The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Epochs. As you noticed I'm recording in the first studio again today just

00:00:24.600 for technical reasons but let's just jump straight into it. Today I thought I'd do sort of a one-off

00:00:28.480 it might be a two-parter we'll see all about the life of William Shakespeare. Something a little

00:00:33.860 bit different because as a lot of people might know that the history isn't exactly full about

00:00:40.760 Shakespeare who he was. There's various ideas about who he might have been or if it was an

00:00:46.740 amalgam of different people like Homer. The ancient Greek poet Homer not Homer Simpson. Anyway talking

00:00:54.980 about Shakespeare. So I've got a lovely quaint little book here which I've read from before

00:00:58.540 Great Englishman of the 16th century by Sidney Lee. It's a it's a very very early very early 20th

00:01:04.840 century book and it's very quaint you know super super pre-woke or anything like that. So I thought

00:01:10.400 we could just talk about it I'll read it and we'll I'll interrupt myself as usual and talk all about

00:01:15.300 everything about the life and career of Shakespeare. Okay let's just jump straight in. We're told the

00:01:21.920 obscurity with which Shakespeare's biography has been long credited is greatly exaggerated. The mere

00:01:28.300 biographical information accessible is far more definite and more abundant than that concerning

00:01:34.620 any other dramatist of the day. In the case of no contemporary dramatist are the precise biographical

00:01:41.560 dates and details dates of baptism, burial, circumstances of marriages, circumstances of children,

00:01:47.120 the private pecuniary transactions of his career, the means of determining the years in which his

00:01:53.120 various literary works were planned and produced. Equally numerous are based on equally firm documentary

00:01:59.100 foundation. Okay so right away you see there that they're saying it's not he's not as opaque as some

00:02:05.440 people try and make out. He definitely was a real person for a start not many people and that we know we

00:02:11.120 actually know a fair bit about his life. I mean you know it's not a very very very well documented life

00:02:16.960 but we can say a fair few things with certainty. Okay he carries on. Shakespeare's father John

00:02:23.280 Shakespeare was a dealer in agricultural produce at Stratford-upon-Avon, a prosperous country town in

00:02:29.360 the heart of England. John Shakespeare was himself the son of a small farmer residing in the neighbouring

00:02:34.560 Warwickshire village of Snitterfield. The family was of yeoman stock. Shakespeare's mother Mary Arden was

00:02:40.800 also daughter of a local farmer who enjoyed somewhat greater wealth and social standing than the poet's

00:02:46.160 father and his kindred. William Shakespeare the eldest child that survived infancy was baptized

00:02:51.440 in the parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon on the 26th of April 1564 and the entry may still be read

00:02:59.280 there in the parish registers. Again this was being written at the very beginning of the 20th century

00:03:04.940 just to remind you. The more closely one studied Shakespeare's career the plainer it becomes that

00:03:09.960 his experiences and fortunes were very similar to those of many who came in adult years to follow

00:03:15.520 in his day his own profession. Sprung from yeoman stock of a family moderately supplied with the

00:03:21.500 world's needs he had the normal opportunities of education which the grammar school of the town

00:03:26.540 of his birth could supply. Elizabethan grammar schools gave boys of humble birth a sound literary

00:03:32.100 education. Latin was the chief subject of their study. The boys talked Latin with their master in

00:03:38.400 simple dialogue. They translated it into English. They wrote compositions in it. A boy with a native bent for

00:03:44.300 literature was certain to have his interest stimulated if he went to an Elizabethan grammar school and

00:03:49.720 mastered the Latin curriculum. Few of Shakespeare's school fellows at Stratford, whatever their adult

00:03:55.280 fortunes, lost in later life familiarity with the Latin which they had acquired at school. Friends and

00:04:01.220 neighbours of Shakespeare at Stratford who were educated with him at the grammar school and passed their

00:04:06.080 days as grocers or butchers in the town were in the habit of corresponding with one another in copious and

00:04:12.380 fluent Latin. Of Shakespeare's great literary contemporaries few began life in a higher social

00:04:17.240 position or with better opportunities of education than he. Marlow who was the first writer of literary

00:04:22.880 blank verse in England and was Shakespeare's tutor in artistic tragedy was son of a shoemaker and was

00:04:28.400 educated at the King's Grammar School in Canterbury. Spencer the poet of Fairy Queen was son of an

00:04:34.860 impecunious London tailor and began writing poetry after passing through the Merchant Tailors School.

00:04:40.640 These schools were of the same type as the school of Stratford-upon-Avon. They provided an identical

00:04:45.860 course of study. While Shakespeare was a schoolboy his father was a prosperous tradesman holding the

00:04:51.380 highest civic office in the little town of Stratford. Unfortunately when the eldest son William was little

00:04:57.040 more than 14 the father fell into pecuniary embarrassment and the boy was withdrawn from school

00:05:03.040 before his course of study was complete i.e. he went broke. The father went broke. He was deprived of the

00:05:08.540 opportunity of continuing his education at a university. His further studies he had to pursue

00:05:14.200 unaided. Nothing peculiar to this experience is to be detected in the fact that his pursuit of knowledge

00:05:20.040 went steadily forward after he left school. I must admit just to interrupt this is me talking now I must

00:05:25.320 admit that I've done much much much more reading and learning since I finished my formal education my

00:05:33.260 undergrad at least. I've read way way more about the ancient world since I finished my undergrad

00:05:39.080 dissertation my undergrad studies in in ancient history. If you're someone that's sort of inquisitive

00:05:44.700 or just enjoy reading and learning for the sake of it it will probably be the way. Okay the narrative

00:05:49.740 goes on saying many men of the day whose education suffered similar abbreviations became not merely men of

00:05:56.380 wide reading but men of immense learning. Ben Johnson whose erudition in the Latin and Greek classics

00:06:02.680 has for range and insight very rarely been equalled in England was according to his own account taken

00:06:08.520 from school and put as a lad to the trade of bricklaying the least literary of all trades. Sir Walter

00:06:15.340 Riley had a very irregular training in youth. He left Oxford soon after joining the university without

00:06:20.940 submitting to regular discipline there yet after a career of great activity in all departments of

00:06:26.200 human effort he wrote his History of the World a formidable compendium of learning and recondite

00:06:32.880 research. Other great writers of the day owed little or nothing to academic teaching. Their wide

00:06:37.820 reading was the fruit of a natural taste. It was under no teacher's control. It was carried forward at the

00:06:43.320 same time as they engaged in other employment. Shakespeare owing to his interrupted education was never a

00:06:49.660 trained scholar. He had defects of knowledge which were impossible in a trained scholar but he was clearly an

00:06:55.340 omnivorous reader from youth to the end of his days. He was a wider reader than almost all of those who

00:07:02.020 owed deeper debts to schools or colleges. Shakespeare's father intended that he should assist him in his

00:07:07.180 own multifarious business of Glover, Butcher and the rest. But this occupation was uncongenial to the young

00:07:14.020 man and he successfully escaped from it. He developed early. At 18 he married hastily to the most unnatural

00:07:20.340 annoyance of his parents. Very soon afterwards his genius taught him that he required a larger scope

00:07:26.160 for his development than the narrow associations of a domestic hearth in a little country town. At 22

00:07:32.540 like hundreds of other young Englishmen of ability of ambition and of high spirits he set his face

00:07:38.760 towards the capital city of the country towards London where he found his goal. The drama was in his

00:07:44.260 infancy. The first theatre built in England was not a dozen years old when Shakespeare arrived in the

00:07:49.840 metropolis. The theatre was a new institution. Of course there had been Roman theatres but I suppose

00:07:55.180 he's talking talking here about them. Medieval times or a true theatre in the modern sense I suppose.

00:08:00.680 The theatre was a new institution in the social life of Shakespeare's youth. English drama was an

00:08:05.940 innovation. It was one of the latest fruits of the renaissance in England of the new study of classical

00:08:11.660 drama with the new expansion of intellectual power and outlook. A love of mimicry is inherent in men

00:08:17.580 and the middle ages gratified it by their miracle plays which developed into moralities and interludes.

00:08:24.540 In the middle of the 16th century Latin and Greek plays were crudely imitated in English but of poetic

00:08:30.000 literary romantic and intellectual drama England knew practically nothing until Shakespeare was of age.

00:08:36.380 The land was just discovered and its exploration was awaiting a leader of men, a mastermind.

00:08:42.040 There is nothing difficult or inexplicable in Shakespeare's association with the theatre.

00:08:46.640 It should always be borne in mind that his conscious aims and ambitions were those of other men of

00:08:52.660 literary aspirations in this stirring epoch. The difference between the results of his endeavours

00:08:57.960 and those of his fellows was due to the magic and voluntary working of genius which since the birth of

00:09:04.460 time has exercised as large a charter as the wind to blow on whom it pleases. Speculation or debate

00:09:11.660 as to why genius bestowed its fullest inspiration on Shakespeare, this youth of Stratford-upon-Avon,

00:09:17.320 is as futile a speculation as debate about why he was born into the world with a head on his shoulders

00:09:22.980 at all instead of say a block of stone. It is enough for prudent men and women to acknowledge the obvious

00:09:28.480 fact that genius in an era of infinite intellectual energy endowed Shakespeare, the Stratford-upon-Avon boy

00:09:35.160 with its richest gifts. A very small acquaintance with the literary history of the world and the

00:09:40.560 manner in which genius habitually plays its part there will show the folly of cherishing astonishment

00:09:46.060 that Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, rather than one more nobly born or more academically trained,

00:09:52.560 should, in an age so rich in intellectual and poetic impulse, have been chosen for the glorious dignity.

00:09:58.000 In London, Shakespeare's work was mainly done. There his reputation and fortune were achieved,

00:10:04.040 but his London career opened under many disadvantages. A young man of 22, burdened with a wife and three

00:10:10.720 children, he had left his home in his little native town about 1586 to seek his fortune in the great city.

00:10:18.680 Without friends and without money, he had, like many other stage-struck youths, set his heart on a

00:10:24.920 two-fold quest. He would become an actor in the metropolis and he would write the plays in which

00:10:30.320 he should act. Fortune did not at first conspicuously favour him. He sought and won the menial office of

00:10:36.840 cool boy in a London playhouse and was only after some time delay promoted to humble duties on the

00:10:43.600 stage itself. But no sooner had his foot touched the lowest rung of the theatrical ladder than he felt

00:10:49.820 intuitively that the topmost rung was within his reach. He tried his hand on the revision of an old

00:10:55.900 play, a play which was about to be revived. The manager was not slow to recognise the gift for

00:11:01.740 dramatic writing. Shakespeare's period of probation was not short. He did not leap at a bound to fame and

00:11:08.300 fortune. Neither came in sight until he had worked for seven or eight years in obscurity and hardship.

00:11:13.920 During these years, he accumulated knowledge in very varied fields of study and experience.

00:11:19.960 Rapid power of intuition characterised many other great writers of the day, but none possessed it in

00:11:25.760 the same degree as himself. Shakespeare's biographies have sometimes failed to make adequate allowance for

00:11:32.180 his power of acquiring information with almost the rapidity of a lightning flash, and they have ignored

00:11:38.540 altogether the circumstances that to some extent his literary contemporaries shared his power with

00:11:44.720 him. The habit of viewing Shakespeare in isolation has given birth to many misconceptions. The assumption

00:11:50.100 of Shakespeare's personal association in early days with the profession of the law is a good

00:11:55.860 illustration of the sort of misunderstanding which has corrupted accounts of Shakespeare's career.

00:12:00.900 None can question the fact of Shakespeare's frequent use of law terms, but the theory that during his early

00:12:06.420 life in London he practised law in one or other professional capacity became perfectly superfluous

00:12:12.320 as soon as his knowledge of law is compared with that of other Elizabethan poets, and it's intuitive

00:12:17.620 rather than professional character appreciated. So he doesn't know as much about the law as some

00:12:22.680 people claim he did, if you actually study it properly. It is true that Shakespeare employs a long

00:12:28.120 series of law terms with accuracy, and is in the habit of using legal metaphors, but the careful

00:12:34.240 enquirer will also perceive that instances of bad law or unsound interpretation of legal principles are

00:12:41.860 almost as numerous in Shakespeare's work as instances of good law or right interpretations of legal principles.

00:12:48.600 On that aspect of the problem, writers are, as a rule, tantalisingly silent. If we are content to keep

00:12:55.200 Shakespeare apart from his contemporaries, or to judge them exclusively by the practice of imaginative

00:13:00.700 writers of recent times, the circumstances that he often borrows metaphors or terminology from the law

00:13:06.500 may well appear to justify the notion that personal experience of the profession is the best explanation

00:13:12.620 of his practice. But the problem assumes a very different aspect when it is perceived that Shakespeare's

00:13:18.760 fellow writers, Ben Johnson and Spencer, Massinger and Webster, employed law terms with no less frequency

00:13:25.560 and facility than he. It can be stated with the utmost confidence that none of these men engaged in the

00:13:31.360 legal profession. Spencer's fairy queen seems the least likely place wherein to study Elizabethan law,

00:13:38.140 but Spencer in his romantic epic is even more generous than Shakespeare in his play and technical references

00:13:43.960 to legal procedure. It was not probably until 1591, when he, Shakespeare, was 27, that the earliest

00:13:52.000 original play, Love's Labour's Lost, was performed. It showed the hand of a beginner. It abounded in trivial

00:13:58.200 witticisms. But above all, there shone out clearly and unmistakingly the dramatic and poetic fire, the humorous outlook on

00:14:06.280 life, the insight into human feelings, which were to inspire titanic achievements in the future. Soon after, he scaled the

00:14:14.000 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

00:14:21.980 onwards in triumph. Fashionable London society befriended the new birth of the theatre. Cultivated noblemen

00:14:28.240 offered their patronage to promising actors or writers for the stage, and Shakespeare soon gained

00:14:34.820 the ear of the young Earl of Southampton, one of the most accomplished and handsome of the Queen's noble

00:14:40.440 courtiers. The Earl was said to spend nearly all his leisure at the playhouse every day. It is not always

00:14:46.620 born in mind that Shakespeare gained, soon after the earliest of his theatrical successes, notable

00:14:52.280 recognition from the highest in the land, from Queen Elizabeth and her court. It was probably at the

00:14:57.940 suggestion of his enthusiastic patron, Lord Southampton, that in the week preceding the Christmas of 1594,

00:15:05.840 when Shakespeare was 30, and he had just turned the corner of his career, the Lord Chamberlain,

00:15:11.100 who controlled the entertainment of the court, sent a stirring message to the theatre in Shoreditch.

00:15:15.860 That is the Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare was at work as playwright and actor. The young dramatist

00:15:21.500 was ordered to present himself at court for two days following Christmas, and to give the sovereign

00:15:26.900 on each of the two evenings a taste of his quality. The invitation was of singular interest. It cannot

00:15:33.340 have been Shakespeare's promise as an actor that led to the royal summons. His histrionic fame did not

00:15:39.560 progress at the same rate as his literary repute. He was never to win the laurels of a great actor.

00:15:44.820 His most conspicuous triumph on the stage was achieved in middle life as the ghost in his own

00:15:50.640 hamlet, and he ordinarily confined his efforts to old men of secondary rank. Ample compensation

00:15:56.520 for his personal deficiencies as an actor was provided by the merits of his companions on the

00:16:03.180 first visit to court. He was to come supported by actors of the highest eminence in their generation.

00:16:08.420 It's funny, isn't it, that way, that sometimes a songwriter who also wants to be a singer and

00:16:13.760 performer, they're just, they're not up to it, they're not any good, they're brilliant at writing

00:16:17.920 songs, but they can't really sing and they're not cut out for performing on stage. There you go,

00:16:23.480 many writers have wanted, started out wanting to be an actor and realised they're just not good

00:16:28.080 enough, but turns out they can write. So I mean, that's, that's what happened with Shakespeare.

00:16:32.360 Directions were given that the greatest of the tragic actors of the day, Richard Burbage,

00:16:37.260 and the greatest of the comic actors, William Kemp, were to bear the young actor-dramatist's

00:16:42.380 company. With neither of these was Shakespeare's acting position then, at any time, comparable.

00:16:49.040 For years, they were the leaders of the acting profession. Shakespeare's relations with Burbage

00:16:54.240 and Kemp were close, both privately and professionally. Almost all Shakespeare's great tragic characters

00:16:59.540 were created on stage by Burbage, who had lately roused London to enthusiasm by his stirring

00:17:05.360 representation of Shakespeare's Richard III for the first time. As long as Kemp lived,

00:17:10.940 he conferred a like service on many of Shakespeare's comic characters, and he had recently proved his

00:17:16.620 worth as a Shakespearean comedian by his original rendering of the part of Peter, the nurse's

00:17:22.620 graceless serving man in Romeo and Juliet. Thus powerfully supported, Shakespeare appeared for the

00:17:28.040 first time in the Royal Presence Chamber in Greenwich Palace on the evening of St. Stephen's Day,

00:17:33.660 which is Boxing Day, in the year 1594. Extant documentary evidence of this visit of Shakespeare

00:17:40.000 to court may be seen in the manuscript account of the Treasurer of the Royal Chamber, now in the

00:17:46.180 Public Record Office in London. The document attests that Shakespeare and his two associates performed

00:17:51.440 one comedy or interlude on that night of Boxing Day in 1594, and one gave another comedy or interlude

00:17:59.560 on the next night, that the Lord Chamberlain paid the three men for their services the sum of £13,

00:18:05.520 six shillings and eight pence, and that the Queen added to the honour, as personal proof of her

00:18:11.560 satisfaction, the further sum of £6, thirteen shillings and four pence. The remuneration was thus

00:18:18.760 £20 in all. These were substantial sums in those days, when the purchasing power of money was eight

00:18:25.480 times as much as it is today, and the three actors' reward would now be the equivalent of £160.

00:18:31.840 And again, this is in the very early 20th century, so it'd be thousands and thousands of pounds now.

00:18:36.880 Unhappily, the record does not go beyond the payment of the money. What words of recommendation

00:18:41.640 or encouragement Shakespeare received from his royal auditor are not handed down to us, nor do we know

00:18:47.200 for certain what plays were performed on the great occasion. It is reasonable to infer that all the

00:18:52.820 scenes came from Shakespeare's repertory. Probably they were drawn from Love's Labour's Lost, which was

00:18:58.320 always popular in later years at Elizabethan Court, and from The Comedy of Errors, in which the farcical

00:19:05.060 confusion and horseplay were calculated to gratify the Queen's robust taste. But nothing can be stated with

00:19:11.300 absolute certainty, except that on December 29th, 1594, Shakespeare travelled up the River Thames

00:19:17.420 from Greenwich to London with a heavier purse and a lighter heart than on his setting out.

00:19:23.020 We hope you enjoyed that video, and if you did, please head over to lotusseeters.com for the full unabridged video.

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PREVIEW： Epochs #251 ｜ The Life of Shakespeare

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