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- [00:04]
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- [02:02]
Emily Briffett
Hello and welcome to Life of the Week where leading historians delve into the lives of some of history's most intriguing and significant figures, from ancient Egyptian pharaohs and medieval warriors to daring 20th century spies. Who was William Shakespeare really? From humble beginnings in Stratford upon Avon, how did he emerge as one of history's greatest writers? I spoke with Dr. Paul Edmondson, head of Research for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, to get better acquainted with the man himself, exploring his education, marriage and family, as well as the remarkable rise in wealth and status that ran in parallel with his career. Today we are talking all about William Shakespeare. Now, his works and legacy may be well known in modern society, but today we are actually going to be delving into the man himself. So in 60 second brief fashion, what are some highlights that listeners should know about before we truly dive in, what are some of the most fascinating or surprising facets of his life?
- [03:16]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, we think of him as one of the greatest of all writers, perhaps the greatest writer in English. Let's think about his personal life here in Stratford upon Avon. He bought a large house in 1597 with between 20 and 30 rooms called New Place. And he was really unusual among his contemporaries to do that, to buy a freehold outside London. Therefore, it seems that he commuted between Stratford and London quite a bit with that lovely family home in Stratford, his theatre world. In London, he achieved literary fame perhaps mainly or importantly, first off, through a poem, not a play. Venus and Adonis 1593 was the first publication with his name on it and it went through 10 editions in his lifetime. So popular that only one copy of it survives in the Bodge Library in Oxford. One copy of the first edition, that is. And then of course, he co founds the Lord Chamberlain's Men with some of his colleagues the following year 1594. Did you know that they performed as the Lord Chamberlain's Men and then later the King's Men between 1594 and Shakespeare's death in 1616. 270 times at court before Elizabeth I and James I.
- [04:27]
Emily Briffett
Some fascinating, wonderful glimpses into his personal life there. And you've really hinted at this, of course, we must remember Shakespeare not as a London boy. How did his early life and upbringing in Stratford upon Avon really influence him?
- [04:44]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Stratford was an important centre for trade joining the north, the west, Wales, going south to London. It had good trade routes to London. The carrier, that means the person who was carrying goods to and from Stratford upon Avon. Commuting was called William Greenway in Shakespeare's time he lived opposite the Shakespeare family on Henley Street. It took about three days for William Greenway to make the journey from Stratford to London. Bringing things back from London, bringing news back from London, bringing reports from overseas back from London. Stratford had a thousand elm trees. When Shakespeare grew up here, it would have felt very wooded, very rural. We know a lot about his neighbours. The town's records are extremely good for the whole of Shakespeare's period. The King's new school opened, King Edward VI Grammar School, just nine days before the death of King Edward vi. Which meant that the town had the best access to education coming over from Europe through the Erasmus influence of training young minds. And Shakespeare was entitled to a free education there as a boy of the town, probably starting when he was seven years old, going on to when he was probably about 14, or perhaps a bit after that. When he was five years old, his father was bailiff, the highest civic official in the town. And his father, John Shakespeare, was the first bailiff to pay for visiting troops of actors to perform before the corporation in the Guildhall. And two of the best theatre companies in the country came to perform in Stratford Upon Avon. The Queen's Men and the Earl of Worcester's Men. And it's easy to imagine Shakespeare, five years old, having his first taste of theatre experience in his very own Guildhall. And then as Shakespeare grows up and starts a professional life in London and is becoming more and more established as an actor, in fact his hometown becomes increasingly anti theatrical and players were fined if they performed in Straptubenhaven very significantly. And bailiffs come and bailiffs go and they have different views on this. But on the whole there's a kind of increasingly shrill puritan voice on the corporation in Stratford Upon Avon. So I think maybe when he was at home, his reputation for being a man of the theatre in London was by some of his neighbours, the corporation perhaps officially frowned on, which is interesting. In 1622, he's been dead six years. The king's men visit the town, probably to visit his grave in Holy Trinity Church, visit his widow and Shakespeare, and they are paid money for not performing. Please don't do that here. Thank you very much. We'll pay you a pittance, a symbolic fee, not to perform. So that's quite an interesting snapshot of Shakespeare's town and some of his relationship to it.
- [07:32]
Emily Briffett
It seems to be a place that still so much of the changes and developments of the time, and you can only imagine what it would be like for Shakespeare growing up in this. Do we get a sense of what his childhood was really like? And also his family. What do we know about Shakespeare's parents, John Shakespeare and Mary Arden, and their status in society?
- [07:54]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, Mary Arden was better off in her background than John, but they were both basically from agricultural backgrounds. John Shakespeare from nearby Snitterfield, Mary Arden from nearby Wilmcote. She was one of eight daughters. She was the youngest of eight daughters of Robert Arden. And she was also one of the two executors of her father's will, which says a lot about her literacy, numeracy, intelligence. And her father left her all my land at wilmcote, along with 10 marks, which is six pounds, 13 shillings and fourpence. So she was quite a catch when she married John Shakespeare, presumably at the Church of St John the Baptist, Aston Cantlow, in 1557, the records don't survive. He, John, we first learn about in relation to Henley street and outside the family home, is known about in 1552 because he's fined for having an illegal muck heap outside his dwelling and was fined for that. He then goes on to really establish himself as a community spirited person. He takes up several civic offices, the official ale taster, a constable like Dogberry and much ado about nothing. He became Chamberlain and then he became bailiff and an alderman for many, many years. So he was very much civic minded, rising I think, from his origins, becoming more and more entrepreneurial, it seems. We know that he dealt in wool illegally and was caught out for that, that he loaned money above the rate of interest that was permitted. So he was fined for that as well. But he does seem to have been unstoppable. He was a wheeler and a dealer and very much interested in self betterment and the betterment of his family. Mary Arden is credited with perhaps first telling her son stories. Stories of Guy of Warwick, of Robin Hood, perhaps stories from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, stories from the Bible. So we imagine and think about his mother as inspiring his earliest imagination. They had two children who died in infancy before Shakespeare, Joan and Margaret. Shakespeare was their first surviving child and they went on to have five others, Gilbert and Joan and Anne and Richard and Edmund. The age difference between William and Edmund was 16 years. Edmund, Shakespeare's youngest child, followed his big brother to London, became an actor there, died there, buried in Southwark Cathedral.
- [10:22]
Emily Briffett
William was fortunate enough in his childhood to receive an education. What kind of education would a grammar school boy like Shakespeare have received in Elizabethan England and what impact did it have on him?
- [10:34]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
That's a hugely important aspect of how we think about Shakespeare's mind. So the grammar school education in the time of Shakespeare is probably one of the greatest gifts the state has ever given. The boys of this state, they were drilled with an understanding of classical texts, mainly Latin texts. So they studied playwrights, Plautus and Terence for a sense of humour. Cicero to learn how to persuade people. Ovid because of the fantastic stories and myth, but also because of history. And Shakespeare goes to Ovid for both of those genres. They studied Horace for satire and they studied Virgil for a sense of nationhood and epic. It's interesting that on Shakespeare's funeral monument in Holy Trinity Church, he's compared to Nestor, he's compared to Socrates and he's compared to Virgil, which you know already by the time that monument is installed, there's a Sense of he is already the national poet, as Virgil is the classical national poet. And they studied the Greek New Testament as well. And in all of this material they were encouraged to speak and to recite and to perform speeches from these plays. So it's easy to see how the grammar school education of Shakespeare's time inspired not only Shakespeare, but many other playwrights who went to grammar school. And it's one reason why there's such a flourishing. Perhaps the main reason why there's such a flourishing of literature and especially drama in that age is because of the grammar school education so hugely important. And it's been amply demonstrated that he didn't need to have gone to university in order to write the works that he did. The grammar school education was enough.
- [12:17]
Emily Briffett
Another key marker in his youth is that at the young age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway. Was this a typical marriage for the time? And do we have an insight into the nature of their relationship?
- [12:30]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, it was very atypical of his time to marry at the age of 18. I said a moment ago, the town's records are really good. Between 1570 and, and 1630, that's a 60 year period. Only three men in straptor bonaven married under the age of 21. The average age for men to marry was like 26, 27. And of those three, Shakespeare was the youngest and the only one. His wife was already pregnant, so it would have been a great shock and something of a scandal that he had to marry her when he did. We don't know about the state of their marriage. This is one of the things that biographers must decide for themselves. I am more and more of the opinion that it was a very good marriage on the whole. But, you know, marriages go through bumpy patches and that's what makes them good marriages. If you can survive those bumpy patches and still, you know, enjoy and respect and understand and love each other. Let's imagine for a moment that he was captivated by Anne Hathaway, who became Anne Shakespeare. She was maybe seven years older than he was. They have their first child soon into the marriage. Susanna is born and then they have twins, Hamlet and Judith in 1585. And some biographers have said, oh, well, they only had three children. Other Stratford families had many more children, which is true, you know, large families in that period, 10, 11, 12, sometimes 14 children. Maybe Anne was injured giving birth to the twins. Maybe she just couldn't have any more children. Is a perfectly plausible explanation for this, rather than them as it were, growing apart and only very recently that letter came to light, which has been known about since 1978. But it was bound around a book in Hereford Cathedral Library. I went to visit it with Shakespeare scholar Professor Sir Stanley Wells back in 2007 and said to the librarian, please can you dismember this book so he can see the rest of the letter bound around the spine? And I knew a little the Dean of Hereford when we were approaching the Quatercentena in 2016 of Shakespeare's death, I said to the then Dean, you know, if you want to sort of make a Shakespearean gesture, you dismember one of your own books so we can read the rest of that correspondence. And I never knew whether he did this until very recently because clearly he did, because someone's done some serious research on it, Matthew Steggall. And this may demonstrate that Anne Mrs. Shakespeare mentioned in the letter and the Trinity Lane is mentioned and Stanley and I tried to locate this to stratford back in 2007 and we couldn't do this. And Matthew Steggall has look London and it seems plausible that Anne and William were living in London at the time. Well, if you have an Anne Shakespeare who is visiting London then that may say something very positive about their marriage which we've not been able to say before. And it certainly continues to bear out this commuting Shakespeare between Stratford upon Avon and London. Anne was literate, she was numerate, she had responsibility in a will to pay a debt that she owed the deceased. So she was trusted with monies, she was an able businesswoman. A very positive view of Anne Shakespeare, a co worker in an equal marriage is emerging in recent times which is really exciting and is developing our biographical understanding more.
- [15:55]
Emily Briffett
You mentioned there their children, Susanna, Hamnet and Judith. Do we get a sense of William's relationship with them at all or is this still sort of similarly hidden in the records?
- [16:05]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
It's not hidden, it's just that we perhaps don't know the things we'd most like to know. What may we say of Susanna? Well, one thing he does is he changes the age of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet to the age of 13 and he's very clear about this. She's older in the source story and he changes her age to around the age of Susanna when he was writing the play as far as we know. That's certainly of interest. There was a report of engravings on the windows of new place, epigrams from his own children's brains that he helped them to engrave and that's Very much an image of Shakespeare the father. One could only suppose how devastated he and Anne were when their only son Hamnet died at the age of 11, buried on 11 August 1596. And there's no reference to Hamnet in history by Shakespeare, obviously there's the play Hamlet and this is a similar pronunciation to the name. And that's been of interest always to Shakespeare scholars, as is the grief of Lady Constance in King John when she thinks her son has died again. Around about the time that Hamnet died, Shakespeare's good friend and rival Ben Jonson, his son died and he wrote a poem about the death of his son in which he names his son Ben Jonson's his best piece of poetry. And it's easy to suppose that Shakespeare felt something similar. On the death of Hamnet, Judith lived the longest of all the children. She died aged 77. Judith married Thomas Quiney of Vintner. Their marriage got off to a very bumpy start because he'd impregnated another woman, Margaret Wheeler. Margaret Wheeler gave birth to his child and both the mother and baby died, which was an absolute terrible start to the marriage of Thomas and Judith. They had three children. They named their first child Shakespeare after her father, Shakespeare Quiney, who died in infancy. Judith was pregnant with him when she attended her father's funeral. They had two more children, Richard and Thomas. And we've known in recent times that Richard, the second child, did a degree at Oxford University at St John's College and looked like he was going to be going onto a fellowship at Oriel College, Oxford, but he died before being able to do that. So I like to think there's something of the Shakespeare as well as the Quine intellect in Richard Quiney going to Oxford University.
- [18:29]
Emily Briffett
These relationships are perhaps not the only things that are lost to time in Shakespeare's life. Shakespeare also disappears from the record between 1585 and 1592. What is known about these lost years? Or are there any strong theories that you would tip your hat to?
- [18:49]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, Emily, there are many theories about these so called lost years and do you know what? I've never really believed in them because they're only lost. If you decide that a gap in the record is significant and then you have to fill it in speculatively and people have made Shakespeare go off and do all sorts during 1585 and 1592 and it's never really rung true for me. I honestly don't believe he'd have left his young children and his wife alone all that time. When he is the husband, he is the chief earner of that household. It just simply doesn't ring true. John Aubrey, in his Brief Life of Shakespeare, says that for many years, or for some years he was a schoolmaster in the country. And that schoolmaster in the country could refer to Shakespeare being in the countryside in Stratford Upon Avon, because Aubrey's writing from London and that rings true that he was helping out at the local school. He couldn't do an apprenticeship, he couldn't go into trade because he was married and you couldn't do an apprenticeship and be married. So he had to do something. Another thing that has been said though, about the lost years and a long time ago by the great Shakespeare scholar Edmund Malone, who himself was a barrister, said that Shakespeare perhaps worked in the offices of a country attorney. This also rings true because the legal language in Shakespeare's works is extremely impressive and prevalent. And I can easily imagine him having some sort of experience of the legal profession possibly during those so called lost years. But I think he was basically based in Stratford, which is not as glamorous as some of the other theories.
- [20:31]
Emily Briffett
You've very much hinted at some of these things before suggesting the area and the background that Shakespeare had, the area he grew up in. What do you suppose drew Shakespeare to the theatre? And when and how did Shakespeare first establish himself in the London theatre scene?
- [20:49]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
So biographers of Shakespeare have to, as it were, get Shakespeare to London by 1592, which is the earliest reference to him in Robert Greene's Groatsworth of Wit, when he's famously or infamously referred to as an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers. Now some biographers have him joining a theatrical troupe, but I just don't buy this running away from Stratford narrative in quite that way. I think his link to London probably started a few years earlier, in the late 1580s, say, when he was perhaps going down to represent his father's business concerns in London, and that obviously he was theatrically minded and literally minded and started himself to develop his own network there. And that's what called him to London. Not a kind of sudden running away, but a kind of gradual pull and thinking, oh, you know, I really could make a go of this as an actor. And for the first few years it seems that he was a jobbing actor and a jobbing playwright, writing in collaboration with other playwrights before the founding of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. So we think of Shakespeare as a kind of freelance theatrical entrepreneur in those years leading up to 1594.
- [22:07]
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- [22:41]
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- [23:03]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
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Emily Briffett
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Dr. Paul Edmondson
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- [23:30]
Emily Briffett
That's why you rack how did his association later with the Lord Chamberlain's Men and later the King's Men shape his career?
- [23:40]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, it was extremely significant that the Lord Chamberlain wanted to become patron of a theatre company and invited some of the best talent in London, as far as he could tell, to be shareholders, Shakespeare among them. That was in May 1594 that Lord Chamberlain dies and his son, Lord Hunsdon takes up the patronage of the company. So they're the Lord Hunsdon's men for about a year. And then the son, the second son of the former Lord Chamberlain becomes Lord Chamberlain. So they become Lord Chamberlain again. Now the Lord Chamberlain was one of the most powerful officials, of course, and definitely responsible for court entertainment. The master of the Revels who was in charge of censorship reported to the Lord Chamberlain. So to be in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, to have co founded, it was extremely impressive and glamorous and had all of the ring of exclusivity and celebrity and court presence, which would have been, I think, looked at with envy by Shakespeare's contemporaries working in the theatre. And the Lord Chamberlain oversaw public theaters until 1968. So it continued as a powerful officer for centuries after Shakespeare. And then of course, when the queen dies and the king, King James I comes to the throne, they become the King's men. So they, as it were, they become the Royal Shakespeare Company.
- [25:05]
Emily Briffett
While we don't have time to talk about all of the plays, all of the poems, all of his works, I just want to touch on this question. How did Shakespeare write his plays? What was his artistic process for his works?
- [25:21]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
I think he was extremely professionally minded as well as extremely inventive and mold breaking in his approach to the play he was going to write next. So the professionally minded Shakespeare would have thought, who have I got to work with? Who are my actors? Well, he's known some of them for many years. Richard Burbage, the lead actor first, Richard III first, Hamlet first King Lear was only three years younger than Shakespeare. And it's interesting to me to know that Shakespeare was writing those plays for somebody more or less his same age to play those leading roles. And Burbage is still acting with the company, you know, 20 years later. So they've grown old together through these plays, which is extremely touching and very interesting in terms of the creative and professional processes. Creatively, I think, you know, in 1623 and indeed before then on the title pages of some of the quarto editions, genre creeps into the titles of Shakespeare's plays. And I don't think he necessarily thought about the genres as rigid as they now sometimes are thought and have been since the division of comedies, histories and tragedies at the front of the 1623 folio, now known as the First Folio. I think each play by Shakespeare was just a new play and he was able to try out new things and continue to try to dazzle his audiences. Why? To get the theatre receipts for the company in which he owned shares and for the theatre in which he owned shares. So playwriting and money and mould breaking creativity were all part of his. And he knew the clowns, especially Will Kemp, for example, Robert Armin, and how they would speak, the jokes, the sense of humour shot through those scenes. Many of the actors in his company were musical. We know this because they bequeathed musical instruments in their wills. They had works of art in their estates. So this is the kind of company he kept. It was sophisticated, it was professional, it was creative. I like to think that he drafted a play and maybe tried it out a little bit in rehearsals and that perhaps then redrafted it based on reactions from these good men whom he knew well. And a tiny example of this. I want to tell this story because A friend of mine, Shakespeare scholar Barbara Everett in Oxford, died recently, and her late husband was also the great Shakespeare scholar Emrys Jones. And the week before she died, we talked about Cymbeline. And this is just one illustration of how the actors can change things. So she and her late husband Emrys had enjoyed Cymbeline very much. And in the 1623 printing, the name of the princess is Imogen, whereas in the source story she's called in a Jean. And in Simon Forman's eyewitness account of seeing the play in 1611, he refers to Inogen. And so therefore the 1623 Imogen has just thought to be erroneous and misprinting all the way through the playtext. And Emrys thought that, in fact, Imogen was just easier for the actors to say, which it is. An actor may stutter with that, but Imogen is much more like a kiss. You can make the M last as long as you like. It's more poetic, it's richer. And the idea of Emrys was that Shakespeare just let them change it because he agreed with them. And that's why it's Imogen in 1623 changed from 1611 because it was just easier to say. And that's what theatre does. So that's a little insight into how Shakespeare worked. But we know that he revised the plays between the early performance and the later performance because there are different versions of the plays. The death of King Lear is very different in the later version to the earlier version, for example, and so on. So we can see a man of the theatre at work and working among other theatre practitioners in the works as printed.
- [29:15]
Emily Briffett
It's such a wonderful glimpse into their working relationships, these personal relationships. Well, there is so much we could talk about in this podcast episode, so I'm going to ask you to do something a little bit cheeky. Could you share with us some of the defining moments of his life? We've spoken a bit about the career, but what about his life more broadly?
- [29:34]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, we talked about the marriage. That's obviously a defining moment. The birth of children as a defining moment. The purchase of new place we've just touched on very briefly. But he manages to buy the life in the borough of Stratford upon Avon at the age of 33 for, we think, 120 pounds, which was a lot of money. And this is in 1597. We believe it had between 20 to 30 rooms, because we can look at similar houses that have survived new places, not survived. We've done some serious archaeology on the site and we Know that Shakespeare, through those excavations, renovated the house very significantly. The house was at least 100 years old when he bought it. He turned an open hall with an open roof for the smoke to get out. He turned it into a place that had proper chimneys and fireplaces. So he spent a lot of money on new place. And therefore a picture emerges of Shakespeare, unusual among his contemporaries as having such a grand house, a place to escape to when plague broke out in London, also to visit his family during the year when the theatres were closed. He was only ever an intermittent lodger in London. So this is why new Place becomes important in the Shakespeare story. There was the burning of the Globe Theatre on 29 June 1613. Burned to the ground during a performance of all is true, Henry VIII and that burning of the Globe when the Globe was rebuilt and we don't know when Shakespeare sold his shares in the Globe. And it has been thought that maybe that was the defining moment, that when it burnt to the ground, he thought, well, that's it, I'll just now just stay away from London most of the time and stay in Stratford upon Av. So these are the sorts of defining moments. But imagine also performing before the Queen for the first time and the newly crowned King James I for the first time. Imagine writing plays that you think she would like, that he would like, and seeking their praise and approbation. This is the kind of playwright he was. He stayed out of trouble. Many of his contemporaries landed up in prison for various minor offences. But Shakespeare didn't do that. He manages to remain clean.
- [31:40]
Emily Briffett
As far as we know Shakespeare's story, it's a story of growing social status. He rose from these relatively modest beginnings in Stratford, became a wealthy, well connected figure and later this respected gentleman. Can you explain this upwardly mobile social trajectory?
- [32:00]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, I think it came through contacts and influence, through networks which took him from a good rising, working class, tradesman's class status in Stratford, up and Avon, with a father who'd become bailiff in a grammar school education, into just the larger and more dangerous world, more powerful world of the court and the aristocracy and other playwrights and literary patrons around that world. And this is the place in which he seemed very much to operate well. And as the monies were coming in from the theater receipts, he was able to invest very significantly in land. This was also part of his social upward trajectory. So in the year after his father dies in 1602, he pays £320 to buy 107 acres of land around Stratford, the size of the borough of Stratford itself was 109 acres. So he's buying land almost the size of the Borough of Stratford, of Bonhaven. This is an astonishing thought. Three years later, in 1605, he pays £440 to buy a share of some of the annual tithes, which would have given him a very steady and very good annual return on that investment. So what's that? £760 over three years as financial investment at a time when a schoolteacher was paid about £25 a year. That just contextualizes the scale of monies that Shakespeare was dealing in. So, yes, wealthy, yes. Famous, I think, in his own lifetime, certainly much liked, much adored and appreciated. And there's that great outpouring of sentiment when he dies, which bears out this kind of reputation.
- [33:48]
Emily Briffett
We've touched on so many plot points, but this is very much something that's important to cover to get a full picture. How close can we really get to the man himself?
- [34:00]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
If you'd asked me that question 20 years ago, I don't think I'd have answered it in quite the same way. I'd have been thinking about Shakespeare's sonnets, which for many years have divided critics into those who think they are only literary exercises, and those who, like the great William Wordsworth, believed with this key, Shakespeare unlocked his heart. I am now firmly of the party that thinks of these as intimate, private poems. I've done some serious work on Shakespeare's sonnets in collaboration with Stanley Wells, and we very carefully noted that Shakespeare was writing sonnets over a long period of time, almost 30 years. The form was very important to him. The order in which they were printed in 1609 is not the order in which he wrote them. And Shakespeare scholars have been thinking this for many years, and we can think about them in a putative chronological order through stylometric tests based on the Great work by MacDonald P Jackson from University of Auckland on the sonnets. And to get a sense of when he wrote certain sonnets, well, this removes at a stroke the old and tired story that people have been bringing to the sonnets for centuries and instead releases them to become individual poems. Emily, when you do that, it's difficult not to see a bisexual sensibility at work in those powerful poems. And I point to two love triangles in the collection of 154 sonnets. Sonnets 40, 41 and 42 present a little story of a love triangle, and then Sonnets 133 and 134 present another love triangle. And Sonnet 144 is about a love triangle. And if you think about these poems written over different periods of time, then the personalities involved and indeed the genders involved in these love triangles need not be the same. So I think this is a very freeing thought about Shakespeare. We can easily find bisexual relationships at work in the plays, for example, Antonio and Bassanio in the Merchant of Venice. And I think this is one of the things that the sonnets tells us about Shakespeare. They're sexual poems in the way that other sonnets of the period are not, and they seem to be private poems in the way that other sonnets of the period are not. Some of them are more private than others. This is the big qualifier. Some of them read as very public, very open poems, highly lyrical, highly polished. But try looking at, for example, Sonnet 110 and thinking, well, am I supposed to know what this is really about? It reads like a confession, as many of them do, and many of them are coming from a very difficult emotional place. So it's quite often the case that when you read a Shakespeare sonnet, you think to yourself, is that really what he's saying? And then you realize that it is, and you think, really, that's from quite a dark place. So I think more and more that the sonnets do take us to the private William Shakespeare. And perhaps he didn't want them to be published, perhaps they were printed by a well meaning friend and Shakespeare didn't want that.
- [37:03]
Emily Briffett
As we get closer to William himself, it's lovely to get those glimpses into his heart. How reliable are various portraits, actual physical depictions of Shakespeare that we have today?
- [37:17]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
So the memorial bust in Holy Trinity Church. Professor Lena Orlin, a Shakespeare historian scholar from Georgetown University, has done some very serious work looking at the monument and has posited quite plausibly that it's a life portrait, that funerary monuments in the period were commissioned and made before the decease of their subject, Shakespeare's among them. In which case the bust in Holy Trinity Church is a good likeness and should be looked at again and again and again. And Lina suggests that the black gown he's wearing in the monument may be an Oxford undergraduate gown. Oxford was one of his stopping off places on the way to London. His friends the Davenants were there, so there were Oxford connections. So I think those connections are worth thinking about. But the likeness of Shakespeare, I think more and more the bust in Holy Trinity Church takes us fairly, fairly close. The other likeness is on the front of the 1623 folio by Martin Druscha at the Famous engraving. And then there's the Chandos portrait in the National Portrait Gallery and the Cobb portrait. Those two portraits have different, but both have very compelling provenances, which is key to a portrait, of course, but they show very different Shakespeares. The Chandos open neck, collar, lace earring. The cob looks much more like somebody who's dressed as his patron would wish him to be dressed, someone who's perhaps dressed for a courtly appearance. So there are lots of portraits out there that are said to be of William Shakespeare. So let's keep it simple and say the bust in Holy Trinity Church and the Druchschout engraving, which is posthumous. The bust now may be from his own lifetime, which I find very exciting, very much exciting.
- [39:07]
Emily Briffett
To round out Shakespeare's life, tell us about his later years and his death.
- [39:13]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, references to Shakespeare in London after 1604 are few, which suggest that he was spending even more time in Stratford and Avon from then. He could have been working on the Folio. I can easily imagine him working on a folio edition of his plays in new place, let's say, from the burning of the Globe until his death in 1616. Doesn't finish it. Ben Jonson Pips into the post. Thank you, Ben. With his folio, published in 1616 of some of his works. And Shakespeare's Folio is finished by his friends Hemings and Condal in 1623. I think he died too young when people say. What did he die of? Perhaps the best account of Shakespeare's death is that by John Ward, the vicar of Strapped upon avon in the 1660s. It's possible he spoke to the surviving Judith Quiney and he wrote down some of the things he'd heard, if not from her, certainly from people within the town, which gives them a ring of truth. And that Shakespeare had a merry meeting with Ben Jonson and Michael Drayton and died of a fever there contracted. So this could have been, let's say, March 1616. Shakespeare knows he's dying. Perhaps he makes his will on 25 March 1616. Francis Collins from nearby Warwick helps him to draw it up. And then he dies on 23rd April 1616. So that, I think, was probably how Shakespeare ended life. And then the posthumous reputation starts soon afterwards. Not only the Folio, his surviving friend and collaborator, John Fletcher, writes the first sequel to a Shakespearean play when he writes the Woman's Prize, or the Tamer Tamed, which is a sequel to the Taming of the Shrew, which is in the early 16TW and is very suggestive not only of how much John Fletcher admired and loved Shakespeare, but just how much the audiences wanted to be remembering Shakespeare's earlier comedy with that sequel. So the posthumous reputation continues through the dedicatory poems at the beginning of the 1623 folio. And those include Ben Jonson's Great Elegy of Praise to my beloved the author Master William Shakespeare and what he had left us. Isn't that marvellous? And then Ben Jonson then goes on to refer to him as Sweet Swan of Avon. He imagines him being so elevated that he could become a constellation in the sky. He calls him this star of poets. And he says Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines in his well tuned and true filed lines. And this is by 1623, so it's uphill all the way for Shakespeare from there on through the centuries.
- [41:50]
Emily Briffett
Extraordinary. Why do you think Shakespeare has endured when so many other people must have faded away into obscurity over time?
- [41:58]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
Well, if they haven't, when we look at them, for my money, they're just not as good as Shakespeare. And one of the reasons is because Shakespeare is not writing the kinds of plays that his contemporaries are. You know, when you look at Middleton, Johnson, Marston Decker, they're all basically only interested in city comedy. Well, Shakespeare doesn't write city comedies. He's too romantic for that, he's too compassionate for that, he's too elegiac and lyrical for that. So his artistic sensibility is altogether different. And as much as I want to acknowledge the influence of other playwrights on his work and how he worked as a collaborator with some of them, for example George Peel and Thomas Middleton and John Fletcher, Shakespeare remains peerless as far as I'm concerned. So I hold no chuck with the conversation that wants to knock him off a so called pedestal. I don't think the pedestal is high enough yet.
- [42:50]
Emily Briffett
Amazing. Raising that pedestal for Shakespeare. As a final question to you, if you could dispel one myth or misconception about Shakespeare, what would it be?
- [43:00]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
I've mentioned this a few times already, so it may come as no surprise, but I still hear it on the streets around Stratford Upon Avon when people say, oh, of course he retired back to Stratford Upon Avon. He left his wife and family and moved to London. And it just doesn't ring true for me. Not when you realize that he put his roots down in a freehold the size of New Place which gave him space and opportunity to write and to get away from the huzz buzz of London, not to be on tour when the other company members were going around the country. Why? Because he could retreat back to Straupteau Bonhaven and write the next blockbuster, which was then going to make them all even wealthier. So I think that's probably the myth, the myth of Shakespeare's retirement. He never retired. I think he kept on working and he died too young.
- [43:45]
Emily Briffett
That was Dr. Paul Edmondson, head of research for the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, Stratford upon Avon. And he was speaking to me, Emily Briffett. Paul has also joined us before to discuss the idea that someone else was behind the playwright's masterful works.
- [44:03]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
How?
- [44:03]
Emily Briffett
Head over to the history's greatest conspiracy theories feed to find out more. And for a deep dive into the Bard's plays and what they can tell us about the times they were written in, check out our previous series, Past Master, available wherever you listen. Thanks for listening to today's Life of the Week. Be sure to join us again next time to learn about another fascinating figure from the past.
- [44:39]
Dr. Paul Edmondson
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- [45:03]
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