The Science of Shakespeare (21 page)

To argue that the Shakespeares were secretly Catholic or, alternatively, mainstream Protestants misses the point that except for a small minority at one doctrinal extreme or other, those labels failed to capture the layered nature of what Elizabethans, from the queen on down, actually believed. The whitewashed chapel walls, on which, perhaps, an image or two were still faintly visible, are as good an emblem of Shakespeare's faith as we are likely to find.

Faith, once a cornerstone of English life, had become uncertain, a thing that could be tampered with or overhauled by powerful men and crafty politicians. Some people surely practiced a combination of the two faiths—adopting Protestant practices in public, while quietly keeping the Catholic faith at home. Religious tension, as Norman Jones notes, “was a fact of daily life.” How this tension affected William Shakespeare's life—and his career—has been endlessly debated. As Jonathan Bate puts it, “His mind and world were poised between Catholicism and Protestantism, old feudal ways and new bourgeois ambitions, rational thinking and visceral instinct, faith and scepticism.”

Something else was in the air: For the first time, the people of England may have felt some small measure of personal freedom. One could choose—to some extent—one's destiny. As Norman Jones notes, however, this could be a mixed blessing: “One had to make the right choices. God still ran the world, demanding obedience. But obedience to which theology? Which Church? Which economic order? Which master? Where could a person turn for intellectual certainty in a world of choice and confusion?” But perhaps there was an upside. Uncertainty may have nurtured creativity. “Confusion,” Jones notes, “made Shakespeare's age one of the most culturally productive in English history.” It is sobering to imagine that Shakespeare, had he lived in a less turbulent time, would perhaps have been content to take up his father's glove business.

The country itself, meanwhile, was growing. The population stood at about four million, a figure that was increasing by roughly one percent every year during Elizabeth's reign. Because of the rapid population growth, the demographics skewed young: About one-third of the population would have been under fifteen; half were under twenty-five. Average life expectancy at birth was forty-eight—but most of the danger was in the first few years. Those who lived to thirty would likely make it to sixty. Death, of course, was not a stranger. Disease was a perpetual threat, the bubonic plague the most feared of all. There were at least five outbreaks during Shakespeare's lifetime. The plague hit the crowded cities harder than rural communities, but no corner of the country was safe. The plague-free years must have been a welcome respite; but even so, there were dangers. The combination of a rising population and uncertain harvests meant that demand often outstripped supply; when harvests failed, people died. Food prices rose, wages fell, and the gap between rich and poor widened. Lack of food could trigger riots, as depicted in Shakespeare's
Coriolanus
, and the “Poor Laws” were established to alleviate the suffering of the least well-off—and to reduce the chances of more severe rioting. The “working poor” seem to have been tolerated; those classified as “idle,” “rogues,” or “vagabonds” were demonized as disease carriers and threats to “good order”; they could be flogged and driven from town.

For those who did have money, there were a variety of ways to show off one's good fortune, with expensive clothing being the first choice. (As one clergyman noted, the land was full of “fickle-headed tailors” who were only too happy to satisfy demand for whatever the latest trend called for, adding that “nothing is more constant in England than the inconstancy of attire. Oh, how much cost is bestowed nowadays upon our bodies, and how little upon our souls.”) Many fashion trends originated on the Continent, and wine, silk, and lace were typically imported; but many items once brought from abroad were increasingly made in England, including felt hats, playing cards, soap, and fine cloth. For the poor, of course, such luxuries could only be dreamed of.

*   *   *

It helped if you were a man.
Women had limited social and legal standing, and only marginally better economic status. If a woman was married, it was assumed that she would look after the home and the children, leaving her husband free to serve as breadwinner. (Widows and unmarried women had slightly more freedom, such as the right to own property and to sign contracts.) In language that is difficult to stomach today, a seventeenth-century political theorist declared, “Women [were made] to keep home and nourish their family and children, and not to meddle with matters abroad, nor to bear office in a city or commonwealth no more than children or infants.” A Dutch visitor, however, noted that English women “are not kept so strictly as they are in Spain or elsewhere”:

They go to market to buy what they like best to eat. They are well dressed, fond of taking it easy, and commonly leave the care of household matters and drudgery to their servants.… All the rest of their time they employ in walking or riding, in playing at cards or otherwise, in visiting their friends and keeping company, conversing with their equals (whom they term gossips) and their neighbours, and making merry with them at childbirths, christenings, churchings, and funerals; and all this with the permission and knowledge of their husbands, so such is the custom.

ENTER ROSALIND, READING A PAPER

Schooling, beyond the most basic home instruction, was almost exclusively reserved for boys and young men. However, girls from well-heeled families could attend an elementary school, and, on rare occasions, were allowed to matriculate at a grammar school. Even then, they were allowed to stay for only the first few years, and were not taught Latin. (The universities were strictly off limits.) Nonetheless, literacy rates among women were on the rise—partly as a result of the Protestant desire to give the largest number of people the ability to read the Bible. While only a handful of works were penned by English women before 1500, the number rose steadily over the next half century—during which time more than a hundred works were composed or translated by English women, including religious works, poetry, essays, advice books, diaries, and letters. (As Stephen Greenblatt has noted, it is remarkable how many of Shakespeare's women are depicted reading.)

*   *   *

Schooling began at home,
and the young Shakespeare would have been taught to read beginning at age four or five. If we are to try to picture William learning his letters, we should bear in mind that, at that age, boys and girls alike would have worn long gowns or dresses; it was only at about age six that a boy would be “breeched”—fitted with the breeches of the style worn by adult men. (In
The Winter's Tale
, Leontes looks at his young son, and imagines himself at that age: “… I did recoil / Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreeched…” [1.2.153–54].) At age seven or eight William would have begun his studies at the local grammar school, adjacent to the guild chapel, an institution reestablished by Edward VI in the 1550s as the King's New School. (We don't have any actual record of William's attendance, but as the son of a prominent town official, it's a fairly safe assumption that he was in fact schooled there.) As noted in the previous chapter, the reign of Elizabeth would see an explosion of these grammar schools; by the end of the sixteenth century, England had about 160 such institutions, about one for every twelve thousand inhabitants (a much higher proportion than one finds even in Victorian times). As a result, basic literacy is thought to have reached 30 percent for men and perhaps 10 percent for women—higher, of course, for privileged classes and townsfolk than for the rural poor.

“THE WHINING SCHOOLBOY, WITH HIS SATCHEL”

The school day was long, running from six in the morning (seven in winter) to five or six in the afternoon. If the family had means, the boy would carry a lantern to light the way in the dark of winter. There was only a short break for recess, and another for lunch—for which William presumably headed home; the house on Henley Street was just a few blocks away. Students would recite the alphabet from a “hornbook” and read from the Bible. Writing was done with a goose-quill pen and inkhorn. The flavor of Elizabethan schooling is captured in Jacques's famous speech on the seven ages of man, in
As You Like It
, in which the second age sees “the whining schoolboy, with his satchel / And shining face, creeping like snail / Unwillingly to school” (2.7.145–47). Later, from age eleven or so, William's studies would have continued with grammar, logic, and rhetoric. A barrage of Latin grammar was unavoidable; Latin maxims were to be learned by heart. The older boys would learn the poetry of Ovid, Virgil, Cicero, and—as hinted at in the prologue—Horace. (Shakespeare's plays echo the themes employed by all of these classical writers.) Older children were meant to speak exclusively in Latin, and could be punished for reverting to English.

Every bit as important as the book and the pen was the birch rod, the chief implement for enforcing discipline, as depicted in numerous woodcuts from the era. As one schoolmaster explained, corporal punishment was simply a part of God's plan, a practice that “God hath sanctified … to cure the evils of [students'] conditions, to drive out that folly which is bound up in their hearts, to save their souls from hell, to give them wisdom: so it [the rod] is to be used as God's instrument to these purposes.” For the Elizabethans, a child, as one scholar has put it, was, “just a diminutive and exceptionally troublesome adult.”

What did young William think of his schoolmasters? We can get a sense, perhaps, from the mocking tone in which the teacher Holofernes is portrayed in
Love's Labour's Lost
, and similar scenes in
As You Like It
and
The Merry Wives of Windsor
. In the latter play, a lad named William Page gives the master, a Welshman named Sir Hugh Evans, a hard time:

EVANS:

What is “lapis,” William?

WILLIAM:

A stone.

EVANS:

And what is “a stone,” William?

WILLIAM:

A pebble.

EVANS:

No, it is “lapis,” I pray you remember in your prain.
*

(4.1.27–31)

If the plays of the ancient Romans whetted the young Shakespeare's appetite for acting and dramatic writing, he would have another taste whenever traveling “players” (theater troupes) passed through town. (And owing to its location in the heart of England, Stratford would have witnessed more such shows than most towns of a similar size.) We know that the Earl of Leicester's players dropped by in 1573 and 1576; Lord Strange's Men in 1579; those of the Earl of Essex in 1584, and the Queen's Men in 1587. It is not hard to picture William sitting wide-eyed in the audience for these touring performances, listening to each word and observing each gesture.

The players were not the only special visitors to pass through. In the summer of 1575 Queen Elizabeth herself visited Warwickshire, during one of her many ceremonial tours of the countryside, known as “progresses.” She stayed at Kenilworth Castle, not far from Stratford, as a guest of the Earl of Leicester. Country folk came from miles around to see their queen, with the festivities—music, plays, fireworks—stretching for three full weeks. Shakespeare would certainly encounter Elizabeth years later, when his own theater company performed before the Court; but perhaps the eleven-year-old William caught a glimpse of the middle-aged Elizabeth on this tour. We know that she liked to “work the crowd,” so to speak. A few years earlier, the Spanish ambassador observed that the queen “ordered her carriage sometimes to be taken where the crowd was thickest and stood up and thanked the people.” Elizabeth was educated, witty, and erudite, and could switch effortlessly between modern and ancient languages (apparently she was fluent in Latin and Greek by age twelve). She excelled at dancing and riding, and could fire an arrow as well as any huntsman. One can sense why her courtiers referred to her as “Gloriana.” Another eyewitness account of her demeanor, from twenty years later, focuses on her physical appearance. The queen, in her later years, was

very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked; her lips narrow, and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops. Her hair was of an auburn colour, but false; upon her head she had a small crown.

It would have been the younger, sprightlier version of the monarch that William would have seen in Warwickshire; a woman who had yet to face down a foreign armada; a woman who had yet to declare, “I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”

Whatever he thought of Her Majesty, William spent more time thinking about a woman named Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior. (The audio guide on one of the bus tours naughtily refers to William as her “boy toy.”) They married in 1582, when he was eighteen and she was twenty-six—and pregnant. (Contrary to what we might imagine based on the youth of the lovers in
Romeo and Juliet
, the average age for marriage at that time was twenty-seven for men; twenty-four for women.) Their first child, Susanna, was born the following year, and twenty months later they had twins—a boy named Hamnet and a girl called Judith.

THE GENIUS FROM WARWICKSHIRE

Unlike some of the other successful playwrights of the time, Shakespeare did not attend university. A common refrain from the “anti-Stratfordians”—those who believe that someone other than the actor from Stratford wrote the works of Shakespeare—is that someone from such a lowly background, with such a modest education, could hardly have written about affairs of state, the courtly intrigues of kings and princes, military struggles, sea voyages, and the ways and customs of foreign lands. How could a country bumpkin have become the greatest writer in the English language? What the doubters seem to forget is that there is more to learning than mere schooling. As one biographer puts it: