November 7, 2011
William Shakespeare, Gangster
The "Chandos Portrait" of Shakespeare–dating to c.1600 and one of only two that may have been painted from life–is thought to be the work of the playwright's "intimate friend" John Taylor of the Painter-Stainers' Company (though it may not show Shakespeare at all). Its be-earringed playwright, pictured without the usual ruff, seems to show an altogether tougher character than the figure that appears in more familiar likenesses.
You wouldn’t think it by looking at the long line of Shakespeare biographies on the library shelves, but everything we know for sure about the life of the world’s most revered playwright would fit comfortably on a few pages.
Yes, we know that a man named Will Shakespeare was born in the Warwickshire town of Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. We know that someone of pretty much the same name married and had children there (the baptismal register says Shaxpere, the marriage bond Shagspere), that he went to London, was an actor. We know that some of the most wonderful plays ever written were published under this man’s name–though we also know so little about his education, experiences and influences that an entire literary industry exists to prove that Shaxpere-Shagspere did not write, could not have written, them. We know that our Shakespeare gave evidence in a single obscure court case, signed a couple of documents, went home to Stratford, made a will and died in 1616.
And that’s just about it.
In one sense, this is not especially surprising. We know as much about Shakespeare as we know about most of his contemporaries–Ben Jonson, for instance, remains such a cipher that we can’t be sure where he was born, to whom, or even exactly when. “The documentation for William Shakespeare is exactly what you would expect of a person of his position at that time,” says David Thomas of Britain’s National Archives. “It seems like a dearth only because we are so intensely interested in him.”
John Aubrey, the collector of many of the earliest anecdotes regarding Shakespeare. Illustration: Wikicommons.
To make matters worse, what does survive tends to be either evidence of dubious quality or material of the driest sort imaginable: fragments from legal records, mostly. The former category includes most of what we think we know about Shakespeare’s character; yet, with the exception of a couple of friends from the theatrical world who made brief mention of him around the time he died, most of the anecdotes that appear in Shakespeare biographies were not collected until decades, and sometimes centuries, after his death. John Aubrey, the noted antiquary and diarist, was among the first of these chroniclers, writing that the playwright’s father was a butcher, and that Shakespeare himself was “a handsome, well shap’t man: very good company, and of a very redie and pleasant smoothe Witt.” He was followed a few years later by the Reverend Richard Davies, who in the 1680s first wrote down the famous anecdote about Shakespeare’s leaving Stratford for London after being caught poaching deer on the lands of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote Park. Yet the sources of both men’s information remain obscure, and Aubrey, in particular, is known for writing down any bit of gossip that came to him.
There is not the least shred of evidence that anybody, in the early years of the Shakespeare cult, bothered to travel to Warwickshire to interview those in Stratford who had known the playwright, even though Shakespeare’s daughter Judith did not die until 1662 and his granddaughter was still alive in 1670. The information that we do have lacks credibility, and some of it appears to be untrue; the most recent research suggests that Shakespeare’s father was a wool merchant, not a butcher. He was wealthy enough to have been accused of usury–the loan of money at interest, forbidden to Christians–in 1570.
Absent firsthand information about Shakespeare’s life, the only real hope of finding out much more about him lies in making meticulous searches through the surviving records of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. The British National Archives contains tons of ancient public records, ranging from tax records to writs, but this material is written in cramped, jargon-ridden and abbreviated dog Latin that cannot be deciphered without lengthy training. Only a very few scholars have been willing to devote years of their lives to the potentially fruitless pursuit of Shakespeare’s name through this endless word-mine, and the lack of firm information about Shakespeare’s life has had important consequences, not least for those who attempt to write it. As Bill Bryson puts it:
With so little to go on in the way of hard facts, students of Shakespeare’s life are left with essentially three possibilities: to pick minutely over…hundreds of thousands of records, without indexes or cross references, each potentially involving any of 200,000 citizens, [in which] Shakespeare’s name, if it appears at all, might be spelled in 80 different ways, or blotted or abbreviated beyond recognition…to speculate…or to persuade themselves that they know more than they actually do. Even the most careful biographers sometimes take a supposition–that Shakespeare was Catholic or happily married or fond of the countryside or kindly disposed towards animals–and convert it within a page or two to something like a certainty. The urge to switch from the subjunctive to the indicative is… always a powerful one.
Bryson is, of course, quite right; most Shakespeare biographies are highly speculative. But this only makes it all the more remarkable that scholars of Shakespeare have chosen to pretty much ignore one of the very few new documents to emerge from the National Archives over the last century. It is an obscure legal paper, unearthed from a set of ancient sheets of vellum known as “sureties of the peace”, and it not only names Shakespeare but lists a number of his close associates. The document portrays the “gentle Shakespeare” that we met in high school English class as a dangerous thug; indeed, it has been plausibly suggested that it proves he was heavily involved in organized crime.
Exploring this unlighted lane in Shakespeare’s life means, first, looking at the crucial document. “Be it known,” the Latin text begins,
The 1596 writ charging Shakespeare with making death threats, discovered in Britain's National Archives by the Canadian scholar Leslie Hotson in 1931. The second of the four entries is the one relating to the playwright.
that William Wayte craves sureties [guarantees] of the peace against William Shakspere, Francis Langley, Dorothy Soer wife of John Soer, and Anne Lee, for fear of death, and so forth. Writ of attachment issued by the sheriff of Surrey, returnable on the eighteenth of St Martin [November 29, 1596].
A few pages away in the same collection of documents, there is a second writ, issued by Francis Langley and making similar charges against William Wayte.
Who are these people, each alleging the other was issuing death threats? The scholar who unearthed the document—an indefatigable Canadian by the name of Leslie Hotson, best remembered today as the man who first stumbled across the records of the inquest into the highly mysterious murder of Shakespeare’s fellow playwright, Christopher Marlowe—uncovered a squalid tale of gangland rivalries in the theatrical underworld of Queen Elizabeth’s day.
According to Hotson’s researches, Shakespeare was an energetic, quick-witted but only sketchily educated country boy—perfect qualifications for someone trying to make his way in the bohemian and morally dubious world of the theater. That world was far from respectable in those days; that is why London’s playhouses were clustered on the south bank of the Thames, in the borough of Southwark, outside the jurisdiction of the City of London–and why the document Hotson discovered lies with the Surrey writs and not among those dealing with London proper.
The shady pleasure districts of Southwark in Shakespeare's time—safely on the far side of the river from the forces of law and order.
As a newcomer to the big city, Hotson realized, Shakespeare was obliged to begin his career on a lowly rung, working for disreputable theater people—which, at that time, was generally regarded as akin to working in a brothel. Theaters were meeting places for people whose interest in the opposite sex did not extend to marriage; they were also infested with crooks, pimps and prostitutes, and attracted an audience whose interest in the performance on stage was often minimal. This, of course, explains why the Puritans were so quick to ban public entertainments when they got the chance.
What seems certain is that the work that the young Shakespeare found took him to the shadiest part of the theater world. Most biographers suggest his first employer was Philip Henslowe, who became wealthy as much from his work as a brothel landlord as he did as a theatrical impresario. Nor was the playwright’s next boss, Langley, much of a step up.
Langley, as Hotson’s minutely careful research shows, had made much of his fortune by crooked means, and was the subject of a lengthy charge sheet that included allegations of violence and extortion. He was the owner of the newly constructed Swan Theater, which the Lord Mayor of London had campaigned against, fruitlessly, on the ground that it would be a meeting spot for “thieves, horse-stealers, whoremongers, cozeners, connycatching persons, practisers of treason, and such other like”–a formidable list, if you know that “cozeners” were petty confidence men and “connycatchers” were card sharps.
Langley’s most dangerous opponent was William Wayte, the man who accused Shakespeare of threatening him. Wayte was noted as the violent henchman of his stepfather, William Gardiner, a Surrey magistrate whom Hotson was able to show was highly corrupt. Gardiner made a living as a leather merchant in the upmarket district of Bermondsey, but most of his money came from criminal dealings. Legal records show that several members of his wife’s family sued him for swindling them; at different times he was found guilty of slander and “insulting and violent behaviour,” and he served a brief prison sentence for the latter. Gardiner’s appointment as a magistrate indicates no probity, merely the financial resources to make good any sums due to the crown in the event that some prisoner defaulted on them. Since they took this risk, most magistrates were not above exploiting their post to enriching themselves.
Biographers who have made mention of the writ’s discovery since Hotson made it in 1931 have tended to dismiss it. Shakespeare must simply have got caught up in some quarrel as a friend of Langley’s, they suggest–on very little evidence, but with the certainty that the author of Hamlet could never have been some sort of criminal. Thus the evidence of the sureties, Bill Bryson proposes, is “entirely puzzling,” while for the great biographer Samuel Schoenbaum, the most plausible explanation is that Shakespeare was an innocent witness to other men’s quarrels.
A contemporary depiction of the Globe Theatre, part-owned by Shakespeare and built on much the same model as Francis Langley's Swan.
This seems almost willful distortion of the evidence, which seems fairly unambiguously to show that the playwright—who is named first in the writ–was directly involved in the dispute. Indeed, Hotson’s researches tend to suggest that Langley and Gardiner were in more or less open conflict with each other for the spoils of the various rackets that theater owners dabbled in—that their dispute was, in John Michell’s phrase, “the usual one between urban gangsters, that is, control of the local vice trade and organized crime.” And since Shakespeare “was principal in their quarrel,” Michell reasonably concludes, “presumably he was involved in their rackets.”
Certainly, Will’s other associates seem to have been no more salubrious that Langley and Gardiner. Wayte was described in another legal case as a “loose person of no reckoning or value.” And though Hotson could discover nothing definite about Soer and Lee, the two women in the case, he plainly suspected that they were associated with Langley through his extensive interests in the Southwark brothel business. Shakespeare, meanwhile, was perhaps the man who supplied Langley with muscle, just as Wayte did for Gardiner. As much is suggested by one of the four principal portraits supposed to show him: the controversial “Chandos portrait” once owned by the Duke of Buckingham. As Bill Bryson points out, this canvas seems to depict a man far from the diffident and balding literary figure portrayed by other artists. The man in the Chandos portrait disturbed Schoenbaum, who commented on his “wanton air” and “lubricious lips.” He “was not, you sense,” Bryson suggests, “a man to whom you would lightly entrust a wife or grown daughter.”
There is plenty of evidence elsewhere that Shakespeare was somewhat less than a sensitive poet and entirely honest citizen. Legal records show that him dodging from rented room to rented room while defaulting on a few shillings’ worth of tax payments in 1596, 1598 and 1599—though why he went to so much trouble remains obscure, since the totals demanded were tiny compared to the sums that other records suggest he was spending on property at the same time. He also sued at least three men for equally insignificant sums. Nor was Will’s reputation among other literary men too good; when a rival playwright, Robert Greene, was on his deathbed, he condemned Shakespeare for having “purloined his plumes”—that is, cheated him out of his literary property—and warned others not to fall into the hands of this “upstart crow.”
That Will Shakespeare was somehow involved in the low-life rackets of Southwark seems, from Hotson’s evidence, reasonably certain. Whether he remained involved in them past 1597, though, it is impossible to say. He certainly combined his activities as one of Langley’s henchmen with the gentler work of writing plays, and by 1597 was able to spend £60—a large sum for the day—on purchasing the New Place, Stratford, a mansion with extensive gardens that was the second-largest house in his home town. It is tempting to speculate, however, whether the profits that paid for such an opulent residence came from Will’s writing–or from a sideline as strong-arm man to an extortionist.
Sources
Brian Bouchard. “William Gardiner.” Epson & Ewell History Explorer. Accessed August 20, 2011. Bill Bryson. Shakespeare: the World as a Stage. London: Harper Perennial, 2007; Leslie Hotson. Shakespeare Versus Shallow. London: The Nonesuch Press, 1931; William Ingram. A London Life in the Brazen Age: Francis Langley, 1548-1602. Cambridge [MA]: Harvard University Press, 1978; John Michell. Who Wrote Shakespeare? London: Thames & Hudson, 1996; Oliver Hood Phillips. Shakespeare and the Lawyers. Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 1972; Ian Wilson. Shakespeare: The Evidence. Unlocking the Mysteries of the Man and His Work. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999.
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What a great article! I knew about Shakespeare’s involvement in the legal case involving a Huguenot couple wanting their dowery (retold in “The Lodger Shakespeare”), and that there is a letter to WS from a Stratfordian asking for a loan (which indicated he had a rep for loaning money and that he had a bit of the doss).
He was also involved in a bit of tax evasion as well, according to the records, which I wrote about on my website at http://planetpeschel.com/wp/2008/11/much-ado-about-shakespeares-taxes-1597/.
Given the difficulty of reading those records, which “The Lodger” describes in detail, one hopes someone can come up with a variation of handwriting recognition software in which they can be scanned and translated, and then cleaned up through crowdsourcing. Imagine what results that could yield, not only about Shakes, but the whole of England at that time!
Very timely article! With so much “ado” over the recent release of a movie that has stirred controversy to Shakespearean proportions, this historical stray from Hollywood-style drama lends credence to that old saying that Fact is truly stranger than Fiction. As always, thanks for the tasty, intriguing morsel.
Remarkable article given the near patriotic zeal of making excuses for the unlikely Shakspere as Shakespeare. You did not refer to another legal imbroglio, the Belott-Mountjoy case. One participant was the son in law of the other. One was known to be involved with brothels. Shakspere had been friends with this family for a dozen years, room and boarding there when he was in London. At the hearing he could not remember the year of his birth, did not sign his name in anything like a practiced signature. His will was not literate, the stock form used in the area, based on a previous will that was no longer current, hence the numerous interlineations, including the supposed memorial gifts to his actor fellows for rings. No education funds provided for the local grammar school, nor for his grandson. This was a shaming act, since citizens provided funds with gratitude and admonishments to the value of education. I am led personally to the conclusion this was not a literate, certainly not a cultivated man, in no way the man the legend makes him. You would need a ton of special excuses to get to the magnificent spirit of the works, and the philosophy of the author, who must feel it or be unable to express it. On the other hand, Edward de Vere if he had faults they were those of the throwback countryman and the honorable rebel, not the cheating miser. His strengths were exactly those of a Shakespeare.
Please do highlight the Belott Montjoy case. Because of it we have a signature of Shakespeare which he spells differently to the lawyers who in their depositions all name him as William Shakespeare, Gent. Also we know from this that his collaboration with George Wilkins on Pericles after Oxford’s death. George was a pimp and pamphleteer who produced a novel version of this play after the collaboration.
It is also evidence of his continuing love of the French language through the french speaking Montjoys.
This miserly comparison of Shakespeare with Oxford above by William J Ray is typical. It’s not if he had faults WJR.
Oxford was a dead beat dad and murderer. Though the murder was ruled a suicide as the servant apparently ran onto de Vere’s sword. yeah right.
I thought the Gardiner who made the most money out of Southwark brothels, was the Bishop of Winchester, who died before Elizabeth ascended the throne, and who engaged in a great theological debate with the martyred Archbishop Cranmer. But I may be wrong.
Two Gardiners, but both involved in the brothel trade.
How doth thou like me now? This is great. I had no idea how gangsta Shakespeare was. It seems he had more in common with Dr. Dre than I thought. He was even more OG than Robert Burchfield. Respect.
“. . . why he went to so much trouble remains obscure. . .”
Perhaps not so obscure, if we acknowledge that, in the context of early modern justice, “equity is a roguish thing.”
http://wp.me/1WZ4J
Could this unsavory character been another with the same name?
It is just possible–but unlikely, given the connection to the theater business. Francis Langley is exactly the sort of person Shakespeare the playwright would have known.
This seems like a lot of assumptions – if Shakespeare’s named appeared 80 different ways in various writings, surely there could be a lot of confusion with other contemporary people. People so badly want to fill in gaps in the life of a historical figure that have simply been lost in time, that they seem willing to grab onto any shaky hypothesis and treat it as fact. Let sleeping Bards lay.
This seems a lot of ‘likely’ assumptions. I take the evidence to be quite corraborative (sp?). It seems to me that the evidence of his being the quiet, private, comtemplative poet is less likely as assumptions now.
It seems rather credulous of Mr. Bouchard to assume malfeasance on Shakespeare’s part from his purported association with theater people whom some scholars find unsavory. Mr. B. also seems to me a bit too quick to agree with others that a portrait that “may have been painted from life” shows WS to be a rather unwholesome fellow. Must journalism be sensational?
It’s not hard to imagine a money-lender being involved in collecting hard money loans. It is also easy to imagine Will Shaksper taking stage outfits for a defaulted loan, as that is most likely his part of investing. If the theaters were closed because of money-lending, why assume that a money-lender was not plying his trade in a lease he was 10% owner of? And I also think it is possible that the Earl of Oxford knew Shaksper in regards to small but timely loans, if indeed, they did know each other. Oxford’s widow denoted a payment to “her dumb man”, small chance that could be none other than our shady swan of Avon. What a wonderful mystery, which it forever remain, in spite of the mountain of circumstantial evidence that logically proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Edward de Vere was the man behind the obvious pen-name “Shake-speare”.
The “Shakespeare did not write ‘Shakespeare’” debate is laughable. What do we know? Only that a number of plays and sonnets were published and attributed to someone named “William Shakespeare”. That creates a logical presumption that William Shakespeare was the author. It is the burden of those who claim that he was not the author to overcome that presumption. That has never been done. The most the doubters can come up with is that given what they don’t know about him, that is, how such an apparently humble origined person such as he could write such masterpieces, he therefore could not possibly have written them. One must ask the doubters, do you have better evidence that someone else wrote them? The answer, obviously, is “no”. Therefore, when you ask who wrote Shakespeare, be satisified with the name Shakespeare. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Stewart, the answer is Yes. We DO have better evidence. As the evidence mounts AGAINST Shaksper of Stratford, it mounts FOR Oxford. Look at the 3rd Folio. Only one of the plays in it is today recognized as a Shakespeare play. Shakespeare was a brand used to sell plays. This disreputable character with a similar name, with little to no education (none on record), does not sound like the author of these sublime works.
William Sutton, please elaborate on the Montjoy connection and what documentary evidence there is that Shaksper spoke and read French. Also please explain your “proof” about the composition of Pericles. Thank you.
The assumption taken for granted by Stratfordians, and upon which the whole notion of Bardolatry is based, as a religious faith to be vehemently defended at all costs, is that because Shaksper of Stratford was involved with the Lord Chamberlains Men as a shareholder and possible actor, he must, ergo, be the same playwright William Shakespeare as named on the plays, even though there is absolutely no historical documentary evidence during his lifetime to warrant this transfer of identity. The name itself is an ironically appropriate pseudonym for a writer who wished to ‘shake a spear at ignorance’, especially as William Shake-speare, which name appeared on the Sonnets and half the plays which weren’t published anonymously.
At one enormous fell stroke of flawed logic, Stratfordians have elevated a simple semi-literate country boy with uncertain education and little history to speak of, especially literary, to the level of a God, “a man for all time” (Jonson), one who had the largest vocabulary of any person until recent times and an unrivalled field of specialized knowledge, skills, learning and interests, as well as mastery of five languages (see a fairly complete list of this knowledge at http://www.shakespeareunmasked.com/authors_mind.htm ). Because Bardolatry is a religion, it’s followers are too blinded to have been able to sense the complete absurdity of such an illogical position. Trying to shoehorn the overwhelming education and knowledge of the author into the known life of Shaksper (who also now turns out to be a thug and a gangster) is like trying to fit an ocean liner into the mooring space of a dinghy. Indeed, it has only been recently that, faced with such massed opposition to their man, Stratfordians have tried to so belittle Shakespeare’s acknowledged vast learning and knowledge that a grammar school education would be able to account for most of it, as well as tavern gossip and reading at bookstalls. Thus they prostitute the greatest author in the English language by bringing him down to Shaksper’s level.
If all the Shakespeare plays had been published anonymously and scholars had to identify the author, from Elizabethan records, based solely upon his knowledge, characteristics and qualities revealed throughout the plays, poetry and sonnets, NOT ONE SCRAP of information from Shaksper’s life would identify him as that person. Not from his known education, achievements, character, background or lifestyle. Zilch. Nada. And Stratfordians call the atheists delusional and holocaust deniers! The shoe is well and truly on the other foot.
It is well recorded now that only one person would qualify as a result of that scholarly search and that person is Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. Whereas Shaksper has NO evidence, direct or otherwise, to link him to the canon, de Vere has MANY HUNDREDS of pieces of circumstantial evidence to link him as the author, that number of which is growing all the time. He had all the education, lifestyle and life experience, access to obscure and foreign language literary sources, character, psychological makeup and acting background necessary to qualify. Indeed, NOTHING yet found eliminates him from the authorship, especially not his early death. Any argument so put forth reveals that proponent’s lack of understanding and knowledge of the latest, and also early, relevant Stratfordian research, some of which has been known since the 19th century and conveniently ignored, which is all freely available online.
It is still not fully understood why de Vere was compelled to use the pseudonym of ‘William Shakespeare’ and why the cover-up lasted as long as it has, but it surely has something to do with the anonymity required of aristocratic authors and of some shame, as per Sonnet 72, ‘My name be buried where my body is, And live no more to shame nor me nor you” and other sonnets where he bemoans enforced anonymity for eternity, hardly what Shaksper would have craved!.
In fact, that scholarly search has already been conducted, over 90 years ago, by John Thomas Looney in his book “Shakespeare Identified in Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford” published in 1920. History will soon show that this book is the literary equivalent of Darwin’s “Origin of Species”. With such widespread coverage of the Internet it is only a matter of time before Stratfordians are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of reality, of logic, instead of their adherence to blind faith and flawed tradition in their Shaksper of Stratford.
An interesting article with a few interesting points but many serious errors and inaccuracies and an obvious negative bias.
It is not true that “little is known” about Shakespeare (or Ben Jonson). We have lots of contemporary accounts and personal references about him as well as many detailed accounts of what London at the time and the theater district life was like specifically.
Will’s father was a glover (made fancy gloves for the aristocracy) , there is no doubt about this, he only dealt in wool and loans as a sideline. He was mayor of Stratford when Will as a boy and was prosperous and well respected. Will’s mother came from an upper class background.
Although there are no exact records, Will’s education was pretty well assumed, given his father’s status and his access to a free education through “Grammar” school. This would have given him the equivalent of a BA in Classics today – he could read and write Latin and Greek, studied Ovid and other Greek and Roman writers and playwrights, and there are numberless references to this in the plays – hardly a “sketchy” education !
As far as legal trouble, Will was a about the only major writer of his time who never was in trouble with the authorities (Ben Jonson was imprisoned several times and branded “M” for killing a fellow player). Most of his rivals died in their 20’s (Christopher Marlowe died in a bar fight at 29 years of age) or in their early 30’s. Will lived till his late 50’s. Robert Greene, referenced to in the article as if he was a respected equal, was perhaps the most notorious of all of the theater crowd, led a totally dissolute life and died an alcoholic at age 34. His comments on Will as an “upstart crow” are universally regarded as sour grapes. Some have speculated that Shakespeare based his comic character Falstaff (a fat knight given to wine, women, and song) on Greene. After Greene’s attack on Shakespeare the publisher retracted it and there are multiple contemporary references to Shakespeare’s good character, wit, friendship and incorruptibility. He did rent rooms in London, but did not move around a lot, changing his address to more upscale areas of town as his status and income improved. There were no identified “gangs” in Elizabethan or Jacobean London — while there was lots of crime and London was a very dangerous place (average lifespan in the city was late 30’s), both Queen Elizabeth and King James ran what was essentially a police state, crime was severely punished and businesses were tightly regulated, especially the theater (given it’s potentially dangerous political influences).
Will likely did know Francis Langley, the theatre world of London was quite small, but they were not likely close associates — Will worked at The Theater and later The Globe (where he was part owner), where his companies were based, although he likely did some acting at other theaters as well. Langley was the owner of The Swan, a rival and much less prosperous theater. Phillip Henslowe was never Shakespeare’s employer, he owned The Rose (as well as several brothels), home of a competing company, The Admirals Men (Will’s companies were The Lord Chamberland’s Men then later The King’s Men).
Shakespeare made his fortune (and he did make a fortune) through the very popular world of the theatre and through very astute land investments. EVERYONE went to the theaters, not just the lower classes. The Globe was HUGE (held close to 3,000) and there were about 6-8 theater’s of similar size in London as well as smaller indoor theaters – all for a population of less than 200,000. Shakespeare’s company performed for Queen Elizabeth many times a year and for King James on a regular basis as well. He was well know and respected in his day, the Andrew Lloyd Webber of his time. As a measure of this he was approved in his application for a coat of arms, allowing he and his family to achieve “gentility”, sign his name “gentleman”, and carry a sword. Only 2-3% of the English population achieved this status. Hardly the accomplishments of a lower class, shady criminal.
PS — as far as “Stratfordians” vs whoever there are no serious critics or researchers who entertain these theories, they were not even advanced till over 100 years after Shakespeare died…just a good way to sell books I suppose.
@ john taylor
It’s kind of hard to ignore that despite writing 700 words attacking the article you have nowhere explained how W.S., who you suggest may just barely have known Francis Langley, came to be named alongside him on a writ accusing him of issuing death threats, or why if he was so wealthy and so respectable he would have needed to issue threats of any kind to anyone.
To state that Shakespeare was “never in legal trouble” seems incredible given the incontestable fact that he was chased for three separate tax arrears, may well have moved south of the river specifically to escape the London equivalent of the IRS, and very plainly does feature prominently in the writ that is the basis of the article.
I have no opinion on the Stratfordian v Anti-Stratfordian argument. But I do think there’s pleading and then there’s special pleading. This smells of the latter.
I second Lee Cramond in his intelligent and forceful comments
. Oxford wrote Shake-speare.
Jeffrey Archer has proved that being a criminal is no impediment to literary output.
Thus Shakespeare being a “gangster” doesn’t mean he couldn’t be a playwright.
The idea that you can’t become a poet or playwright if you don’t possess the “right” education and background is disproved by examples such as Phillis Wheatley and Christy Brown. Being an African slave in colonial Massachusetts didn’t stop the teenaged Wheatley from becoming a published poet. Being born into a working-class Irish family and being almost completely paralyzed by cerebral palsy didn’t stop Brown from typing out novels and poems with his left foot. No matter how daunting the obstacles, if you have the talent and the determination, between you and the Muse you will find a way.
As for the authorship debate, I invite you to read my novel, “The Secret Confessions of Anne Shakespeare.” It may not convince you that Will’s wife Anne had a hand in writing the plays, but at least I know I’m writing fiction.
Arliss Ryan
http://www.arlissryan.com
There are a number of flaws in the de Vere as Shakespeare argument, of which the most telling is that he died five years before “The Tempest” was written, and four years before the events which inspired it.
Second, the prostitution business in Southwark was first established in 1161, by the Bishop of Winchester, whose palace was in Southwark on the river, and who was granted power to licence prostitutes and brothels in the Liberty of the Clink. This was the area covering the manor of the Bishop, and outside the jurisdiction of the City of London. Also in the Bishop’s power was the licensing of playhouses and bull-and bear-baiting rings. The prostitutes became known as Winchester Geese. “Goose bumps” was slang for the symptoms of venereal disease. When these women died, they were buried in Cross Bones, an unconsecrated cemetery for “single women.” Estimates of the total number of burials are around 14,000. The site is still there. So, the business went right up to the higher levels of the Church.
Finally, Shakespeare, Shaksper, Shakeshaft and suchlike are not uncommon names in England. It is entirely possible that some of these contentious records do not belong to the poet and playwright, whose brother is buried in Southwark.
The assumption taken for granted by Oxfordians, and upon which the whole notion of Oxfordolatry is based, as a religious faith to be vehemently defended at all costs, is that because Shaksper of Stratford didn’t behave the way *they* would if they were the author of the plays, he therefore, ergo, cannot be the same playwright William Shakespeare as named on the plays, even though there is absolutely no historical documentary evidence during his lifetime to warrant this denial of identity in favor of their idiosyncratic narcissism.
Always remember the Oxfordian creed: If the behavior of the author doesn’t match your own speculations, said behavior must be dismissed. An Oxfordian is the measure of all humans and humanity’s universal sense of what is and isn’t appropriate, especially the human who was the author.
Sounds like the usual upper-crusty sour grapes as when any upstart trumps the toffy-noses. I first heard the Oxford & De Vere stuff back in the 60s, and never gave it much credence, though I see that it’s gained much in popular view. Shakespeare’s now up there with the Grassy Knoll, Area 51 and faked moon landings IMO. 90% of what everyone says about Wm. S. is pure conjecture.
Here’s an equally plausible theory: The real Shakespeare perished serving in the lowlands and his identity was assumed by a Flanderenman, expl. Wm. S’s love of the French.
Here’s another: Wm. S. was not English, as it is highly unlikely that any Englishman could ever write with such lyric sensibility. He became Shakespeare through willful and habitual English illiteracy. Indeed, his true name was Guilliame Jaques-Pierre, which is why he loved the French so very much.
There is just as much proof for these theories as any of the above stated. Get real.
The court documents imply that Shakespeare and his partners may have threatened William Wate, a known crook, but they hardly prove that Shakespeare was a “dangerous thug” or “heavily involved in organized crime”. My interpretation is that Shakespeare and his colleagues had a business dispute with Wate and his partners, perhaps over a loan or unpaid theatrical services. Anyone who considers the terrifying speeches in some of Shakespeare’s plays (for example, Henry V or Richard III)can imagine that Shakespeare would be capable of delivering some gut-wrenching threats to Mr. Wate.
As an example of the kinds of verbal threats Shakespeare might have made to William Wate, consider the threats Henry V made to the defenders of Harfleur in KING HENRY V, Act 3:
“…with foul hand
Defile the locks of your shrill-shrieking daughters,
Your fathers taken by the silver beards,
And their most reverend heads dashed to the walls,
Your naked infants spitted upon pikes,
While the mad mothers with their howls confused
Do break the clouds…”
“As the evidence mounts AGAINST Shaksper of Stratford, it mounts FOR Oxford. Look at the 3rd Folio. Only one of the plays in it is today recognized as a Shakespeare play. Shakespeare was a brand used to sell plays.”
This is weak, even by the logical standards we have come to expect. The claim would seem to be that this is a publication containing a bunch of plays, only one of which is by Shakespeare. Actually it is a publication containing the plays found in the First Folio, plus seven more. Of these seven, only one is now thought to be by Shakespeare. The claim as stated is some combination of incompetently written and purposefully misleading.
The second tidbit of information about the Third Folio mysteriously omitted is that it was published nearly a half century after Shakespeare’s death. The additional plays were rather like a record company adding “bonus tracks” to the special edition CD, in the hope that some people will buy it even if they already own it. Yes, the publisher was sloppy about the actual authorship of these bonus plays. This is Deeply Significant how? It might tell us something about the publishing industry a half century after Shakespeare. But as support for some vast conspiracy theory, this is simply pathetic.
For that matter other famous artist-criminals include Dostoevsky, William S. Burroughs, Carlo Gesualdo, and quite a few shady but uncharged types like Lewis Carroll.
I wonder if it’s possible to have a reasonable discussion about Shakespeare on the Internet without people barging in to tell you that they know who Shakespeare really was.
WS as author of WS, and not someone else:
I quote from memory, but is it not Ben Jonson who said
about him that: “He had the phantsie most strongly.”
…assuming that by ‘phantsie’ he means powers of literary
invention.
A powerful endorsement regarding WS as a gifted writer,
coming from someone who should know.
Here’s G.E. Bentley on the Wayte affair: “A write like this one was a common device in Elizabethan quarrels; Shakespeare’s father had had one issued against four Stratford men fourteen years before…The procedure was exceedingly common at the time, and usually one can tell very little now about the justice of the complaints. Often, indeed, they were a form of retaliation, and it was the plaintiff himself who had previously been justly complained against by one or more of the parties he now accused. Something of the sort may well have happened in this case, for it is suggestive that just a few weeks before William Wayte made his complaint against Francis Langley and the others, the court had recorded that ‘Francis Langley craves sureties of the peace against William Gardener and William Wayte for fear of death, and so forth’.” I’m not saying Bentley settles the matter. He doesn’t cite numbers for how common this writ was, but I trust that he was sufficiently familiar with the archival evidence to make this kind of claim and put the incident in its proper historical context.
Finally, I would like to ask this question to the anti-Stratfordians: where would be a better place to learn to write plays, Oxbridge, or in the theater working as an actor and working with other playwrights. Shakespeare’s time in the companies would have been the best place for him to learn his craft. Also, most scholars acknowledge that Shakespeare didn’t write all his plays word for word: he collaborated with other writers and the actors in his company.
I contend that Shakespeare’s plays were not written by Shakespeare, but by another writer of the same name.
;)
Pay no attention to Oxfordians. Their ignorance is encyclopaedic, their dementia incurable, their self-regard limitless. The vicious mediocrity Edward de Vere could not even write decent verse in his own name, let alone under a pseudonym, and there is no “circumstantial evidence” for his authorship of Shakespeare’s plays outside the fevered imaginations of these conspiracy-freak simpletons. Mr WIlliam Shakespeare of Stratford wrote the plays attributed to Mr Shakespeare.
“Conspiracy-freak simpletons.” Really? The authorship question is legitimate, and describing it as a conspiracy is not fair. Pseudonyms in literary history are very common and are by no means defined as conspiracies. But because it was a pseudonym for the most celebrated author, the rules of the game change. Whatever belief you have, the mystery of Shakespeare’s life has staying power. There are many thoughtful, intelligent people who profoundly love the art and craft of Shakespeare and they do not believe. Almost all of us are taught by orthodoxy and learn to “interpret” the texts based on orthodoxy beliefs. All of the editions of Shakespeare’s plays are edited by orthodox scholars. But some of us look into the matter further, dare I say deeper, and ask questions that orthodoxy doesn’t ask or is afraid to. If anything, the authorship question is about courage and intellectual honesty. Personally, what I saw over and over again when reading the life of Shakespeare by orthodox biographers was a complete disregard for rigour. It is with a touch of pathetic irony that orthodoxy’s biggest challenge is not the simpletons on the other side of the church aisle but its own rigour mortis.
The reason that William Shakespeare is the first of four persons named on William Wate’s petition for surety is not necessarily that Shakespeare was the chief threatener to Wate. More likely it reflects Shakespeare’s higher social standing. By November 1596, Shakespeare had secured a grant-of-arms for his father and thus became a second-generation gentleman. Elizabethan lists of names would place the highest ranking persons first, especially in legal documents.
What a lot of trainspotters writing here. I am always dubious about discovering biographical details regarding artists whose work I admire. They so frequently disappoint, appearing and appearing as none other than flawed humans. The list of dislikeable geniuses is a long one.
As we can never know the ‘truth’ about who wrote the works of ‘Shakespeare’…what does it matter? Does it enrich our understanding of the work? Surely the greatness of said work is in the universal truths and humanity captured therein, and doesn’t need to be contextualised before we can understand it.
I’ll believe this when “Cliff Notes” comes out with a new edition and says so!
didn’t homer write all the shakespeare plays
:)
The best argument against de vere as author of the plays is to read the poetry we know he wrote. It is not bad at all but it is not of the quality one would expect from the author of the Shakespearean work.
After his death, Shakespeare’s plays were collected by his friends and published in his honor at their expense. The men mentioned in his will were his fellow players. Ben Jonson knew him and worked with him and said he wrote them and in fact complained that he overwrote them.
As for the notion that he had little formal education, please consider that America’s greatest novelist had one year of college and got a D in his one english class at the University of Mississippi.
You assert that “Absent firsthand information about Shakespeare’s life, the only real hope of finding out much more about him lies in making meticulous searches through the surviving records of late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England.”
Lancastrians believe that Shakespeare spent his so called (mythological, England-spinned tale) in Europe studying with the Jesuits like St. Campion. Some of us even claim to find Shakespeare checking out Greek and Latin books from the Vatican during his so called ‘lost’ years.
He was not a thug but an anarchist writing in a clearly recognizable code to rail against the tyrannical, fascist rule of Elizabeth (another socially constructed myth as being one who oversaw the Golden Age of Dram – oh such politically produced mush for British Literature textbooks over the last century).
Probably THE most radical rabbble-rouser ever known in Western Civilization – Shakespeare was. Thank God we still talk about him. I suspect that is because we hear his voice despite the state’s effort’s over the centuries to disguise it.
The names of several dozen people, most commonly Sir Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Edward de Vere, have been suggested as the “real” Shakespeares. My master’s thesis was on the authorship question. The first thing I discovered is that virtually all of those anti-Stratfordians are trained in many fields — except LITERATURE. I’ll bet few of the doubters have even read more than a handful of the plays. There’s a huge step between actual authorship and the “might have,” “could have” speculations that favor people like deVere. Do we have ANY evidence the 17th Earl of Oxford (de Vere) wrote anything literary?
@Pat Macauley, #36: On the reason Shakespeare was listed first in the arrest warrant, can you please tell me how William of Stratford would have been considered more of a gentleman than Francis Langley, who was Lord of the Manor of Paris Garden? If anything, this writ suggests that the “Shakespeare” who prowled the streets with Langley and two threatening women in tow was NOT “Shakspear ye player” of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.
@Mike Dash: Thanks for retrieving this gem from the dustbin. May I suggest that you follow up by reading Ben Jonson’s “Poetaster” and Dekker and Marston’s response, “Satiromastix”, both of 1601? In the second play, the portrait of “Captain Tucca”, with his band of rowdy women whom he cajoles into tormenting Horace (Ben Jonson) seems to mirror the threatening quartet of Shakespeare, Langley, Anna Lee and Dorothy Soer.
Very interesting and well documented article. One track that hasn’t been explored so far could suggest that the quarrel opposing William Wayte and Gardiner with Shakespeare and his theatre fellows could come, not from theatre related business, but from the leather trade in which Gardiner, but also Shakespeare’s father were involved. I would strongly suggest to wait for a book to be published next month before deciding if Shakespeare, the author could have been Shakespeare, the Stratford so called “illiterate” man.
http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=8503&pc=9
@Marie Merkel, #43. William Shakespeare was a gentleman by right, as the oldest son of John Shakespeare who had received a grant-of-arms. Francis Langley was “Lord of the Manor of Paris Garden” by virtue of his purchase of this property. He was not allowed to call himself “Lord Langley”. Paris Garden was sold after Langley’s death. Simply owning Paris Garden did not make Langley a gentleman with rights-of-arms, and he was not Shakespeare’s social equal in Elizabethan England unless he had received a grant-of-arms.
The real problem it seems to me is that lives of writers often clash with the ideals they subscribe to. In the case of Shakespeare (whoever he is!) his plays, sonnets and long poems in their totality are what he is and what he will be for the likes of me. He continues to inspire.
Can the de Vere lot tell us who wrote the Discworld novels?
It can’t possibly have been Terry Pratchett . . . leaving school at 17, working for a minor newspaper then going into PR work is patently not the correct background to produce the body of work attributed to this man.
Can you dig out a Tolkein equivalent?
And how is it, anyway, that Oxford and Cambridge turn out hundreds of English literature graduates who can’t write home for money?
This article takes evidence of a probably drunken fight and a few unpaid bills, and builds it up into a picture of Shakespeare as a professional criminal. News flash: Street fights were far less scandalous in the Elizabethan age than ours, poets did not always pay all their bills, and Shakespeare’s rival poets were jealous of his success. So what?
And, since Shakespeare was not an aristocrat who could afford to write plays as a mere courtly accomplishment, there was no other way for him to be a playwright at all than to mingle in the “shady” world of the theatre with all its pickpockets and so forth (whose presence, anyway, was found in many other public places as well).
Yes you may be right about some of his shisty ways, another way to look at this is he was also a thief, which everyone is failing to mention as well… According to my family tree. I have one of the oldest books of our history ” Will Shak-spere and the Dyer’s Hand “. Where in this book it dates back to as early as 1943 but in the forward of the book which states the obvious of the life of Edward Dyer I and how shak-spere stumbled on to the plays for himself, when Will shak-spere showed up at the playhouse as a servant and unwittingly got a hold of these plays and over night became famouse sort of speak. It was Edward Dyer I who was in love with the Queen. That is why no one has been able to depicted where Will Shak-spere cams from, even in the registry dated that far back shows no records of Will Shak-spere ever have gone to school to learn anything even his father was un-learned.