Shakespeare

It is a demanding poetry once more recalling that of Shakespeare’s contemporary John Donne. It is even possible that there was in this period a fashion for difficult poetry, which Shakespeare mastered just as he mastered every other form. It is a difficult play but it is also a dry play, an abortive exercise in comic form. We do not need to suppose any great crisis in Shakespeare’s creative or personal life, as some biographers have suggested, in order to explain this loss of power. A dark thought took wing into a dark valley which, once thoroughly investigated, proved barren and boring. That is all.

CHAPTER 78. The Bitter Disposition of the Time

On 24 July, 1605, Shakespeare invested £440 in tithes or, as the official document states, “one half of all tythes of corne and grayne aryseing within the townes villages and fieldes of Old Stratford, Byshopton and Welcombe” as well as “half of all tythes of wooll and lambe, and of all small and privy tythes.”¹ A tithe had originally been a tenth part of the produce from the land, paid by farmer or tenant to the Church; this archaic form of tribute had then been passed to the Stratford Corporation at the time of the Reformation. Shakespeare was leasing his tithes from the corporation for a period of thirty-one years. At this late date it sounds a complicated matter, but at the time it was a conventional and familiar way of securing a reasonable income. The sum laid out by Shakespeare was in fact a very large one, and he could not raise the whole amount at one time; a year later he still owed some £20 to the vendor, Ralph Hubaud. He expected an annual return on his investment of something like £60, which was in itself a reasonable income. There were, however, one or two additional costs. He collected the tithes but was obliged to pay an annual fee of £17 to the Corporation of Stratford for the privilege. Nevertheless he still gathered a large amount.

The fact that his tithe lease ran for thirty-one years is evidence that he was intent upon securing his family’s future after his death. It was a question of social, as well as financial, status. As the owner of tithes he was classified as a “lay rector,” and had earned the right to be buried within the rails of the chancel of Stratford Church; it was a right that was taken up at his behest or on his behalf. Meanwhile his purchase of New Place had given him the right to a reserved pew in the church. He seems always to have been concerned about his precise social standing in his old town. It was in this period, too, that he rented out the eastern part of the family house in Henley Street to brewers by the name of Hiccox.

The transaction concerning the tithes was witnessed by two friends who would at a later date be named in his will, Anthony Nash of Welcombe and the lawyer Francis Collins. It is a mark of the invisibility of Shakespeare’s Stratford life that little is known of these gentlemen, who played an intimate and familiar part in the dramatist’s commercial affairs. They were part of a world very different from that of the players and playgoers, but he was equally at home in their company.

His prosperity did not go unremarked and in a fictional “biography” published this year of a notorious highwayman, Gamaliel Ratsey, there are references to actors who “are grown so wealthy that they have expected to be knighted, or at least to be cojunct in authority and to sit with men of great worship.” There is also a clear allusion to Shakespeare in the remark that “thou shalt learne to be frugall … to make thy hand a stranger to thy pocket… and when thou feelest thy purse well-lined, buy thee some Place or lordship in the country, that growing weary of playing thy mony may there bring thee to dignitie and reputation.”² The anonymous writer goes on to say that “I haue heard indeede, of some that haue gone to London very meanly, and haue come in time to be exceeding wealthy.” This fits Shakespeare’s case exactly. The little volume seems to have been written by someone who knew of Shakespeare’s affairs, and it is interesting that he should emphasise the dramatist’s obvious thrift as well as his success.