Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s father, John Shakespeare, embarked at an early age on a prosperous career. Although there were already Shakespeares settled in Stratford, he was a native of Snitterfield. His younger brother, Henry, remained a Snitterfield farmer, but John did not choose to work only in the family business. He wished to pursue other trades as well. He was, in the tradition of striving first sons, moving upwards through the world. His own son would follow him. John Shakespeare left the farm in order to be enrolled as an apprentice to a glover in Stratford. The most plausible candidate for his master is Thomas Dixon, who was the innkeeper of the Swan, at the bottom of Bridge Street, as well as a master glover. His wife came from Snitterfield.

John Shakespeare’s apprenticeship lasted for seven years, and in the Stratford records of 1556 he was listed as a “glover.” He was then twenty-seven, and he would already have pursued the trade for a few years. In later documents he is described as a “whittawer” or dresser of “tawed” or un-tanned white leather. He soaked and scraped the skins of horses and deer, sheep and hounds, before softening them with salt and alum; they were placed in pots of urine or excrement before being laid out in the garden to dry. It was a messy and smelly business. From the evidence of his drama Shakespeare had a pronounced aversion to unpleasant smells. When the skins had been rendered tender and pliant they were cut to pattern with knife and scissors as they assumed the shape of gloves, purses, belts and bags. They were then hung on a rod by the window in order to attract custom. Shakespeare often mentions the trade, and its products, in his plays. He knows the varieties of leather, from dog-skin to deer-skin, and lists the assortment of items that his father sold, from shoes of neat’s leather to bridles of sheep’s leather and the bags of sow-skin carried by tinkers. “Is not Parchment made of sheepe-skinnes?” Hamlet’s question is answered by Horatio with a further refinement: “I, my Lord, and of Calues-skinnes to” (3082-3). Gloves, particularly those made of cheveril or kid-skin, are praised by Shakespeare for their softness; there are references to a “soft chiuerell Conscience” (All Is True, 996) and “a wit of cheuerell, that stretches from an ynch narrow, to an ell broad” (Romeo and Juliet, 1139-40). Shakespeare describes gloves continually, whether worn in the hat or thrown down as a pledge. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Mistress Quickly remarks upon “a great round Beard, like a Glouer’s pairing-knife.” This is the language of close observation.

John Shakespeare had a ground-floor shop at the front of his house, looking out upon Henley Street, with outbuildings at the back for stretching and drying. He found employment here for one or two apprentices or “stitchers.” His “sign” was a pair of glover’s compasses. He also set up a stall on market-days by the High Cross, where the cheapest gloves sold at 4 pence a pair; lined and embroidered items were of course far more expensive. It would be interesting to see his eldest son helping to attract custom at this Thursday morning market; but on most weekday mornings he was at school. Nevertheless every business was in some sense a family business.

John Shakespeare was a member of the glovers’ guild. The making and selling of gloves was a well-developed and thriving Stratford trade. Between 1570 and 1630, there were some twenty-three glovers in the town. But he had other occupations as well. He was still a yeoman farmer, and farmed land with his father in Snitterfield and with his younger brother in the neighbouring village of Ingon. Here he reared and slaughtered the animals whose skins were later converted into leather; hence derive later Stratford reports that Shakespeare’s father was a butcher and that the young Shakespeare had become a butcher’s apprentice. Behind all local legends, there lies a modicum of ascertainable fact. There are indeed a number of references to butchers and to butchery in Shakespeare’s dramas, most notably connected with the relationship between sons and fathers; Shakespeare knows the various shades and textures of blood, as well as the “uncleanly sauours of a Slaughterhouse” (King John, 2002). There is a suggestive connection.