the rest. But this occupation was uncongenial to the young
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man and he successfully escaped from it. He developed early. At 18 he married hastily to the most unnatural
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annoyance of his parents. Very soon afterwards his genius taught him that he required a larger scope
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for his development than the narrow associations of a domestic hearth in a little country town. At 22
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like hundreds of other young Englishmen of ability of ambition and of high spirits he set his face
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towards the capital city of the country towards London where he found his goal. The drama was in his
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infancy. The first theatre built in England was not a dozen years old when Shakespeare arrived in the
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metropolis. The theatre was a new institution. Of course there had been Roman theatres but I suppose
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he's talking talking here about them. Medieval times or a true theatre in the modern sense I suppose.
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The theatre was a new institution in the social life of Shakespeare's youth. English drama was an
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innovation. It was one of the latest fruits of the renaissance in England of the new study of classical
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drama with the new expansion of intellectual power and outlook. A love of mimicry is inherent in men
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and the middle ages gratified it by their miracle plays which developed into moralities and interludes.
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In the middle of the 16th century Latin and Greek plays were crudely imitated in English but of poetic
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literary romantic and intellectual drama England knew practically nothing until Shakespeare was of age.
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The land was just discovered and its exploration was awaiting a leader of men, a mastermind.
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There is nothing difficult or inexplicable in Shakespeare's association with the theatre.
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It should always be borne in mind that his conscious aims and ambitions were those of other men of
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literary aspirations in this stirring epoch. The difference between the results of his endeavours
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and those of his fellows was due to the magic and voluntary working of genius which since the birth of
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time has exercised as large a charter as the wind to blow on whom it pleases. Speculation or debate
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as to why genius bestowed its fullest inspiration on Shakespeare, this youth of Stratford-upon-Avon,
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is as futile a speculation as debate about why he was born into the world with a head on his shoulders
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at all instead of say a block of stone. It is enough for prudent men and women to acknowledge the obvious
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fact that genius in an era of infinite intellectual energy endowed Shakespeare, the Stratford-upon-Avon boy
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with its richest gifts. A very small acquaintance with the literary history of the world and the
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manner in which genius habitually plays its part there will show the folly of cherishing astonishment
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that Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, rather than one more nobly born or more academically trained,
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should, in an age so rich in intellectual and poetic impulse, have been chosen for the glorious dignity.
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In London, Shakespeare's work was mainly done. There his reputation and fortune were achieved,
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but his London career opened under many disadvantages. A young man of 22, burdened with a wife and three
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children, he had left his home in his little native town about 1586 to seek his fortune in the great city.
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Without friends and without money, he had, like many other stage-struck youths, set his heart on a
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two-fold quest. He would become an actor in the metropolis and he would write the plays in which
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he should act. Fortune did not at first conspicuously favour him. He sought and won the menial office of
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cool boy in a London playhouse and was only after some time delay promoted to humble duties on the
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stage itself. But no sooner had his foot touched the lowest rung of the theatrical ladder than he felt
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intuitively that the topmost rung was within his reach. He tried his hand on the revision of an old
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play, a play which was about to be revived. The manager was not slow to recognise the gift for
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dramatic writing. Shakespeare's period of probation was not short. He did not leap at a bound to fame and
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fortune. Neither came in sight until he had worked for seven or eight years in obscurity and hardship.
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During these years, he accumulated knowledge in very varied fields of study and experience.
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Rapid power of intuition characterised many other great writers of the day, but none possessed it in
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the same degree as himself. Shakespeare's biographies have sometimes failed to make adequate allowance for
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his power of acquiring information with almost the rapidity of a lightning flash, and they have ignored
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altogether the circumstances that to some extent his literary contemporaries shared his power with
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him. The habit of viewing Shakespeare in isolation has given birth to many misconceptions. The assumption
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of Shakespeare's personal association in early days with the profession of the law is a good
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illustration of the sort of misunderstanding which has corrupted accounts of Shakespeare's career.
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None can question the fact of Shakespeare's frequent use of law terms, but the theory that during his early
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life in London he practised law in one or other professional capacity became perfectly superfluous
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as soon as his knowledge of law is compared with that of other Elizabethan poets, and it's intuitive
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rather than professional character appreciated. So he doesn't know as much about the law as some
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people claim he did, if you actually study it properly. It is true that Shakespeare employs a long
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series of law terms with accuracy, and is in the habit of using legal metaphors, but the careful
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enquirer will also perceive that instances of bad law or unsound interpretation of legal principles are
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almost as numerous in Shakespeare's work as instances of good law or right interpretations of legal principles.
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On that aspect of the problem, writers are, as a rule, tantalisingly silent. If we are content to keep
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Shakespeare apart from his contemporaries, or to judge them exclusively by the practice of imaginative
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writers of recent times, the circumstances that he often borrows metaphors or terminology from the law
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may well appear to justify the notion that personal experience of the profession is the best explanation
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of his practice. But the problem assumes a very different aspect when it is perceived that Shakespeare's
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fellow writers, Ben Johnson and Spencer, Massinger and Webster, employed law terms with no less frequency
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and facility than he. It can be stated with the utmost confidence that none of these men engaged in the
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legal profession. Spencer's fairy queen seems the least likely place wherein to study Elizabethan law,
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but Spencer in his romantic epic is even more generous than Shakespeare in his play and technical references
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to legal procedure. It was not probably until 1591, when he, Shakespeare, was 27, that the earliest
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original play, Love's Labour's Lost, was performed. It showed the hand of a beginner. It abounded in trivial
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witticisms. But above all, there shone out clearly and unmistakingly the dramatic and poetic fire, the humorous outlook on
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life, the insight into human feelings, which were to inspire titanic achievements in the future. Soon after, he scaled the
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tragic heights of Romeo and Juliet, and he was rightly hailed as the prophet of a new world of art. Henceforth, he marched on the
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onwards in triumph. Fashionable London society befriended the new birth of the theatre. Cultivated noblemen
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offered their patronage to promising actors or writers for the stage, and Shakespeare soon gained
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the ear of the young Earl of Southampton, one of the most accomplished and handsome of the Queen's noble
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courtiers. The Earl was said to spend nearly all his leisure at the playhouse every day. It is not always
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born in mind that Shakespeare gained, soon after the earliest of his theatrical successes, notable
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recognition from the highest in the land, from Queen Elizabeth and her court. It was probably at the
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suggestion of his enthusiastic patron, Lord Southampton, that in the week preceding the Christmas of 1594,
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when Shakespeare was 30, and he had just turned the corner of his career, the Lord Chamberlain,
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who controlled the entertainment of the court, sent a stirring message to the theatre in Shoreditch.
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That is the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare was at work as playwright and actor. The young dramatist
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was ordered to present himself at court for two days following Christmas, and to give the sovereign
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on each of the two evenings a taste of his quality. The invitation was of singular interest. It cannot
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have been Shakespeare's promise as an actor that led to the royal summons. His histrionic fame did not
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progress at the same rate as his literary repute. He was never to win the laurels of a great actor.
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His most conspicuous triumph on the stage was achieved in middle life as the ghost in his own
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hamlet, and he ordinarily confined his efforts to old men of secondary rank. Ample compensation
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for his personal deficiencies as an actor was provided by the merits of his companions on the
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first visit to court. He was to come supported by actors of the highest eminence in their generation.
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It's funny, isn't it, that way, that sometimes a songwriter who also wants to be a singer and
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performer, they're just, they're not up to it, they're not any good, they're brilliant at writing
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songs, but they can't really sing and they're not cut out for performing on stage. There you go,
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many writers have wanted, started out wanting to be an actor and realised they're just not good
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enough, but turns out they can write. So I mean, that's, that's what happened with Shakespeare.
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Directions were given that the greatest of the tragic actors of the day, Richard Burbage,
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and the greatest of the comic actors, William Kemp, were to bear the young actor-dramatist's
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company. With neither of these was Shakespeare's acting position then, at any time, comparable.
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For years, they were the leaders of the acting profession. Shakespeare's relations with Burbage
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and Kemp were close, both privately and professionally. Almost all Shakespeare's great tragic characters
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were created on stage by Burbage, who had lately roused London to enthusiasm by his stirring
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representation of Shakespeare's Richard III for the first time. As long as Kemp lived,
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he conferred a like service on many of Shakespeare's comic characters, and he had recently proved his
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worth as a Shakespearean comedian by his original rendering of the part of Peter, the nurse's
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graceless serving man in Romeo and Juliet. Thus powerfully supported, Shakespeare appeared for the
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first time in the Royal Presence Chamber in Greenwich Palace on the evening of St. Stephen's Day,
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which is Boxing Day, in the year 1594. Extant documentary evidence of this visit of Shakespeare
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to court may be seen in the manuscript account of the Treasurer of the Royal Chamber, now in the
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Public Record Office in London. The document attests that Shakespeare and his two associates performed
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one comedy or interlude on that night of Boxing Day in 1594, and one gave another comedy or interlude
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on the next night, that the Lord Chamberlain paid the three men for their services the sum of £13,
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six shillings and eight pence, and that the Queen added to the honour, as personal proof of her
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satisfaction, the further sum of £6, thirteen shillings and four pence. The remuneration was thus
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£20 in all. These were substantial sums in those days, when the purchasing power of money was eight
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times as much as it is today, and the three actors' reward would now be the equivalent of £160.
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And again, this is in the very early 20th century, so it'd be thousands and thousands of pounds now.
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Unhappily, the record does not go beyond the payment of the money. What words of recommendation
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or encouragement Shakespeare received from his royal auditor are not handed down to us, nor do we know
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for certain what plays were performed on the great occasion. It is reasonable to infer that all the
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scenes came from Shakespeare's repertory. Probably they were drawn from Love's Labour's Lost, which was
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always popular in later years at Elizabethan Court, and from The Comedy of Errors, in which the farcical
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confusion and horseplay were calculated to gratify the Queen's robust taste. But nothing can be stated with
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absolute certainty, except that on December 29th, 1594, Shakespeare travelled up the River Thames
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from Greenwich to London with a heavier purse and a lighter heart than on his setting out.
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