The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street (38 page)

and going into an upper room, where the chamber door was locked, the said Ireland did violentlie breake open the said doore & tooke out of the chamber the peticioners mill, the onlie instrument of his living, and caried away the same . . . wherebie the peticioner his wife & children are utterlie undone.
³

Another upstairs room in Cripplegate, another faint glimpse of Mary, shielding her frightened children as the men rifle through the chamber. Whether Belott ever got the ‘recompense’ he craved we do not know.

The last record of Mary Belott
ne’e
Mountjoy is the baptism of her daughter Elizabeth on 21 September 1621. I have not found any record of her burial. She was dead when Stephen Belott drew up his will in July 1646. He had by then a second wife, Thomasine, though no children by her. Their address was ‘the Bowling Alley neere Long Lane’. The street ran down from Aldersgate to Smithfield. Stow describes it as ‘builded on both the sides with tenements for brokers, tipplers, and such like’; John Taylor the water-poet associates it with pawnshops.
⁴
The neighbourhood has a down-at-heel air.

Belott bequeathed money to Thomasine and his three married daughters, but the money was inconveniently overseas, in Holland - 900 guilders, then worth £90, left to him by his brother John, who had died in Haarlem: another pot of cash just out of reach. Stephen Belott died in early 1647, probably in his mid-sixties.
⁵

And what of Mr Shakespeare? These others all outlived him. When he walked out of that courtroom in the early summer of 1612 he had just under four years left. In literary terms he was already coasting downhill. The only plays later than this date are his three collaborations with John Fletcher. Two of them -
Henry VIII
and the lost
Cardenio
- were performed by the King’s Men in 1613; and the last,
The Two Noble Kinsmen
, probably in 1614.

He was sometimes to be seen in London - indeed he became, for the first time, a property-owner in the city. The Blackfriars Gatehouse, which he bought in March 1613, was a rambling old house near the river, with ‘sundry back-dores and bye-ways’, and was probably a pied-à-terre as well as an investment. But most of what we know of these last years belongs to his life in Stratford: a well-off gentleman in well-earned retirement, surrounded by his family and his fruit-trees at New Place, though not entirely free of the small vexations that come with respectability. There was a brief but embarrassing court case, when his daughter Susanna Hall sued a man who said she had ‘bin naught with [had sex with] Rafe Smith’ and had ‘the runinge of the raynes [gonorrhea]’. There was the threat of enclosure in the Welcombe area, where he owned land - ‘My cosen Shakspeare’ (wrote the town clerk, Thomas Greene, in his diary) ‘told me that they assured him they ment to enclose noe further then to Gospell Bushe, and so upp straight . . . [to] Clopton Hedge.’
⁶

And then there was the matter of his younger daughter Judith, who turned thirty in 1615 - one last piece of matrimonial business to be arranged. She was married at Holy Trinity church on 10 February 1616. Her husband was a feckless young man, Thomas Quiney, who had recently sired an illegitimate child. His business ventures would fail, his children by Judith would die young.
⁷
Not quite an ‘honest fellow’, perhaps: a match made in haste rather than heaven. Six weeks later, already sick, Shakespeare drew up his will, and on 23 April 1616 he died.

Half a century later, a Stratford vicar obligingly offered a cause of death - Shakespeare had over-indulged at a ‘merry meeting’ with fellow-poets Drayton and Jonson. ‘It seems [they] drank too hard, for Shakespeare died of a fever there contracted.’ This Parnassian binge is certainly too good to be true. Neither Shakespeare nor Drayton has any reputation for roistering, and Jonson (who could drink enough for all three of them) is not known to have visited Stratford. A more sober conjecture is that Shakespeare died of typhoid fever. The spring of 1616 was unseasonably warm and wet, favourable to water-borne infections. The mortality rate in Stratford was high that year, nearly 50 per cent up on recent years.
⁸
He died in the company not of poets, but of his fellow-townspeople - one among many.

In his last sole-authored play,
The Tempest
(1611), Prospero’s great speeches of recantation are often taken as Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage: ‘This rough magic I here abjure . . .’; ‘Our revels now are ended . . .’; and most poignantly in the Epilogue, also spoken by Prospero -

Now my charms are all o’erthrown,
And what strength I have’s my own,
Which is most faint.

But though these lines may be, in part, Shakespeare’s swansong, they are not his last words on the stage. These are to be found in the little-read and seldom performed
Two Noble Kinsmen
of
c
. 1614. The play, an elegant tragicomedy set in ancient Athens, has more Fletcher and less Shakespeare than
Henry VIII
, and was not included in the Folio, but the final act is demonstrably his.

A speech by Theseus - one of those ‘kingly parts’ that Shakespeare himself used to take - brings the play to a close.
⁹
Its concluding lines, addressed to the ‘gods’, are the nearest we have to Shakespeare’s last words - oddly unfamous, quietly spoken, serenely puzzling:

O you heavenly charmers,
What things you make of us! For what we lack
We laugh; for what we have are sorry; still
Are children in some kind. Let us be thankful
For that which is, and with you leave dispute
That are above our question. Let’s go off
And bear us like the time. (5.6.131-7)

The stage direction calls for a ‘flourish’ of music before the characters walk off.

Appendix:

The Belott-Mountjoy Papers

The chief documents relating to the Belott-Mountjoy case are here transcribed in full, arranged as follows:

Pleadings
(Complaint, Answer, Replication and Rejoinder; January-May 1612)

Depositions
(witness statements at three sessions of the Court of Requests; May-June 1612)

Arbitration
(referral from the Court of Requests and deliberations of the French Church; June 1612-February 1614)

I also give, under the heading
Other Documents
, some later papers not connected with the lawsuit - Mountjoy’s will (January 1620), Belott’s petition to the House of Lords (March 1621) and Belott’s will (July 1646).

Most of these documents were first published by Charles William Wallace in 1910 (
University of Nebraska Studies
10/4, 8-44). The scarcity of that volume makes this reprint desirable. His transcripts, checked against the originals at the National Archives and the French Church of London, are remarkably accurate. Mountjoy’s will and Belott’s petition are published here for the first time, from manuscripts at the Guildhall Library and the House of Lords Record Office.

1. PLEADINGS

a. Stephen Belott’s Bill of Complaint, 28 January 1612 [TNA Pro REQ 4/1/3/1]

To the Kinges moste Excellent Ma
^ty

In all humblenes Complayninge sheweth vnto yo
^r
moste excellent Ma:
^tie
yo
^r
highnes poore and faythfull and obedient subpliant Stephen Belott of London Tyermaker, That whereas yo
^r
Suppliant aboute nyne yeares sithence laste paste beinge then a Servant vnto one Christopher Mountioye of London Tyer maker [did] well Carry and behaue himselfe in the tyme of his saide service w
^th
the saide Christopher bothe iustly & to the greate p
ro
ffitt and advantage of the [said] Christopher, as that thereby yo
^r
saide Suppliant in all outwarde appearance did obtayne the good will and affecion of him the saide Christopher in suche sorte as hee then offered vnto yo
^r
saide Suppliant, that yf hee would accept in marriage one Marie Mountioye beinge his daughter and only Child that then hee would giue in Marriage w
^th
his saide daughter vnto yo
^r
saide Suppliant the somme of three scoore poundes or thereabout
es
for a porc
i
on vppon yo
^r
saide Suppliant
es
daye of Marriage or shortlie after and would likewise at the tyme of his deceasse leaue vnto yo
^r
said Suppliant and his saide daughter the somme of two hundred pounds more vppon w
^ch
offers of y
^e
saide Compt.
^lt
and vppon his p
er
swac
i
ons yo
^r
said Supp.
^lt
did shortly after entermarry w
^th
the saide Mary and haue liued togeather by the space of theis five yeares and haue had diuers Children betwixt them to the greate encrease of theire Chardge and are likelie to haue manie more so that theire poore trade is not able to giue them mainten
a
nce and yo
^r
saide Suppliant lent the saide Christopher the somme of fortie shillinges w
^ch
hee denies to paye or to p
er
forme his former promise, But so it is may it please yo
^r
moste excellent Ma
^tie
. that yo
^r
said Suppliant growinge since his saide entermarriage w
^th
the saide Mary into some want and necessitie by the reason of the encrease of his Chardge as a fore saide yo
^r
saide Supp.
^lt
therefore repaired vnto him the saide Christopher desiringe him to satisfy and paye vnto yo
^r
saide Supp.
^lt
the said somme of three scoore poundes soe promised by him vnto yo
^r
saide Supp.
^lt
as all so to putt in suertyes to leaue yo
^r
Supp.
^lt
and his wiffe two hundred poundes att his deathe, who all together forgettinge his ffatherlie promisses nor pityinge the distressed poore estate of yo
^r
said poore Subiecte and his greate Chardge verie vnnaturally dothe not only nowe deny his said p
ro
misse and refuse to paye the said somme of three scoore poundes but likewise denieth the payment of the saide somme of ffortie shillinges so lent him as a fore said. As allso hath sithence giuen forthe diuers tymes to diuers p
er
sons, that hee intendeth not to leaue vnto yo
^r
Supp.
^lt
his wiffe nor Children the vallue of one penny when soever hee shall dep
ar
te this naturall lyffe, beinge not onlie to the greate [hurt] and hinderance of yo
^r
said Supp.
^lt
his wiffe & famyly but alsoe to theire vtter vndoeinge yf they bee not releiued by the iustice of this honorable Courte, & beinge a man of good estat & w
^th
out charge. In Tender Considerac
i
on whereof and for asmuche as by y
^e
strict Course of the Common lawes of this Realme yo
^r
said pore subjecte is remediles either to recover the said three scoore poundes soe p
ro
missed as aforesaid or to Compell him the saide Cristopher Mountioye to putt in suretyes to leaue tow hundred poundes to yo
^r
highnes poore subject & his wiffe at his death beinge of late inclyned to waste his estate for that yo
^r
said subject cannott prove the saide promisses in soe strict manner as by the Common lawe is required or yf hee Could yet hath not yo
^r
said subject by the said Common lawes of this Realme ffitt or apt remedy neither is yo
^r
saide loyall subject able to proove the loane of the said fforty shillinges to y
^e
said Christopher Mountioye but p
er
swadeth himselfe that the said Christopher either to dischardge a good Conscience as knowinge p
er
iurye is a moste damnable sinn or to avoide the punishment inflicted on such as comit the saide sinn, may it therefore please yo
^r
highnes the p
re
misses Considered, To graunt vnto yo
^r
subject yo
^r
highnes moste gracious writt of privie seale to be directed vnto the said Christopher Mountioy Com
m
aundinge him thereby at a Certayne day and vnder a Certayne payne therein to be directed p
er
sonally to appeare before yo
^r
highnes in yo
^r
highness Courte of White Hall Comonlie called the Court of Request
es
Then & there to make a direct answer to the p
re
misses and to stande to suche further order & direction therein as by yo
^r
highnes or yo
^r
said Counsell shalbe thought meete to stand w
^th
equity & good conscience, And yo
^r
said loyall subjecte accordinge to his bounden dutye shall hartely pray to god to p
ro
longe yo
^r
highness happy Raigne and lyfe longe to Contynewe./