Shakespeare

The original family may have been of Norman derivation. In the Great Rolls of Normandy, dated 1195, there is found “William Sakeespee”; a late thirteenth-century Norman romance, Le Chatelain de Couci, was composed by “Jakemes Sakesep.” It is also true that the Shakespeare families of England preferred Christian names that were characteristically Norman. The surname itself seems to have had some militaristic association, and in Shakespeare’s lifetime there were some who were impressed by its martial ring. An early sixteenth-century text suggests that it was “imposed upon the first bearers … for valour and feats of arms.”² It is suggestive, then, that when Shakespeare’s father applied for a coat of arms, he claimed that his grandfather had been rewarded by Henry VII for “faithfull amp; valeant service.”³ Shakespeare was also used as a nickname “for a belligerent person, or perhaps a bawdy name for an exhibitionist.”⁴ For this reason it was sometimes regarded as a “base” name. In 1487 Hugo Shakespeare wished to change his surname because “vile reputatum est”⁵ (it was considered “low”). Similar obloquy was later heaped upon the name of Dickens.

The first mention of the name in English records is of “William Sakspeer” in 1248; he came from the village of Clopton, just a few miles outside Stratford. From the thirteenth century the name often occurs in Warwickshire records; it was a family name of long local settlement, in a literal sense part of the landscape. This may help to explain the rootedness of Shakespeare himself within English culture. Thomas Shakespere was living in Coventry in 1359. William Shakespere dwelled in the southern part of Balsall in 1385. Adam Shakespere was part of the manor of Baddesley Clinton in 1389. The religious guild of Knowle had as its members Richard and Alice Shakspere, in 1457, subsequently joined by Ralph Schakespeire in 1464. Thomas and Alice Shakespere, of Balsall, entered the same guild in 1486.

There are many other Shakespeares of later date in Balsall, Baddesley, Knowle, Wroxall and neighbouring villages; the names and dates provide clear evidence of an extended family of siblings and cousins living within a geographical area a few miles in extent. Many of them were part of the guild of Knowle, fulfilling certain secular and religious obligations, and can therefore be considered good and observant Catholics. The prioress of the nuns’ house in Wroxall in the first years of the sixteenth century was Isabella Shakespeare; in 1526 that position, in characteristically medieval fashion, was in turn granted to Jane Shakspere. It was from this cluster of Shakespeares that William Shakespeare’s immediate ancestors came.

His grandfather, Richard Shakespeare, was a farmer of Snitterfield, a village four miles north of Stratford. He was the son either of John Shakeschaffte of Balsall, or of Adam Shakespere of Baddesley Clinton; whatever his exact paternity, his origin is clear. He was an affluent farmer, commonly known as a husbandman, with two sets of land in the vicinity. Snitterfield itself was a scattered parish with a church and manor-house, ancient farmhouses and cottages, presiding over a mixed landscape of woodland and pasture, heath and meadow. This was the landscape for part of the dramatist’s childhood.

There was a further familial bond. Richard Shakespeare’s house and grounds were leased from Robert Arden, the father of Mary Arden, whom John Shakespeare later married. The dramatist’s mother and father knew each other from an early age, therefore, and doubtless met in Richard Shakespeare’s old house on the High Street whose land stretched down to a little brook. It had a hall and several bedchambers; by the standard of the time it was an imposing dwelling. John Shakespeare himself grew up in the life and atmosphere of the farm. He was born in 1529, the year that his father is first known in Snitterfield, and it seems likely that Richard Shakespeare moved to this area with his new wife and anticipated family.

Richard Shakespeare left in his will the sum of £38 14s 0d, which demonstrates that he was by the standard of his age and position living in modest affluence. He was fined on occasions, for not attending the manorial court and for not controlling his livestock or yoking his swine, but he was a man of some substance in the little community of Snitterfield. A friend of his living in Stratford, Thomas Atwood, bequeathed him a team of oxen. He sat on juries in order to appraise his neighbours’ goods, and seems to have also been enrolled in the religious guild of Knowle. He was in that sense the image of the Shakespeare family itself, in its affluence, in its solidity, and also in its occasional recklessness. It is sometimes conjectured that Shakespeare sprang from a race of illiterate peasants, but that is emphatically not the case.