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Life of William Shakespeare, actor Brief Historical Sketch William Shakespeare the actor was born in 1564 and died in 1616. There is no documentary record to show on which day he was born, but according to church records he was baptised Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere on 26 April 1564 in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, eldest son of John Shakespeare, a glover and wool trader, and his wife, Mary Arden, daughter of a yeoman farmer of Wilmcote. The next notice of William concerns his marriage in 1582. On the 28 November 1582 a bond was issued to indemnify the Bishop of Worcester's permission for 'Willm Shagspere' to marry 'Anne Hathwey of Stratford', assumed to be the daughter of Richard Hathaway of Shottery and who was clearly pregnant at that time. William was then eighteen years old and Anne was twenty-six. This notice of marriage is slightly confused by a marriage licence issued the previous day, 27 November 1582, when a special license was issued by the bishop for the marriage of 'Wm Shaxpere' and 'Anna Whateley' of Temple Grafton. Either this was immediately overridden or possibly the Shaxpere who intended to marry Anna Whateley was a different person to John Shakespeare's son. Seven months later a daughter was born
to them, who was baptised Susanna on 26 May 1583 in Holy Trinity Church,
Stratford-upon-Avon. Two years after this Anne gave birth to twins,
a son and a daughter, who were baptised Hamnet and Judith on 2 February
1585 in the same parish church of Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1589 William was named together with his parents in a legal action taken against John Lambert concerning land at Wilmcote, called Ashbies, which John Shakespeare had previously mortgaged to John Lambert's father for a loan of £40. (This is the first reference to William in the public records.) Either then or in one of the years following William left Stratford for reasons unknown. Unsubstantiated 17th/18th century gossip says that his departure was as a result of being prosecuted by Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote Park for poaching deer (although the records of Charlecote Park indicate that Sir Thomas did not have a deer park at that time); but circumstances also suggest that William, no longer able to earn a living and support his young family from his father's trade, went to London in the hope of better employment. His name is not mentioned again until March 1595. On a document dated 15 March 1595 Will Shakespeare is recorded as having been one of the players in plays presented before the Queen the previous December by the acting company known as the Lord Chamberlain's Men, who operated under the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain of the Queen's Household, Lord Hunsdon. The Accounts to the Treasurer of the Royal Chamber record a payment of £20 to 'Will Kempe Will Shakespeare & Richard Burbage servants to the Lord Chamb[er]lain... for two several comedies or interludes shewed by them before her Ma[jesty]... upon St. Stephens day & Innocents day'. The plays were acted before the Queen at Greenwich on the 26th and 28th December 1594 respectively. The Lord Chamberlain's Men, later to be called the King's Men from the time of James I's accession, was run by the famous tragic actor Richard Burbage, one of the two sons of James Burbage, the actor-manager and builder of the Theatre, the first permanent theatre to be built in London, located on the north side of the city. (These mss accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber not only contain the first mention of William Shakespeare as an actor but also provide the first example of his surname being spelt as Shakespeare.) In August 1596 William's son Hamnet died, aged eleven, and was buried in the parish church at Stratford-upon-Avon on 11 August. William's father (or William, on his father's behalf), meanwhile, had applied that year to the Heralds' College for a grant of arms. Sir William Dethick, Garter King of Arms, drew up two drafts of a grant of arms in October that year. (This grant, however, excluded the Arden family in its consideration and does not seem to have been fully executed, with the Arden arms included, until three years later.) William himself was then living in the parish of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, London, conveniently close to Shoreditch where the Lord Chamberlain's Men performed. In November 1596 William Wayte, stepson of a Bankside justice of the peace, William Gardiner, petitioned for sureties of the peace against William Shakespeare, Francis Langley (builder and owner of the new Swan theatre in Southwark) and their two women associates, Dorothy Soer and Ann Lee, 'for fear of death'; and on 29 November 1596 a Writ of Attachment was issued to the Sheriff of Surrey to enforce them to keep the peace. By the spring of 1597 William had a sufficient sum of money to enable him to buy, on 4 May 1597, the second largest and one of the finest houses in Stratford-upon-Avon, together with two cottages and two barns. The house was called New Place, and he moved into it before the end of 1597, or at least before 4 February 1598 when he is listed as a resident of Chapel Street ward. But, despite this wealth, on 15 November 1597 the Tax Collector of St Helen's, Bishopsgate, London, reported non-payment of tax by William Shakespeare, Will having been assessed for 5s tax on property worth £5 in St Helen's parish the previous year. However, he is noted as being among those who are either dead, departed or gone out of the ward. A Stratford town record of 4 February 1598 shows that William was then dealing in corn and malt in Stratford-upon-Avon, and from correspondence between others we learn that he was also acting as a moneylender. But he still continued to reside in London for part of the year. On 1 October 1598 he is assessed for 13s 4d tax in St. Helen's Parish. The record lists him as a defaulter, with a marginal note 'Surrey' added, implying that he had moved to the south side of the Thames. We also know that he was still acting, as he was listed in Ben Jonson's 1616 Folio edition of poetry and plays as having performed in Jonson's Every Man in his Humour in 1598. The reason for William moving his London place of residence south of the Thames is apparent, for during December 1598 the Lord Chamberlain's Men pulled down the Theatre and, in January 1599, took the materials across the Thames to build a new theatre, the Globe, on Bankside. The next month, February 1599, Will was named with others (i.e. Cuthbert and Richard Burbage, John Heminges, William Kempe, Augustine Phillips and Thomas Pope) as a lessee/shareholder in land for the new Globe Theatre, thereby becoming one of the actor-managers of the theatre company. The seven men took out a thirty-one year lease, beginning at Christmas 1598, and shared the cost. The Burbage brothers held a 50 per cent share between them, whilst the others, including Will, held a 10 per cent share each. The Globe was opened for performances in May 1599. It was during 1598 that the only known letter addressed to Will Shakespeare was written. This was a letter dated 25 October from Richard Quiney of Stratford-upon-Avon, who wrote to William asking for a loan of £30. Later that year, in December, the Stratford Civic Chamber records 10p paid to William Shakespeare for one load of stone. In May 1599, in an inventory of property belonging to Thomas Brend (father of Nicholas Brend, the leaseholder of the land on which the Globe was built), Will is recorded as living in a new house in St Saviour's Parish. On 6 October 1599 Will is again recorded as owing 13s 4d tax in St. Helen's Parish, Bishopsgate; but the authorities traced him to Surrey and on 6 October 1600 he is recorded as owing tax in Sussex (which included Surrey for tax purposes). That same year the Heralds' College drafted an Assignment of Arms to 'John Shakespere' and his posterity, allowing the Shakespeares to impale their arms with those of Arden. (The formal, signed award, which would have contained a fully painted coat of arms, has regrettably long since vanished.) In 1600 William's tax debt was still unpaid, and on 6 October the case was referred to the Court of the Bishop of Winchester, whose jurisdiction extended over the liberty of Clink, London's famous prison for debtors. The liberty included Southwark and Bankside, the notorious red-light district of London containing London's new theatres (e.g. the Rose, Globe and Fortune) and the bear-baiting arenas. Later the bishop records that the sum has been paid in full by unnamed persons referred to him by the sheriff. In March 1601 Thomas Whittington, shepherd to Hathaway of Shottery, died, leaving a will in which it was recorded that William and Anne Shakespeare owed him 40s. In September 1601 Will's father died and was buried at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 8 September. William inherited his father's house in Henley Street as a result. On 1 May 1602 William bought from John Combe, the richest man in Stratford, 107 acres of farmland in Old Stratford for £320; and on 28 September the same year he acquired a quarter of an acre of land and a cottage in Chapel Lane, close to New Place. That year a second conveyance for New Place was drawn up, confirming William's title to the house. This document accorded William Shakespeare the title of 'gentleman' in recognition of the arms he had inherited on the death of his father in 1601. On 24 March 1603 Queen Elizabeth died and the Stuart king, James VI of Scotland, acceded to the throne of England as James I. James Stuart showed great interest in the theatre and within ten days of arriving in London took over the patronage of the Lord Chamberlain's Men, which by then was the most popular and successful acting company in London. On 19 May 1603 William's name was included in a list of nine named actors ('Laurence Fletcher, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, Augustine Phillips, John Hemminges, Henrie Condell, William Sly, Robert Armyn, Richard Cowley') and their associates, in a patent granted to the Lord Chamberlain's Men, renaming them the King's Men. Will was also named at the head of the list of the principal comedians who played in Ben Jonson's Sejanus his Fall in 1603. Ten months later, on 15 March 1604, William was mentioned in the accounts by the Master of the King's Wardrobe as receiving four and a half yards of scarlet cloth for the purpose of appearing with eight other players of the King's Men as a groom of the King's Chamber at James I's coronation, in the King's procession through the city of London. His name heads the list of nine players. In April of the same year he was named as one of the King's Men in a Privy Council warrant for a play. In this year he is recorded as lodging in the house of Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot maker of fashionable headdresses, at the corner of Silver Street and Mugwell (Monkwell) Street near St Olave's church in Cripplegate, north of the river. In July 1604, back in Stratford-upon-Avon, William sued the Stratford apothecary Philip Rogers for £1 19s 10d, for malt supplied to Rogers the previous March. On 4 May 1605 Will was left 30s in gold by fellow-actor Augustine Phillips. On 24 July 1605 he paid £440 for one quarter of the Bishopton tithes lease, which brought him an income of £60 a year. In December 1607 William's youngest brother Edmund died. Like William, Edmund had also been an actor. He was buried in St Saviour's Church, Southwark (now Southwark Cathedral), on 31 December 1607. On 5 June 1607 William's eldest daughter Susanna married the Stratford physician Dr. John Hall at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon. Their daughter Elizabeth was born nine months later and baptized in the parish church on 21 February 1608. In 1596 James Burbage had taken on the lease of parts of the palatial Blackfriars Priory and built there a new indoor theatre in the great hall. At first he leased the theatre to Henry Evans and Nathaniel Giles for performances by the Children of the Chapel. But on 9 August 1608 the Kings Men obtained the theatre for their indoor productions when a syndicate was formed of James Burbage's sons and heirs, Richard and Cuthbert, together with William Shakespeare, John Heminge and Henry Condell, who took on the lease of Blackfriar's Theatre for twenty-one years. In this transaction Will was referred to, like the others, simply as one of the 'men players'. William bought a house near Blackfriars, but moved back to Stratford-upon-Avon to live. His mother died in September and was buried on 9 September 1608. A month later, on 16 October 1608, he became godfather to William Walker of Stratford-upon-Avon. Between December 1608 and June 1609, in the Stratford Court of Record, William proceeded against John Addenbrooke, whom he had caused to be arrested, for £6 plus costs that he claimed Addenbrooke owed him. The following year he obtained judgement and 25s costs, but Addenbrooke absconded, so Will proceeded against his surety-a local blacksmith and alehouse keeper. In 1610 he completed the conveyance of 127 acres of land begun in 1602. In February 1613 William's second brother Gilbert died in Stratford-upon-Avon and was buried at Holy Trinity Church on 3 February. On 10 March 1613 William bought Blackfriars Gatehouse, close to Blackfriar's Theatre in London, for £140. This purchase was clearly for an investment, as he never occupied it himself. The very next day he mortgaged the property back to its previous owner for £60. On 31 March 1613 he and Richard Burbage are recorded as having received 44s for an impresa for the Earl of Rutland's shield. On 29 June 1613 the Globe Theatre burnt down during a performance of a new Shakespeare play, All Is True (later published in the Shakespeare First Folio as The Life of King Henry the Eight). It was replaced with a new and larger Globe Theatre, in which William continued to have a share, built on the foundations of the first Globe. The new Globe was open by June 1614. On 12 July 1614 John Combe died, leaving William £5 in his will. William became involved with the Combe family in an attempt to enclose the Stratford borough common lands, which if carried out would have extinguished the ancient common rights to the land. The Stratford Corporation strenuously opposed the proposals and after William's death the project was abandoned. A document dated 5 September 1614 shows that William owned approximately 127 acres in Stratford at that time. On 17 November 1614 it is recorded that William Shakespeare and his son-in-law Dr. John Hall were in London on business concerning Stratford tithes. On 26 April William was involved in a lawsuit with Mathew Bacon concerning Blackfriars property; and in September Thomas Greene referred to William Shakespeare and possible land enclosures. On 10 February 1616 William's younger daughter Judith, aged 31, married Thomas Quiney, a tavern keeper. They married without the proper license required for a marriage during the Lent period and were subsequently excommunicated by the Bishop of Worcester. Shortly afterwards Quiney confessed to adultery in a court action brought against him after a woman whom he had made pregnant, Margaret Wheeler, had died in labour with his child a fortnight earlier. William's will had already been drafted by then (25 January 1616), but he revised it on 25 March, crossing out his new son-in-law's name. A month later William Shakespeare died, aged 52. His burial on the 25 April 1616 is recorded in the register of Holy Trinity, Stratford-upon-Avon, where he is named as Will. Shakspear gent.. © Peter Dawkins, FBRT, 2004 The Francis Bacon Research Trust |