Shakespeare

Peter Ackroyd Shakespeare

Author’s Note

Certain questions of nomenclature arise. The earliest publications of Shakespeare’s plays took the form of quartos or of the Folio. The quartos, as their name implies, were small editions of one play characteristically issued several years after its first production. Some of the more popular plays were reprinted in quarto many times, whereas others were not published at all. About half of Shakespeare’s plays were printed during his lifetime by this means. The results are good, clumsy or indifferent. There has been a division made between “good quartos” and “bad quartos,” although the latter should really be known as “problem quartos” since textual scholars are uncertain about their status and provenance. The Folio of Shakespeare’s plays is an altogether different production. It was compiled after Shakespeare’s death by two of his fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condell, as a commemorative edition of Shakespeare’s work. It was first published in 1623, and for approximately three hundred years remained the definitive version of the Shakespearian canon.

The earliest biographical references to Shakespeare deserve mentioning. There are allusions and references in various published sources, during his lifetime, but there were no serious descriptions or assessments of his plays. Ben Jonson ventured a brief account in Timber: or, Discoveries Made upon Men and Matter (1641) and some biographical notes were composed by John Aubrey without being published in his lifetime. The first extended biography was Nicholas Rowe’s prefatory Life in Jacob Tonson’s edition of the Works of Shakespeare (1709), and this was followed by the various surmises of eighteenth-century antiquarians and scholars such as Samuel Ireland and Edmond Malone. The vogue for Shakespearean biography itself arose in the mid- to late nineteenth century, with the publication of Edward Dowden’s Shakespeare: A Critical Study of His Mind and Art (the first edition of which was published in 1875), and has not abated since.

Part I. Stratford-upon-Avon

The title page of this edition of The Bishops’ Bible shows the enthroned Queen Elizabeth I surrounded by the female personifications of Justice, Mercy (Temperance), Prudence and Fortitude. During his schoolboy years, Shakespeare would have become familiar with the vigorous language of the Bible recently translated into English.

CHAPTER 1. There Was a Starre Daunst, and Vnder That Was I Borne

William Shakespeare is popularly supposed to have been born on 23 April 1564, or St. George’s Day. The date may in fact have been 21 April or 22 April, but the coincidence of the national festival is at least appropriate.

When he emerged from the womb into the world of time, with the assistance of a midwife, an infant of the sixteenth century was washed and then “swaddled” by being wrapped tightly in soft cloth. Then he was carried downstairs in order to be presented to the father. After this ritual greeting, he was taken back to the birth-chamber, still warm and dark, where he was laid beside the mother. She was meant to “draw to her all the diseases from the child,”¹ before her infant was put in a cradle. A small portion of butter and honey was usually placed in the baby’s mouth. It was the custom in Warwickshire to give the suckling child hare’s brains reduced to jelly.

The date of Shakespeare’s christening, unlike that of his birth, is exactly known: he was baptised in the Church of the Holy Trinity, in Stratford, on Wednesday 26 April 1564. In the register of that church, the parish clerk has written Guilelmus filius Johannes Shakespere; he slipped in his Latin, and should have written Johannis.