Warwickshire: The Land of Shakespeare

by Clive Holland

Every life of Shakespeare, even with the benefit of the latest discoveries and the most recent and learned reasoning and deductions, must unhappily be largely conjectural. Not because it is possible to believe that it was blank or useless in its earlier days, but because, alas! the records are so scanty that the most able and painstaking research has succeeded in eliciting from the past but a fragmentary chain of circumstances and comparatively unimportant facts where one would have had detailed evidence. Shakespeare’s wedding with Anne Hathaway when he was nineteen and she seven years his senior, some time in the early part of the month of December 1582, was followed on May 26 of the succeeding year by the birth of his daughter Susannah. No evidence exists to settle the question of either Shakespeare’s employment or mode of life during the early period of his married life, and the only indisputable fact that has come down to us relating to the next year or two is the record of the birth of twins, a son Hamnet and a daughter Judith, on February 2, 1585, who were baptized in Stratford Church.

It was about this time that Shakespeare went to London, though probably quite late in the year. The reason of his removal from his native town is quite unknown, although some authorities appear to favour the traditional story that it was in consequence of his poaching exploits, and the action of Sir Thomas Lucy. Others think that he was drawn thither by a desire to better his position, and thus provide for his increasing family. Two years later, in 1587, he was found, according to Mr. Fleay, a member of the Earl of Leicester’s players either at the time of or shortly after their visit to Stratford, when they probably gave performances in the Guild Hall. This is, however, entirely supposition, as there is neither any very definite tradition nor any recorded fact which proves Shakespeare to have left Stratford under these circumstances.

For several years after this date there is nothing to connect the poet with his native town, but in 1596 the Register at Stratford contains an entry recording the burial of his only son Hamnet, which took place on August 11. The following year the poet purchased from William Underhill, gentleman, “one messuage, two barns, two gardens, and two orchards, with appurtenances, in Stratford–on–Avon,” for the sum of £60, the house being that erected by Sir Hugh Clopton in the reign of Henry VII., and known then as the Great House. Shakespeare renamed it New Place, and by this name the site (for the house has disappeared) is known to this day.

From this time onward the poet seems to have enjoyed very material prosperity, and became at various times the purchaser of other property in the town and neighbourhood.

In 1607 his elder daughter Susannah married one of the leading medical men of the town, Dr. John Hall, and in the following year a grand–daughter was born to the poet, named Elizabeth. His younger daughter Judith married in 1616 a vintner of Stratford named Thomas Quiney. Of this marriage there were three children born, two of whom survived to attain manhood, but died without issue.

These somewhat bare facts unhappily constitute almost all that is known of Shakespeare and his family life. His death occurring on April 23, 1616, after an illness of some weeks.

Of the latter part of his life his first biographer, Rowe, writes, it “was spent, as all men of sense may wish theirs may be, in some retirement, and the conversation of his friends. His pleasurable wit and good nature engaged him in the acquaintance, and entitled him to the friendship of the gentlemen of the neighbourhood.”

But, however meagre may be the details of the poet’s life at Stratford and elsewhere, fortunately for pilgrims to his native town and admirers of his plays, there are still surviving the ravages of time and modern changes, so often destructive of these things, many buildings and spots directly or indirectly connected with him and incidents in his career.

The birthplace, situated in Henley Street, is of course the most interesting and important building in the eyes of Shakespearian “critics” and admirers alike. It is a half–timbered, two–storied building with dormer windows and a wooden porch, which although largely restored in 1857–58, may be considered to fairly represent the house as it stood at the time of the poet’s birth, great care having been taken at the time of restoration to follow every indication discoverable of its former state. Both the birthplace and the wool–shop adjoining were probably erected at the commencement of the sixteenth century, and at that period the house would have undoubtedly held rank as one of the better sort, and as forming a very comfortable residence for a tradesman in a small provincial town such as Stratford then was. But in those far–off Elizabethan days the environment of the house was very different from what it now is. We have already referred to the state of Stratford streets when rubbish and household refuse not only disfigured them, but made passage through them both difficult and unsavoury, and John Shakespeare would not seem to have been more particular than his neighbours, for we find that in April 1552 he was mulcted in the not then inconsiderable sum of twelve–pence for cleaning away the rubbish which he had allowed to accumulate in front of his own door. The roadway was probably little more than a deeply rutted track, with a walnut tree, which was standing as late as 1765, in front of the entrance door, and under the shade of which doubtless Shakespeare’s father, when his business was done, used to sit and gossip with his neighbours. Across the road was a pool of water (probably a duck pond), and at the rear of the house a garden and outbuildings.