William Shakespeare, his family and friends

Front matter

V ^ xxV-^V._

-7;

H •T'-i

Prefatory Note

THE following chapters have been formed from the greater portion of a series of papers, which the author evidently intended to be the nucleus of an exhaustive work upon Shakespeare. This series dealt with two special subjects. One part of it concerned the biography and family-history of Shakespeare, and the various places with which his name can be connected. The other division embraced several historical studies, relating to the sources and production of The Tempest.

The shape in which these papers were left by Mr. Elton was incomplete and disconnected. Some had undergone revision : in some cases, two almost parallel versions, apparently of the same chapter, existed, testifying to the scholarly care with which the work had been undertaken and planned. There was no definite indication, however, of the final shape which it had been intended to assume. To the state of completeness at which the various parts had arrived, inference was the only guide ; their purposed order was matter for pure conjecture.

A number of representative chapters, therefore, have been selected from the papers, which may define, in some measure, the scope and character of the book thus begun. By a collation of all the existing versions vi PREFATORY NOTE

of chapters and separate details, the editor has endeavoured to retain everything that seemed to him ready for publication, while giving each chapter completeness and continuity, so far as was possible, within itself. Almost all the matter in the first of the divisions mentioned above has been included. Much of the portion relating to The Tempest was in so unfinished a condition that it could not have been inserted without fundamental alteration. Fortunately, three of the existing chapters on that subject were in such a state that they could be printed, to all intents and purposes, as they were left : the fourth is the result of a collation of two parallel chapters, in which Mr. Elton's text, with a few necessary changes, has been carefully preserved. The chief portion of the editor's task has lain in verifying the quotations with which the book abounds, and supplying the footnotes and references. As the papers supplied few clues, beyond the names of the authors, to these quotations and references, this task has involved some time ; and the publication of the book has been delayed unavoidably thereby.

It has been the one object of the editor, in undertaking his part in the work, to present these papers in their true light as a sound and weighty contribution to Shakespearean scholarship. If, in many cases, they deal with familiar aspects of the subject, their attitude seems to him to be distinguished by singular independence of view, and by a characteristic ability to produce and handle the complex details of evidence, often of a confusing and contrary nature. They bear convincing witness to the learning and wide research of their

accomplished author.

A. H. T.

Chichester,

January, 1904.

Contents

PAGE

Facts and Traditions Relating to Shakespeare's Early Life 21

I. origin of name— prehistoric remains : PATHLOW AND THE

II

The first great event in Shakespeare's Hfe was his marriage, which (as it must be presumed) was solemnised in the year 1582. The place of marriage is unknown. The Christian name of his wife and her age — more than seven years in advance of his own — are known only by the inscription on her tomb. That her surname was Hathway or Hathaway is inferred from a vague phrase or two in her granddaughter's will. But the early biographers all agreed that Anne Shakespeare was the daughter of one Hathaway, a substantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford ; and the original statement is supported by the evidence which has been since collected. The only dispute remaining open is whether she belonged to the Hathaways of Stratford, or to those whose home was in the adjoining parish of Weston, on the left side of the Avon.

Malone at one time thought that she was that Anne Hathaway of Shottery who had married William Wilson in 1580,^ but soon found the idea was erroneous. The coincidence between the names continued, nevertheless, to be the source of mistakes. Mr. Greene " imagined that our poet's wife was of Shottery " ; and he was induced to this belief, as Malone supposed, by finding notices in the register about '' Richard Hathaway, otherwise Gardner, of Shottery " and his descendants. If he had looked nearer home, he would have found Hathaways in Luddington or Weston-on-Avon, both almost within sight of his vicarage. Mr. Greene jumped to the conclusion that the "cottage," or farmhouse, in Shottery belonging to the Misses Tyler, and before them to an old Mr. Quiney, might have been

1 Stratford marriage register, 1579-80, in Halliwell-Phillipps, u.s., ii, 187 ; see Malone's Shakespeare, u.s., ii. 113, note 7.

ANNE HATHAWAY 27

settled on Judith Shakespeare as part of her mother's property upon her marriage with Tom Quiney ; all which , things were easily disproved, but soon took a new lease of life among the roots of the local traditions.^

At one time Malone thought that Anne Hathaway was the child of the other Richard Hathaway, of Shottery, though the evidence was necessarily deficient. ''There is no entry of her baptism, the register not commencing till 1558, two years after she was born." He came round, however, to the opinion that she was not of Shottery at all, but of the family that held lands in Luddington, one of the Stratford hamlets, and owned a small freehold patrimony in the adjoining parish of Weston, across the Gloucestershire boundary. There were persons of the name of Hathaway farming Sir John Conway's lands at Luddington in the reign of Elizabeth, and the name continued upon the estate rolls till about the year 1775. Here then, says Malone, as a final decision, it is not improbable that Shakespeare found his wife. The suggestion has been improved by "a so-called tradition" that their marriage took place at Luddington, for which there is no evidence of any kind. And Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps^ was of opinion that the notion of Anne's residence at Luddington should be summarily dismissed. There can be no doubt, however, that she came from a yeoman's family at Weston ; and whether her family held a farmhouse on Sir John Conway's property across the river or not is a matter of very little importance.

Great efforts have been made to connect her with the last-mentioned Richard Hathaway of Shottery. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps quotes an unpublished version of Rowe's Life of Shakespeare {ante 1766), now in the

^ See quotations from Greene's unpublished version of Rowe's biography, in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 189-90. •^ Id., 183.

British Museum, for the statement that her father's name was John, and says that Jordan described her as "a daughter of Samuel Hathaway."^ It is not likely, he adds, that there was any satisfactory evidence in favour of either of these "nominal ascriptions," and we shall find the same remark applicable to the case of the various Hathaways of Shottery.

Richard Hathaway's wilP contained a legacy to his daughter Agnes, besides a gift to another Agnes, daughter of Thomas Hathaway, whose relationship to the testator is unknown. It is pointed out, moreover, that Anne Hathaway was a common name in Shottery ; a person of that name was married, as we have seen, to William Wilson ; and Bartholomew, Richard Hathaway's eldest son, had a daughter Anne, who married Richard Edwardes. The poet's wife, said Malone, might have been Bartholomew's sister, though he did not mention her in his will ; but the suggestion was admitted to be improbable.

It has been surmised that she was the same person as Richard Hathaway's daughter Agnes, for whom a marriage portion was provided by his will. That would account, it is said, for her father's friend taking part in the application for a licence before her marriage, for his using a seal with Richard Hathaway's initials upon the same occasion, and for her acquaintance with Hathaway's shepherd, Thomas Whittington, who said in his will (i6oi)that Mrs. Shakespeare owed him forty shillings.^ But these are only subsidiary details. The point to be proved is that Agnes and Anne were used as two forms of one name. Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps*

^ Printed in Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 195-6, with other extracts from wills and reg^isters relating to the Hathaway families.

^ Halliwell-Phillipps, id., 186, note 10. See also Richard Hathaway's will, "Item, I owe unto Thomas Whitting-ton, my sheepherd, fower poundes sixe shillinges eight pence."

HIS MARRIAGE 29

thought they were "sometimes convertible." He shows that the pet name Annice (Annys, Annes) was used for both without much distinction ; that the person called "Agnes, daughter of Thomas Hathaway" in the yeoman's will is named Anne in the parish register; and that Philip Henslowe spoke of his wife as Agnes in his will, but that she appeared as Anne in the Dulwich register, and also in the inscription on her tombstone.

The names in reality appear to be quite distinct. Agnes, or Agneta, was one of the earliest English names ; it was used in honour of the saint whose martyrdom and "second appearance" were commemorated on the 2ist of January and the octave following. The other name was not much in use before the Reformation. It is supposed to refer, not to the festival of July 26th, but to an Eastern saint very little known here till the arrival of Queen Anne of Bohemia. Mr. Chandler noticed, in his edition of the Cressingham Court-rolls, that Alice, Agnes, and Margaret were anciently the favourite names for women. Agnes occurs fourteen times in the rolls, and Alice sixteen times, but there is only one Anne in the whole series. Moreover, the subject of "misnomer" was so important in our early law that it is easy to bring together authorities on the point. There are several relevant cases in the Year-Books and Abridgments. As early as the thirty-third of Henry VI. it was decided that Anne and Agnes are distinct baptismal names and not convertible, so that if an action was brought against John and his wife Agnes, and the wife's name was Anne, the variance was essential and could not be amended. Two other cases are reported by Croke. In King v. King, decided in the forty-second Elizabeth, the Court resolved that Agnes and Anne are several names, and that a mistake between them could not be amended after a verdict. In Griffith v.

Sir Hugh Middleton, in the fifteenth year of James L, the Chief Justice said that '^ Joan and Jane are both one name, but Agnes and Anne, Gillian and Julian, are different."^

The suggestion may therefore be dismissed that the poet married, under the name of Anne, an Agnes Hathaway of Shottery. It would, indeed, have been somewhat difficult to prove that his wife was a Hathaway at all, if it were not for the bond relating to their marriage which Sir Thomas Phillipps found at Worcester, and for the recognition by Lady Barnard of the Weston Hathaways as her kinsfolk. There is, we may say, no reasonable doubt that Anne belonged to a Gloucestershire family, but whether she was remotely connected with the great Gloucestershire Hathaways is a very different question. There are many records showing that the Hathaways were important people in the Forest of Dean from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. A William Hathaway held a manor in Lydney in the tenth year of Henry II. The Pleas of the Crown for Gloucester in 1221 show that Gilbert Hathaway and others beat and maimed a certain Hugo Chark, who was probably a disturber of the Forest. A William Hathaway was one of the two owners of the parish of Ruardean in the reign of Edward I. A Ralf Hathaway owned the manor of Hathaways at Minsterworth in the next reign. Another Hathaway was appointed Keeper of the Forest ; and several instances of the same kind might be added.

But when we consider that nothing was heard of this family in later times, and that the Forest of Dean was at the other end of the county, we must admit that there is at present no means of connecting them with the family at Weston-on-Avon. It should also be remembered that Weston is close to Stratford, and

^ Croke's Reports, ed. Leach, 1790-2, i. 776 ; ii. 425.

HIS MARRIAGE 31

therefore not far from the old Heath-way, which, as we suspect, gave a surname to the various Hathaways in that neighbourhood.

The questions raised about the licence and bond relating to the poet's marriage are interesting in themselves ; but it must be remembered that they do not relate to the time at which the marriage was contracted, but only to a detail of the ceremony at which it was solemnised.

We may say at once that there is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare and his wife had made an irregular or clandestine marriage, though they appear to have been united by a civil marriage contract some time before the ceremony was performed in face of the Church. We should distinguish between regular and irregular contracts. A contract of future espousals was regular, but it did not amount to marriage, being nothing more in reality than a mutual covenant to be married at a future time. A contract of present espousals, on the contrary, was a legal marriage. The man said, "I take thee for my wife," and the woman answered, "I take thee for my husband," or to that effect, before witnesses, and with the gift of a ring or some other symbolical object. A contract of this kind might legally be made by a boy over fourteen or a girl over twelve ; but it was provided by the looth canon that infants under twenty-one required the express consent of their parents and guardians. As Shakespeare was only eighteen years old, though his bride was twentysix, it follows that John Shakespeare's consent was obtained. The congregation was frequently warned that such civil marriages ought to be contracted publicly, and before several witnesses. If these rules were broken, the offenders were liable to the punishments for clandestine marriage, such as fine, imprisonment, or excommunication ; and the victim might be condemned to walk, like the Duchess of

Gloucester, in a white sheet, with bare feet and a taper alight : —

'* Metbinks I should not thus be led along", Mail'd up in shame, with papers on my back ; And follow'd with a rabble that rejoice To see my tears and hear my deep-fet groans." ^

The civil marriage required the religious solemnity to give the parties their legal status as to property ; but otherwise it was both valid and regular. The clandestine marriage was valid, but all parties could be punished for their offence against the law. It was of that kind which has been made familiar to us by the Fleet Street registers. A bankrupt parson who dreaded no fine or fall, or some irregular practitioner like Sir Oliver Martext, would unite a couple of runaways, "as they join wainscot."- "Thou saw'st them married?" asks the Host in Jonson's play of the New Inn.^ "I do think I did, and heard the words, / Philip, take thee Lettice . . . and heard the priest do his part." " Where were they married ? " " In the new stable. ..." " Had they a licence?" "Licence of love, I saw no other."

It may be asked why marriages were not always solemnised in church after banns published or special licence obtained. "Get you to church," said Jaques, "and have a good priest that can tell you what marriage is."^ The answer is that it was difficult to get married, especially with due publication of banns, except in the latter half of the year, between Trinity and Advent. The ancient prohibitions had been relaxed by the Council of Trent ; but the decrees of that assembly were not accepted in England. In our own country the ancient rules prevailed. The banns could not be published, nor marriages solemnised,

1 2 Henry VI. , ii. 4, 30-3. - As You Like It, iii. 3, 88.

^ Act v., scene i. ^ As You Like It, u.s,, 86-7.

LAWFUL TIMES OF MARRIAGE 33

although they might certainly be legally contracted, during any of the periods of prohibition, unless, indeed, a special licence were obtained. The periods extended from Advent to the Octave of the Epiphany, or January the 13th, exclusive ; from Septuagesima to the end of Easter Week ; and from the first Rogation Day, three days before the Feast of the Ascension, to Trinity Sunday, inclusive. These restrictions are described in certain old Latin verses, which are thus translated in the Termes de la Ley : —

"Advent all marriage forbids, Hilary's feast to nuptials tends, And Septuagint no wedding rids, Yet Easter's Octaves that amends.

Rogation hinders hasty loves.

But Trinity that let removes,"^

" It is also certain," says Burn, ''that a distinction of times hath been observed as the law of our Reformed Church, not only from the clause in several licences which we may observe in our books, Quocunque anni tempore, but also from a remarkable dispute which happened in Archbishop Parker's time between the Master of the Faculties and the Vicar-General, whether the first only, or the second in conjunction with him, had a right to grant licences on that particular head. And after that, in Archbishop Whitgift's table of fees, there is first a fee for a licence to solemnise matrimony •without bamis, and afterwards a fee for a licence to solemnise matrimony in the time of prohibition ofhanns to be published." Several attempts were made to remove these disabilities, both in Parliament and in Convocation. In the seventeenth of Elizabeth a Bill was introduced to declare marriages after banns to be lawful at all times of the year, with the exception of nine days specially mentioned. In the Convocation of

^ Les Termes de la Ley (by J. Rastell), 1641, pp. 13, 14, s,v. Advent, D

1575) the Queen rejected an article proposing that marriages might be solemnised on any day in the year; "but these distinctions, being invented only at first as a fund (among many others) for dispensations, and being built upon no rational foundation, nor upon any law of the Church of England, have vanished of themselves."^

These dispensations were of different kinds. In some cases the publication of banns was required once and no more ; in others, one of the three publications was forborne ; and there were faculties, or licences, "expressly requiring all the three publications, and dispensing only with time or place." Instances of all these kinds, we are told, are very common in our ecclesiastical records, especially before the Reformation.

On Thursday, the 28th of November, 1582, William Shakespeare went to the Bishop's Registry at Worcester with his two friends, Fulk Sandells and John Richardson, the two farmers from Shottery, and obtained a licence to be married to Anne Hathaway with only one publication of banns. Advent Sunday fell on December ist, so that there was only just time to get the banns called on the last day of November — St. Andrew's Day. Even then, however, in the absence of another dispensation, the wedding in church could not take place until the 13th of January, being the Octave of the Epiphany, when the period of prohibition came to an end.

There has been some discussion of an entry made in the book on the preceding day. There is a minute as to an application for a marriage licence "for William Shakespeare and Anne Whately of Temple Grafton in the County of Warwick." The licence to dispense with

1 Burn, Ecclesiastical Law, 9th ed., ii. 467-8. The words, "It is also certain . , . head," are quoted by Burn from Gibson's Codex, 430. The prohibited times are g-iven by Lyndwood (see Gibson's Codex, u.s., and Ayliffe's Parergon, 364).

HIS MARRIAGE-LICENCE 35

banns was given in favour of ''William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway of Stratford." Temple Grafton is not one of the hamlets of Stratford. There is a curious coincidence in the name ; but we cannot attach much importance to it when we find that the objects of the application were quite different, not to mention the differences in the surnames and residences of the two intended brides.

Anne Hathaway was not present when the application was made. This involved the necessity of proof that she had no parents living, and was beyond the age of wardship. We know that it was not very easy to prove her age, owing to the neglect in keeping a parochial register ; and it is probable that there were no certificates produced to prove that her parents were dead, especially if they had died at Weston, in another diocese. Time, however, was very pressing, and an expedient was devised to meet the difficulty. The bond of indemnity was drawn in a somewhat unusual form — with a condition that Anne Hathaway should not be married "without the consent of her friends."

It was necessary under the circumstances that the intended bridegroom should attend the office in person. On being presented to the Ordinary, a lawyer exercising the Bishop's jurisdiction at the Registry, he had to state his age and to show, as a minor, that he was furnished with his father's consent. One of the two friends would doubtless produce a letter or document bearing John Shakespeare's signature or attested mark. Then William Shakespeare had to testify on oath that to the best of his knowledge and belief there was no impediment by way of precontract, kindred, or alliance, or by reason of any suit in the Ecclesiastical Court, and, in short, that he knew of no lawful cause why the licence should not be given. In the next place formal proof had to be offered that the parties were ''of good estate and quality " ; a point as to which no question was likely to arise. The bonds-men being ready to give security in the usual way, the licence was accordingly granted, permitting the parties to be married ''with once asking of the banns of matrimony between them," subject, of course, to the ordinary rules as to marrying in the canonical hours and in the church or chapel of the place where one of the parties was in residence. The bond was executed in favour of Mr. Richard Cosin, a lawyer of Worcester, and Mr. Robert Warmstry, notary, and principal Registrar for the diocese, an office which was long hereditary in his family. The instrument was drawn up according to the precise directions provided by the Canon Law. The date was the 28th of November, in the twenty-fifth year of Elizabeth, the regnal year having commenced on the 17th of November, 1582. Fulk Sandells and John Richardson bound themselves in the sum of £^0, the obligation to be void if there was no impediment of the kind mentioned, if Anne obtained the consent of her friends, and if William Shakespeare duly indemnified the Lord Bishop of Worcester, John Whitgift, "for licensing them to be married together with once asking of the banns of matrimony between them."

We do not know where the marriage took place. If it had been at Stratford, it would have been entered in the paper book then used as a register, and would have been copied into the existing parchment book, besides being recorded in the transcripts from time to time forwarded 'to Worcester. As Shakespeare's place of residence is not mentioned in the bond, it is possible that he was living for the time at Weston, or some other place in the neighbourhood. The wedding ceremony may have been actually performed at Weston ; but there are no registers of that parish for the date in question, and no transcripts for the same period have as yet been discovered at Gloucester. There is no doubt, however, that the ceremony was fully performed in accordance

ANNE SHAKESPEARE 37

with the episcopal authority. Malone had an idea that Shakespeare was married at Billesley ; but this seems to be a mere conjecture, based on the fact that Elizabeth, the poet's grandchild, chose Billesley as the place for her second marriage. The world was all before her ; and yet she went for no apparent reason, but doubtless led by sentiment or affection, to the obscure little church.^ But at Billesley, as at Weston, the early registers are lost; and, unless transcripts be found, any further discussion of the question will be unprofitable.

We know nothing about the appearance of Anne Shakespeare, though it might be possible to show what she was not like by comparing various passages in the plays and sonnets. We may be sure that she was not of the complexion despised in poor Phebe, that she had not those " inky brows," that " black silk hair," or the "bugle eyeballs" of Robin Redbreast. 2 There are, of course, many passages in the sonnets which would hardly have been circulated if Anne had been palelipped and of a dun complexion, and with "black wires" for curls on her head.^ Oldys thought that he had found out something more definite, and was convinced that Mrs. Shakespeare was lovely, cold, and frail. He was misled, as Malone has shown, by taking an incomplete view of the ninety-third sonnet, as if it had been an isolated statement and not part of an intricate series of arguments.^ He seems also to have been much struck with the poet's quotation from Edward III., as if it had been intended as an imputation against Mrs. Shakespeare's character : —

" For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds ; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. "^

^ See Malone, op. cit, ii. 117, 118. Billesley was about four miles north-west of Stratford on the Alcester road.

^ As You Like It, iii. 5, 46, 47. ^ Sonnet cxxx., 1. 4.

* "So shall I live, supposing thou art true, Like a deceived husband."

^ Sonnet xciv., 13-14. Cf. Edward III. (in "Leopold Shakespeare") ii. 2, 455.

In the next sonnet, however, it is admitted that all faults are hidden by "beauty's veil."i The comments of Steevens on the suggestion afford us an amusing specimen of his style. ' ' Whether the wife of our author was beautiful, or otherwise, was a circumstance beyond the investigation of Oldys . . . yet surely it was natural to impute charms to one who could engage and fix the heart of a young man of such uncommon elegance of fancy. "2

It may be assumed that the young couple lived with Mr. John Shakespeare, and that Anne Shakespeare helped in the housework, while her husband found something to da, either in teaching at school or copying papers in a lawyer's office.

Ill

In or about 1586, Shakespeare came to London to seek his fortune, and it was not long before he was well known as an actor and playwright. About a century afterwards, someone invented the story of his robbing a park. Not once, but several times, was he guilty of this "extravagance," to borrow the discreet phrase of Mr. Nicholas Rowe;^ "and though it seemed at first to be a blemish upon his good manners, and a misfortune to him, yet it afterwards happily proved the occasion of exercising one of the greatest geniuses that ever was known in dramatic poetry." The park, in process of time, was identified with Charlecote, and the owner with Sir Thomas Lucy. Malone showed, however, by reference to the Records, that the Lucys had no park either at Charlecote or Fulbrooke.^ Part

^ Sonnet xcv., ii, " Where beauty's veil doth cover every blot." 2 Quoted m Malone, op. cit., xx. 307, note. ^ Accoutit of the Life of Shakespeare, 1709.

■* Malone, op. cit., ii. 145-9. See the note in Halliwell-Phillipps, ti.s., ii. 385-

THE DEER-STEALING LEGEND 39

of the Fulbrooke estate, before the Hampton woods were inclosed, had been a park till the reign of Philip and Mary. The privileges of park and warren had been abolished before the property came to the Lucy family, but the name of Fulbrooke Park was still used as a title of courtesy.^ But it must be confessed that taking deer from any inclosed ground, even without any riotous conduct, was an offence within the Act of Elizabeth.

After the lapse of centuries, the offence, if it happened, may fairly be condoned. Many people, moreover, are pleased at thinking how valiantly the keepers would be encountered '^on a shiny night." But the poaching romance seems to have been unknown in 1693, when Mr. Dowdall left his club or ''knot of friends " at Kineton, and stayed at Stratford on the

^ The estate of Fulbrooke was granted, early in the fifteenth century, to the Regent Duke of Bedford, with leave to impale a park ; it is recorded that he despoiled a nunnery, and pulled down a church and a whole village, to effect his purpose. After his death it was granted to John Talbot, Lord Lisle of Kingston Lisle, From him it passed to the great Earl of Warwick ; and after his death to his son-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, who allowed the park and castle to fall into decay. Fulbrooke came into the possession of the Lucy family for a few years in 1510; it passed to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, when lord of the borough of Stratford ; on his attainder, it was bestowed on Sir Francis Englefield, who was convicted of treason and fled to Spain. The tract of open land, the park being dispaled and having no legal existence, was granted to Sir Francis' nephew, who sold the property in 1615 to the third Sir Thomas Lucy. "This Sir Thomas renewed the park, and by the addition of Hampton Woods thereto enlarged it" (Dugdale, A^ii. War., ed. Thomas, ii. 668-70). Leland (Itin., ed. Hearne, iv. 51-2) says, "Here (at Barford Bridge) I saw half a mile lower upon Avon on the right Ripe a fair park called Fulbroke. In this park was a pretty castle made of stone and brick, and, as one told me, a Duke of Bereford (Bedford) lay in it. . . . This castle of Fulbroke was an eyesore to the Earls that lay in Warwick-Castle, and was cause of displeasure between each lord. Sir William Compton, Keeper of Fulbroke Park and Castle, seeing it go to ruin helped it forward, taking part of it (as some say) for the building of his house at Compton (Wynyates), by Brailes in Warwickshire, and gave or permitted others to take pieces of it down." Mr. C. H. Bracebridge, of Stratford, published an account of the park in 1862.