The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street (50 page)

20
.
Christs Teares
, sigs S3-S4v; Nashe 1958, 2.137-40. ‘Frounzed’ = frizzed, curled (
OED
‘frounce’, sense 2). ‘Streetwalkers’: Robert Greene,
A Notable discovery of cozenage
(1591), in Salga˜do 1972, 180.

21
. Bod., Ashmole MS 208, fol. 121v,
c
. 1593; Kassell 2005, 160.

22
.
Microcynicon
, 1599, Satire 3; Middleton 1886, 8.123-7. He refers again to hair-extensions in
A Mad World, my Masters
(
c
. 1605), where women who ‘wear half-moons made of another’s hair’ are said to be ‘against kind’ (i.e. unnatural).

23
. Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen; Hearn 1995, no. 78 (cat. entry by Tabitha Barber); Strong 1983, 155-7.

24
.
CSP
Venetian 1617-19, 67-8.

25
.
Satyres and Satyricall Epigrams, with certain Observations at Blackfryers
(1617), sig E8v; Gurr 1987, 231. However, the ‘tittle’ may be a small hat, or even (as Matthew Steggle suggests to me) a beauty spot. Wearing expensive headgear to the theatre had its dangers, as in Sir John Harington’s vivid anecdote (
c
. 1595) in which two muggers try to snatch a jewelled ‘border’ off a woman’s head as she walks up the ‘dark and private’ playhouse stairs (
Letters and Epigrams
, ed. Norman McLure (1930), 245-6; Gurr 1987, 210).

15. The ‘tire-valiant’

26
. Chambers 1923, 1.372. On the costs and logistics of theatrical costuming see also Cerasano 1994; Bentley 1984; Carson 1988, 35.

27
. Two inventories of Admiral’s Men costumes survive: one dated 10 March 1598, transcribed from a lost original by Edmund Malone in his 1790 edn of Shakespeare (Wells 2006, 234-6); and one
c
. 1602 (Dulwich College MS1/90; Cooper 2006, no. 35).

28
. Longleat House, Wilts., Portland Papers 1, fol. 159. The folio, which also contains an elegantly scripted excerpt from the play, is signed ‘Henricus Peacham’; the date, in abbreviated Latin, may be 1594 or 1595.
Titus
was in repertoire at the Rose, performed by Sussex’s Men, in the winter of 1593-4. Peacham, later the author of
The Art of Drawing
(1606) and
The Compleat Gentleman
(1623), was then a sixteen-year-old student at Cambridge. The costuming implications of the sketch are discussed in Cerasano 1994. See also June Schlueter, ‘Rereading the Peacham Drawing’,
SQ
50 (1999), 171-84, though her central thesis (that the sketch is not of Shakespeare’s play, but of a scene from the anonymous
Tragaedia von Tito Andronico
, performed in Germany by English actors, and known only in a German translation published in 1620) may struggle for acceptance.

29
. Platter 1937, 166-95; Wotton to Edmund Bacon, 2 July 1613, in L. Pearsall Smith, ed.,
Life and Letters of Henry Wotton
(1907), 2.32.

30
. Stallybrass 1996, 295.

31
.
The Blacke Booke
(1604), in Middleton 1886, 8.13; Melton 1620, sig. E4r. For a general survey of headgear worn onstage see Linthicum 1936, 216-37.

32
. The author is sometimes identified as William Parrat. Two ballads on the burning of the Globe were registered the day after the fire (SR 26 July 1613; Arber 1875-94, 3.528), one of them by Parrat, but it does not have the same title as this one, which was first published in 1816 (
Gentleman’s Magazine
86, 114) from a MS found in York. See Chambers 1923, 2.420; Peter Beale, ‘The Burning of the Globe’,
TLS
20 June 1986. On Heminges’s managerial role, see Mary Edmond, ‘John Heminges’ (
ODNB
2004).

33
. See note 27 above.

34
. Foakes 2002, 185, 198 (Diary, fols 95v, 104). William Gosson of St Olave’s, Southwark, is listed in subsidy rolls from 1593 (PRO E179/146/ 349 etc); he may or may not be Stephen Gosson’s brother of that name, later described as ‘gentleman and drum-major to James I’. Another possible husband for Mrs Gosen is Lianard Gawson, a Polish tailor from Danzig (Gdansk) listed in the 1593 return (Scouloudi 1985, 178), though he was at that point unmarried.

35
. Foakes 2002, 221 (Diary, fol. 118v).

36
. The story of Proteus and Julia in
Two Gentlemen of Verona
(
c
. 1590) suggests Shakespeare’s knowledge of
Diana
. It was translated from the Spanish by Bartholomew Yong in the early 1580s; possibly Shakespeare knew this translation in MS, as it was not published till 1598.

37
.
Merry Wives
(1602), sig. D4v: ‘The arched bent of thy brow / Would become the ship tire, the tire vellet, / Or anie Venetian tire.’ On the Quarto text see Gerald Johnson, ‘
The Merry Wives of Windsor
Q1: Provincial Touring and Adapted Texts’ (
SQ
38 (1987), 154-65). ‘Tire-volant’: see Steevens’s edn of Shakespeare (1793), vol. 3.

38
. Feuillerat 1908, 241; Korda 2002, 212-14. Also in the 1573-4 accounts are an ‘Italian woman’ and her daughter, paid £1 13s 4d for ‘hier of womens heares for the Children’, and for attending the Children ‘to dresse their heades’; and a ‘Mistris Swegoo’, who also sounds foreign, paid to ‘garnishe ix heades . . . for the ix Muzes’ (Feuillerat 1908, 219, 156).

39
. Jonson 1925-51, 7.205-41; Orgel and Strong 1973, 1.101-5; Hearn 1995, 190.

40
. Belvoir Castle accounts, 4 March and 18 May 1606 (HMC Rutland 4.457-8). The other ‘Powers of Juno’ were the Countesses of Bedford and Montgomery, Ladies Berkeley and Knollys, and three Maids of Honour, Dorothy Hastings, Blanche Somerset and Cecily Sackville. The earlier
Masque of Blackness
(described in the Revels accounts as the Queen’s ‘Maske of Moures’) had parts for eleven ‘Ladies of Honour’, who ‘came in great shows of Devises wch they satt in, wth exzselent Musike’ (PRO AO3/ 908/13, fol. 2v; Streitberger 1986, 9).

41
. For Jonson’s costume notes see Jonson 1925-51, 7.230-31; for a discussion of the paintings, see ibid., xv-xix. The third painting (Welbeck Abbey; Hearn 1995, no. 129) was first catalogued at Titchfield House in 1731 as ‘A Turkish Lady’. One of Inigo Jones’s earliest surviving costume designs (Chatsworth House; Hearn 1995, no. 106) has similarities to these costumes and may be for
Hymenaei
; the head-tire has been compared to Italian models in a Florentine
intermezzo
of 1589 and in Vercellio 1598.

42
. Pory to Sir Robert Cotton, 7 January 1606 (BL Cotton MS Jul Caes 3, fols 301-2); Jonson 1925-51, 10.466.

16. In the workshop

43
. See Mountjoy’s ‘Answer’ (Appendix 1). On the movements of Stephen and Mary Belott in the years after their marriage see Chapter 21. There was a similar disagreement over an unpaid brewer’s bill.

44
. Whitebrook 1932, 93. A more precise explanation of Courtois’s ‘purled work’ is found in the unlikely location of Henry Ainsworth’s
Annotations on the Book of Psalms
(1622). Glossing Psalm 45.13-14, ‘Her clothing is of wrought gold . . . [a] raiment of needlework’, Ainsworth suggests the garment is made of ‘purled works or grounds, closures of gold such as precious stones are set in’. This would be apt for Mountjoy’s requirements: a form of gilded embroidery to house the gems that featured in a tire.

45
. Sleny Georghiou, quoted in
Sunday Times
(‘Talking Heads’, 2 July 2006). Cf. Victoria Beckham on ‘bad extensions’: ‘You can see the glue holding the bonds in at the scalp, [and] the extensions themselves look all frizzy because they’re made out of nylon instead of real hair’ (
That Extra Half an Inch
, 2006, 290). Such or similar disasters were doubtless avoided by the expert stylists of Silver Street.

46
. Glover 1979, 1-12.

47
. Randle Holme,
The Academy of Armory
(1688), 3.21.

48
.
OED
, s.v. sleave silk.
Webster’s Dictionary
defines it as ‘(a) The knotted or entangled part of silk or thread. (b) Silk not yet twisted; floss’. ‘Sleave’ is cognate with Swedish
slejf
and German
Schleife
, a knot. Fishing flies were made out of it: ‘Sleave-silk flies / Bewitch poor fishes’ wand’ring eyes’ (John Donne, ‘The Bait’, 23-4; Donne 1912, 1.47).

49
. Chamber’s
Cyclopaedia
1727-41, s.v. See Gina M. Barrett, ‘Metallic Threads: A Background to their Use in Textile Work’ (
http://www.et-tu.com/soper-lane
).

50
. See Epilogue and Appendix 4. The petition is mentioned (misdated and with no source) in Hotson 1949, 179; I am grateful to James Travers for his help in tracking it down.

51
. This document, also mentioned without source in Hotson 1949, 179, and described only as ‘a lawsuit’, remains elusive.

52
. Cunnington 1970, 224; Feuillerat 1908, 23, 82.

53
. For ‘ravelled’ = frayed, see
OED
, s.v. ravel, citing Bishop Fuller, ‘To hem the end of our history so it ravel not out . . .’.

17. The underpropper

54
. In a commendatory poem opposite the engraving in F1 (below it in editions subsequent to F3, 1664), Ben Jonson writes: ‘This figure that thou here seest put, / It was for gentle Shakespeare cut; / Wherein the Graver had a strife / With Nature, to out-doo the life.’ That Jonson really thought the portrait accurate and expressive (or that he had even seen it when he wrote the poem) cannot be guaranteed. See Spielmann 1924, 27.

55
. On the identity of the engraver see Edmond 1991, Schuckman 1991. Martin Droeshout senior, born in Brussels in the late 1560s, came to England in about 1584 (Kirk 1910, 3.179, 183; Edmond 1991, 341). He was created denizen in 1608, appearing on the same patent roll as Mountjoy (Shaw 1911, 11), and was a freeman of the Painter-Stainers’ company. He is last heard of, living at St Olave’s, Hart Street, in 1641. Martin Droeshout junior, son of Michael and nephew of Martin senior, was born in London in 1601. It has been thought that he was the engraver, primarily because Martin senior is described in contemporary documents as a ‘painter’ or ‘limner’ (miniature portraitist) but never as an engraver. This line of reasoning is challenged by Edmond: the word ‘painter’, she shows, was used loosely to convey a general idea of ‘picture-maker’. The Dutch artist Remegius Hogenberg, who was certainly an engraver, appears eight times in the register of St Giles, Cripplegate: only once is he described as a ‘graver’; on all the other occasions he is called a ‘picture-maker’ or ‘painter’. The nomenclature, in short, does not preclude the painter Martin senior from also being the ‘graver’ of Shakespeare’s portrait.

56
. Strong 1969, 283; Cooper 2006, 48. Some thought the original was the ‘Flower’ portrait (Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford; formerly owned by Edgar Flower), an atmospheric oil-portrait, demonstrably similar to the Droeshout, and inscribed with the date 1609. However, recent technical analysis (2005; Cooper 2006, 72-5) has shown that, as many suspected, it is a nineteenth-century fabrication.

57
. Spielmann 1924, 34-5. The poor quality of this prestigious commission is mysterious: Richard Vaughan’s portrait of Ben Jonson (
c
. 1622-7) shows how much more vivid and expressive an engraving could be (Riggs 1989, 281). One plausible conjecture is that the editors of F1 were obliged to commission Droeshout, because it was he who had painted the original portrait on which the engraving was based (Honigmann 1985, 146-8). Honigmann is one of the engraving’s apologists: its ‘withdrawn and fastidious features’ convey ‘the thoughtfulness of a reserved and private man, not the tavern-haunting, overflowing poet of popular mythology’.

58
. On the Stratford monument see SRI 158-63. The Janssen family, Dutch immigrant sculptors and ‘tomb-makers’, have various connections with Shakespeare: their workshop was in Southwark, close to the Globe; their clientele included the Earls of Southampton and Rutland, both patrons of Shakespeare, and the Combe family of Stratford, his neighbours.

59
. Cooper 2006, 48. The style of the doublet is after
c
. 1610, tending to confirm its absence from the original portrait.

60
. Stubbes 1879, 1.52. ‘The underpropper or supportasse was a wire frame ... spread out behind from the doublet collar, to which it was fixed, supporting the ruff, which was pinned to it’ (Cunnington 1970, 113).
OED
notes that ‘supportasse’, found only in Stubbes, may derive from a printer’s error. It was also known as a ‘pickadil’ (originally a cutwork border for a collar, and probably the origin of the London street name, Piccadilly). Some underproppers were made of stiffened card, pasteboard, etc; an example in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Accession no. 192-1900) is discussed by Susan North in Cooper 2006, 120.

61
. Arnold 1988, 226.

62
. The supporter is associated with wigs and tires by William Warner: ‘Buskes, perriwigs, maskes, plumes of feathers fram’d, supporters’ (
Albion’s England
, 1592, 9.47).

PART FIVE:
AMONG STRANGERS

18. Blackfriars and Navarre

1
. Kirwood 1931; David Kathman, ‘Richard Field’,
ODNB
2004. It has been suggested that Field was a source of books used by Shakespeare, such as Holinshed’s
Chronicles
(1587), Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
(1589) and North’s translation of Plutarch’s
Lives
(1595), in all of which he had a hand as printer or publisher.

2
. In his will (8 June 1591, PRO Prob 11/77; PCC Sainberbe) Dutwite calls himself a merchant. He is not listed among the ‘strangers’ of St Martin le Grand in 1582 (see Part Three, note 15), unless he is James ‘Detewe’, taxed on £3 and described as a ‘bugler’ (probably a maker of bugles, ‘tube-shaped glass beads’ for decorating garments, rather than a musician). A James Detwitt, pursemaker, became a denizen in 1550 (Kirk 1910, 2.350): if he was Jacqueline’s father it is likely she was born in England.