took place on February 14, 1612-13, seems fanciful. During May 1613, according to an extant list, nineteen plays were produced at Court in honour of the event, but ‘Henry VIII’ is not among them. [263a] The conjecture that Massinger and Fletcher alone collaborated in ‘Henry VIII’ (to the exclusion of Shakespeare altogether) does not deserve serious consideration. [263b]
XVI—THE CLOSE OF LIFE
Plays at Court in 1613. Actor-friends.
The concluding years of Shakespeare’s life (1611-1616) were mainly passed at Stratford. It is probable that in 1611 he disposed of his shares in the Globe and Blackfriars theatres. He owned none at the date of his death. But until 1614 he paid frequent visits to London, where friends in sympathy with his work were alone to be found. His plays continued to form the staple of Court performances. In May 1613, during the Princess Elizabeth’s marriage festivities, Heming, Shakespeare’s former colleague, produced at Whitehall no fewer than seven of his plays, viz. ‘Much Ado,’ ‘Tempest,’ ‘Winter’s Tale,’ ‘Sir John Falstaff’ (i.e. ‘Merry Wives’), ‘Othello,’ ‘Julius Cæsar,’ ‘and Hotspur’ (doubtless ‘Henry IV’). [264] Of his actor-friends, one of the chief, Augustine Phillips, had died in 1605, leaving by will ‘to my fellowe, William Shakespeare, a thirty-shillings piece of gold.’ With Burbage, Heming, and Condell his relations remained close to the end. Burbage, according to a poetic elegy, made his reputation by creating the leading parts in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies. Hamlet,
Othello, and Lear were rôles in which he gained especial renown. But Burbage and Shakespeare were popularly credited with co-operation in less solemn enterprises. They were reputed to be companions in many sportive adventures. The sole anecdote of Shakespeare that is positively known to have been recorded in his lifetime relates that Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with a lady in the audience to visit her after the performance; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, anticipated the actor’s visit, and met Burbage on his arrival with the quip that ‘William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third.’ [265a]
Such gossip possibly deserves little more acceptance than the later story, in the same key, which credits Shakespeare with the paternity of Sir William D’Avenant. The latter was baptised at Oxford on March 3, 1605, as the son of John D’Avenant, the landlord of the Crown Inn, where Shakespeare lodged in his journeys to and from Stratford. The story of Shakespeare’s parental relation to D’Avenant was long current in Oxford, and was at times complacently accepted by the reputed son. Shakespeare is known to have been a welcome guest at John D’Avenant’s house, and another son, Robert, boasted of the kindly notice which the poet took of him as a child. [265b] It is safer to adopt the less compromising version which makes Shakespeare the
godfather of the boy William instead of his father. But the antiquity and persistence of the scandal belie the assumption that Shakespeare was known to his contemporaries as a man of scrupulous virtue. Ben Jonson and Drayton—the latter a Warwickshire man—seem to have been Shakespeare’s closest literary friends in his latest years.
Final settlement at Stratford.
At Stratford, in the words of Nicholas Rowe, ‘the latter part of Shakespeare’s life was spent, as all men of good sense will wish theirs may be, in ease, retirement, and the conversation of his friends.’ As a resident in the town, he took a full share of social and civic responsibilities. On October 16, 1608, he stood chief godfather to William, son of Henry Walker, a mercer and alderman. On September 11, 1611, when he had finally settled in New Place, his name appeared in the margin of a folio page of donors (including all the principal inhabitants of Stratford) to a fund that was raised ‘towards the charge of prosecuting the bill in Parliament for the better repair of the highways.’