The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street (49 page)

53
. PRO PROB 11/102, 10 May 1599. ‘Teesye’ is probably a diminutive of Prothesia.

54
. William Huffman,
Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance
(1988), 4-8; Rowse 1976, 29-30, 251-2.

55
. Bod., Ashmole MS 226, fol. 263v.

56
.
Laura
, sigs A4v, D1;
Alba
, sig. E3v. On the life and writings of Tofte (1562-1620) see A. B. Grosart’s edn of
Alba
(1880); Williams 1937; L. G. Kelly, ‘Robert Tofte’ (
ODNB
2004). I am very grateful to Matt Steggle for alerting me to the possibilities explored here.

57
.
Love’s Labours
was written earlier (perhaps
c
. 1593-4: see Chapter 18), but the 1598 quarto is described as ‘newly corrected and augmented’. The play was performed before the Queen during Christmas 1597-8, but there is nothing to suggest that Tofte moved in courtly circles, or that the performance remembered or imagined in
Alba
was a royal one. There are Carrells in the subsidy rolls, any (or none) of which might be connected with Ellen. One is the seriously wealthy Edward Carrell, esq, who is assessed on £200 in lands and fees in 1599 (PRO E179/146/393, fol. 6). He lived near the Mountjoys at St Botolph’s, Aldersgate.

58
. The book was seen and described by the Tofte expert Franklin Williams in the 1930s. Though it has marginalia in Tofte’s hand, and the cropped remains of his signature, an inscription on the title-page shows that in 1597 the book was given by Lady Margaret Radcliff to Sir George Buc, the future Master of the Revels; it is not known whether Tofte owned it before or after this, so his praise of ‘Marie M—’ cannot be dated (Williams 1937, 296). Tofte lived in the parish of St Andrew’s, Holborn; his landlady, whom he mentions in
The Blazon of Jealousie
(1615), was the wife of a barber-surgeon, Thomas Goodall.

59
. Bod., Ashmole MS 195, fol. 8.

60
. Ibid., fols 16, 24. It is hard to tell if the final mark in the name is an
s
or an oblique punctuation. ‘Gui d’ Asture’ was exorcized by R. E. Alton (
NQ
223 (1978), 456-7).

61
. Scouloudi 1985, 160.

62
. Bod., Ashmole MS 195, fol. 15v. This transcription differs from the one I gave in the first edition. I am grateful to Roger Davey, whose expert readings of Forman’s Latin I have incorporated; they alter some of the wording, but not the overall implication, of the entry. All the Latin words are in contracted form, with a suspension-mark for the final letter or syllable.

63
. Bod., Ashmole MS 226, fol. 258; Rowse 1976, 192; PRO E179/146/ 325, fol. 2.

64
. Bod., Ashmole MS 226, fol. 310v.

65
. ‘Alained’: Rowse 1976, 109. The initial letter, unconnected to the others, is too blotted to read with any certainty, but compare the poorly formed
o
of ‘yellow’ in the line below. The tall ungainly upstroke which follows is not Forman’s usual
l
(which has a pronounced rightward curve, somewhat like a modern capital C), but there is a parallel formation on the same page (‘lefte’ in the top line of the second piece of writing), and also in the
l
of ‘glob[e]’ in Forman’s report of a performance of
Richard II
(see note 42 above). The fifth letter could be
n
, as Rowse reads it, but Forman’s
n
, invariably open at the top, is identical with his
u
(see the juxtaposed
u
and
n
of ‘Mountioy’), and in the orthographic convention of the time
u
and
v
are the same, so it could as well be a
v
. The last letter is not a
d
. Forman uses an Italic-type
d
with a pronounced looping curve. In my view it is a poorly formed secretary
e
, paralleled by the equally loose
e
of ‘dore’ a couple of lines above. The formation is echoed at the end of ‘Madam’ in the line below, but there it is a gratuitous upstroke after the final
m
. I have wondered if the word is ‘olavum’ (referring to the Latin name of the parish, ‘Sanctus Olavus’) but ‘olaive’ is the more likely reading.

66
. Joy Rowe, ‘Kitson family’,
ODNB
2004; Hearn 1995, nos 53-4; John Gage,
History and Antiquities of Hengrave
(1822), 175-85. A spirited glimpse of Lady Kitson is in a letter of Philip Gawdy,
c
. 1594: ‘My L. Kytson is well recovered & in token of thankesgyving danced all this last night as long as she was able to go’ (Jeayes 1906, 79-80). Two of her cousins were frequent visitors to Forman in the late 1590s: Anne Brock
n’e
Jerningham, who was the niece and namesake of Lady Kitson’s mother; and Anne’s daughter, Alice Blague, wife of the Dean of Rochester. Mrs Blague was a particular confidante, and for a while the lover, of Forman. She recruited clients for him, including, in 1601, Lady Kitson’s father, Sir Thomas Cornwallis. Among her friends at court were Lord Hunsdon’s sisters, Lady Hoby and Lady Scrope, and she doubtless knew Lady Hunsdon as well. She visited Forman at least twice in January 1598, the probable date of Forman’s memo concerning ‘Madam Kitson’.

67
. New Year’s Gift Roll 1578, in Nichols 1823, 2.68.

68
.
The Blacke Booke
(1604), Middleton 1886, 8.37. ‘Flaxen hayr to sell’: George Gray, news-sheet advertisement, 4 February 1663, cited in
OED
s.v. periwig 3.

13. The m’nage

69
. Registers of St Giles, Cripplegate (GL MS 6419/2), 5 April 1612: baptism of ‘Martha daughter of John Blott, tiremaker’. In his will of 3 October 1642 he left Stephen 900 guilders to be paid after the death of his widow, Maijlie.

70
. Webb 1995, 4.684, 644.

71
. Ibid., 4.646. Her husband may be the Scottish basketmaker Thomas ‘Johnsonne’, a native of Moffat, who came to London in about 1590, and was living in the Castle Baynard district of the city in 1593 (Scouloudi 1985, 186). If this is the same man he was a widower when he married Joan, for in 1593 he had a wife, Isabel. But the name is extremely common.

72
. PRO E179/146/390, fol. 32 (1599); E179/146/409, fol. 3 (1600). On his nominal assets of £5 he has to pay tax of 26s 8d: the double tax-rate for foreigners in Shakespeare’s London.

73
. Mountjoy as godfather: FPC, Marriage Register 1600-39, fol. 43; Moens 1896, 48. Clinkolad: Scouloudi 1985, 160. Courtois: Whitebrook 1932, 93.

74
. Mountjoy’s denization: see note 1 above. For denization figures see Scouloudi 1985, 5; Shaw 1911.

75
. W. Bruce Bannerman, ed.,
Registers of St Olave, Hart Street 1563-1700
, Harleian Society Registers 46 (1916), 260.

76
. See Appendix 4.

PART FOUR:
TIREMAKING

14. Tires and wigs

1
. The tireman of the Globe, unnamed, is humorously presented onstage in the prologue written by John Webster for Marston’s
The Malcontent
(1604). More generally
OED
gives ‘tireman’ = a dresser or valet, or a tailor; and ‘tirewoman’ = a lady’s maid, or a dress-maker or costumier. The tiring-house is shown (marked ‘mimorum aedes’) in the De Witt sketch of the Swan theatre (1596); it was also used for backstage effects: ‘drummers make thunder in the tiring house’ (Melton 1620, sig. E4r), referring to a production of
Dr Faustus
.

2
. The French courtly head-tire in turn echoed Renaissance Italian costume for
feste
and pageants, on which see Newton 1975. The influence is discernible in Vecellio 1598, a handbook of French and Italian costume written by the brother of the painter Titian. Extravagant tires designed by Inigo Jones for the
Masque of Queenes
(1610) were adapted from Ren’ Boyvin’s engravings of head-dress designs by Rosso Fiorentino for court festivals at Fontainebleau in the 1530s (Peacock 1984; Hearn 1995, 161).

3
. Ben Jonson,
Cynthia’s Revels
(1601), 2.4.51-61. Phantaste’s new head-tire is also based on continental models: ‘ ’Tis after the Italian print we look’d on t’other night.’ See also Jonson’s
Alchemist
(1610): one of the ‘pleasures of a countess’ is to have ‘citizens gape at her and praise her tires’ (4.2.50-51). Those tires could be robes, however.

4
. ‘Tyre of gold’: Edmund Spenser,
Faerie Queene
(1590), 1.10.32. ‘Tyer of netting’: Michael Drayton,
Muses Elisium
(1630), 2.113. ‘Ship tire’: Jorge de Montemayor,
Diana
, trans. Bartholomew Yong (1598), in Hotson 1949, 178. ‘Mourning tire’:
will of 1639 in Wills and Inventories of Bury St Edmund
s
1470-1650
(Camden Society, 1850), 183. ‘Turkish tires’: John Hall,
Paradoxes
(1650), 67. ‘Squirrels’ tails’: John Marston,
Histriomastix
(1599), 2.117. In Jonson’s
Everyman in his Humour
(1598), 3.2.37-8, Kitely’s decree that his wife ‘shall no more/Wear three-pil’d acorns to make my horns ache [cuckold him]’ certainly refers to headgear and perhaps to a head-tire.

5
. George Chapman,
A Justification of a Strange Act of Nero
(1629), in M. R. Ridley, ed.,
Antony and Cleopatra
(Arden edn, 1954), 67n.

6
. John Stow,
Annales
, ed. E. Howe (1631), 1038; Stow’s spelling ‘perwig’ is also found in
Hamlet
Q1. Joseph Hall has ‘th’ unruly winde blowes off his periwinke’ (
Satires
, 1598, 3.5 line 8). For other spellings see
OED
, s.v. periwig. Philemon Holland uses ‘perrucke’ in his translation of Suetonius (
Historie of Twelve Caesars
, 1606); his marginal explanation (‘a counterfeit cappe of false hair’) suggests the word was still unfamiliar.

7
. On hair-cauls (‘nets made of knotted human hair’) see Arnold 1988, 204. One decorated with pearls is visible in a portrait of Queen Elizabeth (Pollok House, Glasgow,
c
. 1590; Arnold 1988, figs 46, 296). Her hoodmaker, Margaret Sketts or Schetz, supplied these items. The tiremaker would also use ‘rolls’: tightly packed hair held together inside nets, used to bolster up the natural hair.

8
. I am grateful to Susan North, Curator of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for information in this paragraph and elsewhere.

9
. In the ‘Armada’ portrait (1588) she wears a ‘halo of pearls’ surrounding a ‘bodkin topped with feathers and a diamond fleur de lys’ (Scarisbrick 1995, 15). See also head-tires in portraits of Mary Fitton (
c
. 1585, Arbury Hall); Princess Elizabeth (Robert Peake, 1603, National Maritime Museum); and the Countess of Arundel (Daniel Mytens,
c
. 1618, NPG).

10
. Maids of Honour: Arnold 1988, 202. The same document records one of the Maids, Dorothy Abington, receiving lengths of black and orange sarcenet ‘to lyne cawles’. Mountague’s payment: BL Egerton 2806, fol. 216, 27 September 1586.

11
. Norris 1938, 2.609. The German traveller Leopold von Wedel, who saw her at Hampton Court in 1585, writes: ‘on either side of her crisp hair hung a great pearl as large as a hazel-nut’ (Klarwill 1928, 322-3). This ‘crisp’ or curled hair was a wig. An earlier report (Pierre Ronsard,
Le Boccage royal
, 1567) refers to her ‘longues tresses blondes’, but these may have been her own tresses.

12
. PRO LC5/36, fols 212-13, 6 June 1592; LC5/37, fol. 90, 29 April 1595. Cf. LC5/37, fols 222, 257, 288. The ‘heads of hair’ are distinct from periwigs; they were conveniently sheaved bundles of hair to be used for making hair-cauls, hair-lace, etc.

13
. Mary wore wigs twenty years earlier, as witnessed by Sir Francis Knollys: ‘Mystres Marye Ceaton [Seaton], who is . . . the fynest dresser of a woman’s heade and heare that is to be seen in any countrye . . . did sett sotche a curled heare upon the Queen [Mary] that was said to be a perewycke that shoed very delicately’ (letter to Sir William Cecil, 28 June 1568, BL Stowe MS 560, fol. 24v). Knollys seems to have been particularly taken with this, for early the following year Nicholas White wrote of Mary: ‘Her hair of itself is black, and yet Mr Knollys told me that she wears hair of sundry colours’ (Norris 1938, 3.2.515-16).

14
. Marie’s payment: see Part One, note 24. Weaver had already known the Mountjoys for some time (since
c
. 1596 according to his Court of Requests deposition). On the Sheppards see Chapter 26.

15
. The headwear shown by Van Somer (NPG) is ‘an attire of royal pear-shaped pearls standing up at the back of her head on a wire covered with red ribbon’, set off by a large ‘table-cut diamond bodkin in the centre of her head, with pear-pearl and ruby drops hanging from it, and a tuft of feathers behind’ (Scarisbrick 1995, 21, 67).

16
. Erondell 1605, sigs E1v-E3v.

17
. The carcanet, often a collar or necklace, is here a head-ornament (cf. Cotgrave 1611, s.v.
fermaillet
: ‘a carkanet or border of gold etc such as Gentlewomen wear about their heads’). Erondell’s last dialogue, ‘Of the going to bed’, has more on Madame de Rimelaine’s headwear: a ‘white hayre-lace to binde my haires’, a ‘white fillet [hair-band] for to raise up my haires’, a ‘little linnen coyffe’, and an under-cap.

18
. In modern French
atour
is used mainly in the plural, and with a jocular note: a woman
dans ses atours
= dressed up in her finery.

19
. Byrne 1930, xiii-xv; J. Maclean,
Lives of the Berkeleys
(1883).