Shakespeare: A Life (49 page)

public at the Globe.
¹³
Little else suggests that Troilus was meant only for lawyers. By 1602
(when we think it was written) Shakespeare's troupe had cause for
anxiety: George Carey, Lord Hunsdon was too ill to attend the Privy
Council: they had no patron at Whitehall. On his appointment as Lord
Chamberlain in 1597, they had again become the Lord Chamberlain's
Servants, but his illness and the Queen's decline put them in
jeopardy. Still, none of that accounts for Shakespeare's acid view of
the Trojan War, his assault on valour and idealism, or his picturing
of a faithless Cressida and a bitterly disillusioned Troilus.

He had, however, steeped himself in a war about which Tudor writers
were cynical. In Homer and in Ovid as well as in Robert Henryson's
Testament of Cresseid and perhaps in Chaucer Troilus and Criseyde
among other sources, he had found older versions of the tale. Some
three Trojan War plays were staged in the 1590s -- and Chettle and
Dekker had written a '
Troyelles & cresseda
' for Henslowe
in 1599. A year before that, George Chapman had dedicated Seaven
Bookes of the Iliades of Homere to the Earl of Essex, while lauding the
Greek hero -- Achilles -- as one in whose 'unmatched vertues shyne the
dignities of the soule, and the whole excellence of royall
humanitie'.
¹⁴

Unlikely to have responded to Chapman quite as Keats did, Shakespeare
shows Achilles as lazy, corrupt, and murderous, but none of his
drama's portraits -- not even Ajax's -- is 'original' in being free from
all Tudor precedent. Its figures had already been judged in legend,
and cynicism here is in keeping with recent debate over the
Iliad
and, lately, with the theatre's satiric pessimism. Jonson Poetaster
has an armed Prologue, to which Troilus's own Prologue figure
responds, since he calls himself.

A Prologue armed -- but not in confidence Of author's pen or actor's voice . . .

(lines 23-4)

Shakespeare is less satirical in the play than intrigued by his
materials, by war's reality, problems of mixed viewpoints, and
history's forcing of roles on its actors.

The situation of the long, futile Trojan War gives him a chance to
explore paradoxes of our human faculties -- particularly those of
intuition and romantic faith on the one hand, and of logic and
intellectual

-287-

reasoning on the other. 'Intelligence here is a primary quality', notes
Wilson Knight in The Wheel of Fire, in one of the most discerning
essays on the play: 'fools are jeered at for their blunt wits, wise men
display their prolix wisdom, the lover analyses the metaphysical
implications of his love.'
¹⁵
The play is freshly analytic, but with long roots in Shakespeare's
developing views of history and temperament. As early as
Lucrece
he had referred to 'sly Ulysses', and here Ulysses is at once foxy
and flawed. More icily drawn than heroes of the romantic comedies,
Troilus is more to blame for love's failure than Cressida, who is not
prone to self-deception. The play relates to several of the genres and
implies a fine, innovative critique of tragic form -- but it is very
doubtful that this brilliant experiment was really a particular success
in its time on any stage in London, whether private or public.

In these years there were sad changes at Stratford, where mortality
divided the poet a little more from his past. His father had died, and
John Shakespeare was laid to rest at Holy Trinity on 8 September 1601.
He made no surviving legal will, but his eldest son inherited the two
Henley Street houses.

Did the
amiable glover -- in old age -- have a loose tongue? Someone, after all,
had spoken to Adrian Quiney of the poet's wish to buy 'some odd
yardland or other at Shottery'. That had been a delicate topic,
involving, perhaps, no more than a half-formed plan of John
Shakespeare's son to invest spare cash. But Sturley and old Adrian had
both hoped to persuade John's very affluent son -- an actor and
theatrepoet with money in his pocket -- to forget the Shottery
yardlands, and to help himself and the Corporation by buying a share
in the tithes. Sturley refers to the poet as an unwitting soul who can
be guided, but it is not clear that the glover's son was eager to be
told what to do with his cash. Having bought New Place, Shakespeare
waited four and a half years and until after his father died before
making another large outlay -- despite his rising profits as a Globe
'housekeeper' and at a time when Hamlet (by around 1601) would have
been one of the Globe's chief drawing cards.

-288-

As he acquired funds, he apparently took pains to guard himself
against those too ready to advise; in fact, he did not invest in
Shottery, and for a few years bided his time. John Shakespeare's
tongue, if it did cause trouble, may have been less embarrassing than
the council's kindly fondness for anybody with spare cash. In any
case, grief for his father may possibly have outweighed any sense
Shakespeare had of the old glover's failings. Grief can elude the
Public Record Office, but two poems that he wrote at about this time
with their strong elegiac strain may indirectly reflect his sense of
loss. It is well to add that their composition dates are unsettled.
A Lover's Complaint
,
a narrative in the plaintive vein of Samuel Daniel and the 1590s, may
have been written in 16o2 or soon after. It takes up themes of
seduction and betrayal from the viewpoint of a young woman whose tone
is one of elegiac weariness. Her seducer is a clever, interesting
version of a young Tarquin bent on self-apology, though the portrait is
offset by almost unchanging, leaden effects of her sorrow.

The Phoenix and Turtle, a lyric he never entitled, appeared in the
year of his father's death. It was printed along with verses by Jonson,
Chapman, and Marston in a collection by Robert Chester, entitled
Love's Martyr. or, Rosalin's Complaint. Allegorically shadowing the
Truth of Love, in the constant Fate of the Phoenix and Turtle. The
volume is dedicated to Sir John Salusbury, who in 1586 had married
Ursula Halsall, born Stanley, the illegitimate daughter of the fourth
Earl of Derby. Ursula and her husband had two children, a daughter
Jane born in 1587, and a son Henry in 1589. Using motifs of the
Phoenix and the Turtle Dove, Chester's poets appear to celebrate the
Salusburys.

Shakespeare writes a
requiem on the death of pure love. Alluding to the burial rite, he
imagines troops of birds mourning for the Phoenix and Turtle Dove, who
had loved ideally:

Hearts remote yet not asunder,
Distance and no space was seen
'Twixt this turtle and his queen:
But in them it were a wonder.

(lines 29-32)
¹⁶

-289-

Oddly his rhyme 'asunder-wonder' also appears in the light song
'Shall I die?' -- which in recent times Gary Taylor, rather
unconvincingly and in the face of much disbelief, holds to be
Shakespeare's. Here in one stanza, a lady's cleavage is in view:

Pretty bare, past compare,
Parts those plots which besots
still asunder.

It is meet naught but sweet
Should come near that so rare
'tis a wonder.

(lines 71-6)

Light love, light verse -- and this is only a flying trapeze in rhyme.
'Shall I die?' was first assigned to Shakespeare in a miscellany
collected, and donated to the Bodleian, by Richard Rawlinson (
16891755), in which most of the attributions are reliable. The light
song's authorship is in doubt, but further arguments for it might be
made, and I think it could very well be by Shakespeare. Missing
exercises, not necessarily of any greater weight, must lie behind his
most exquisite lyrics, or the 'Threnos' for his Phoenix and Dove:

Beauty, truth, and rarity,
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclosed in cinders lie.

(lines 53-5)

Investments followed in the year after his father died. In 1602 he
made two purchases without being on hand to confirm them. Across from
his gardens on the far side of Chapel Lane was land belonging to the
manor of Rowington, then held by the dowager Countess of Warwick, lady
of the manor. A transfer of copyhold title to the dramatist was
arranged; but when her deputy, Walter Getley, came to the manor court
on 28 September to surrender the deed, no one was there to be granted
it. Four years later, the matter was still irregular. A cottage and
garden were on this quarter-acre, and yet a survey of the manor leaves
a blank space for the date of the court at which Shakespeare was

-290-

admitted to tenancy -- no record that he had bothered with that formality could be found.
¹⁷

His brother Gilbert helped at another time. On 1 May 1602, Shakespeare
bought for £320 from the wealthy Combes, William Gilbert of Warwick
and his nephew John, of Stratford, about 107 acres in open fields
north and east of the town in what was then called Old Stratford.
Gilbert took receipt of the deed, and Humphrey Mainwaring, Anthony
Nash and his brother John, and others witnessed it. The poet's acres
lay in nineteen scattered strips of land, or furlongs, which were
irregularly shaped. The names of the furlongs and their exact locales
were lost when the land was enclosed, but the names interestingly came
to light as recently as 1994.
^*

Why did he buy this land? His motives were unlikely to be as simple
or clear-cut as writers have supposed. Land ownership conveyed status,
influence, or respectability with local political overtones, and
heritable factors were often crucial; moreover, recent evidence in this
case is suggestive. A document arising from an inquiry of about 1625
by Simon Archer, lord of Bishopton manor, describes the 107 acres in
detail and states rather ambiguously that Shakespeare gave away 'the
said land with his daughter in marryage to Mr Hall of Stratford'. If the

-291-

land did figure in his negotiations for Susanna's marriage settlement,
in 1607, it would have been the usual or common practice for him to
retain a life interest before he bequeathed the estate to Susanna and
her husband in his will.
¹⁸

His deep, anxious concern for Susanna is evident. Even by 1602 a new
political mood could be felt, so that he would have been obliged to be
tactful, far-sighted, and politic in his acquisitions. This mood at
Stratford might be called a puritanical one so long as one bears in
mind that puritanism had its degrees and shades, not necessarily based
on any religious doctrine, and that local crises to come in
Shakespeare's lifetime involved other factors, too. But there was a
strong rise in local feeling against his own profession. The council
did not think less of him because of that -- they were to court him
urgently enough -- although in the parish church he was to be fixed in
effigy not as an actor, but as a poet. In these years, he was
conspicuous in his absences from New Place. He was a major landowner
known to have made money as an actor, and as feeling against
play-acting became sharper the aldermen officially echoed it. In
December 1602 they passed a measure forbidding all 'plays or
interludes' in their Gild hall or other Corporation property, and a
fine of 10s. (payable by anyone giving 'leave or licence' to
contravene that order) was to be raised to a stiff £10.

The council's animus against acting was much more severe, for
example, than Sir Edward Coke "Charge at Norwich" in 1607 merely
against unlicensed, strolling players. The money that bought New Place
would not have been thought tainted, but even as his fellows were
applauded in London, Shakespeare came back to a town where the
corporate council impugned his means of living.
¹⁹
In the wake of this a few years later, he thought of the Corporation's tithes.

His last major outlay at Stratford had a politic aspect, since the
hardpressed council, with too many of the poor to care for, depended on
returns from tithe leases. The dramatist had more to gain than a
tangible reward in this investment. Any share in the tithes could
provide a local outlet for his cash, likely profits not for himself,
but for his heirs, and a suggestion of his and his family's loyalty to
those at 'halls'. Ironically Adrian Quiney's plan thus bore real fruit,
after all On 24. July

-292-