Shakespeare: A Life

Read Shakespeare: A Life Online

Authors: Park Honan

Tags: #General, #History, #Literary Criticism, #European, #Biography & Autobiography, #Great Britain, #Literary, #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Europe, #Biography, #Historical, #Early modern; 1500-1700, #Entertainment & Performing Arts, #Performing Arts, #History & Criticism, #Shakespeare, #Theater, #Dramatists; English, #Stratford-upon-Avon (England)

Shakespeare
A LIFE

PARK HONAN

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

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OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford University Press is a
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Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries

Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York

© Park Honan 1999

The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker)

First published 1998 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback 1999

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Honan, Park. Shakespeare: a life/ Park Honan. Includes
bibliographical references. 1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 --
Biography. 2. Dramatists, English -- Early modern, 1500-1700 --
Biography. PR2894.H65 1998 822.3'3-dC21 98-22114 [B]

ISBN 0-19-282527-5

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Typeset in Galliard by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India Printed in Hong Kong

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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
vii
Introduction
ix
A Note on Conventions Used in the Text
xvi
I. A STRATFORD YOUTH
1.
BIRTH
3
Stratford -- Master Bretchgirdle's arrival -- The chamberlain's first son
2.
MOTHER OF THE CHILD
11
Mary Shakespeare at Henley Street --'Hic incepit pestis' -- Air and music
3.
JOHN SHAKESPEARE'S FORTUNES
25
In the bailiff's family -- Debts and a downfall
4.
TO GRAMMAR SCHOOL
43
A classroom -- Rhetoric at dawn -- The Lord of Misrule
5.
OPPORTUNITY AND NEED
60
'In the Countrey' -- Upon a promontory -- Returning
6.
LOVE AND EARLY MARRIAGE
72
Anne Hathaway and the Shottery fields -- A licence for lovers -- After
Davy Jones's show
II. ACTOR AND POET OF THE
LONDON STAGE
7.
TO LONDON -- AND THE AMPHITHEATRE PLAYERS
95
Streets and conduits -- Hirelings, repertory, and poets -- Crab the dog
8.
ATTITUDES
120
Marlowe, Kyd, and Shoreditch --'I am the sea': Titus Andronicus and
the Shrew -- The white rose of York
9.
THE CITY IN SEPTEMBER
145
Plague and prospects -- The 'waspish little worme' and 'upstart
Crow' -- Shagbag, The Comedy of Errors, and Love's Labour's Lost
10.
A PATRON, POEMS, AND COMPANY WORK
169
To the 'Earle of Southampton' -- The sonneteer -- Politics and King John
11.
A SERVANT OF THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN
196
Sharing with the Burbages -- Dreams and the doors of breath -- Falstaff,
Hal, and a Henriad

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12.
NEW PLACE AND THE COUNTRY
225
Gains and losses -- Two murders, New Place, and Mr Quiney's little
faults --'This is the Forest of Arden'
III. THE MATURITY OF GENIUS
13.
SOUTH OF JULIUS CAESAR'S TOWER
251
Ben Jonson's thumb -- Shylock, the troubled Merchant of Venice, and
Francis Meres -- Julius Caesar at the Globe
14.
HAMLET'S QUESTIONS
274
Poets' wars and 'little eyases' -- The Prince's world -- Investments
15.
THE KING'S SERVANTS
295
King James's arrival -- Pageantry, Measure for Measure, and All's Well
That Ends Well -- The 'pluméd troops'
16.
THE TRAGIC SUBLIME
318
Jennet's guest and Marie's lodger -- Time's perpetuity: Macbeth and
King Lear -- Classical roots: Egypt, Rome, and Athens
IV. THE LAST PHASE
17.
TALES AND TEMPESTS
353
Susanna's marriage -- Lands of 'painful adventure' from Pericles to
The Tempest -- A fire at the Globe
18.
A GENTLEMAN'S CHOICES
382
Stratford friends and family affairs -- Making a will and the struggles of
the Harts --'For all time'
The Arden and Shakespeare Families
412
Descendants of Shakespeare's Nephew Thomas Hart (b. 1605) Down to
the Sale ofthe Birthplace in 1806
413
A Note on the Shakespeare Biographical Tradition and Sources for his Life
415
Notes
425
Index
451

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
(between pp.
240
and
241
)
1.
Shakespeare's Birthplace at Stratford, from a watercolour sketch made
around 1762
2.
Mary Arden's house at Wilmcote, in the earliest known drawing
3.
South-east Prospect of Stratford-upon-Avon, 1746
4.
The High or Market Cross at Stratford
5.
Stratford's Middle Row
6.
Elizabethan gloves presented to the actor and manager David Garrick in
1769 by John Ward, the actor
7.
Mary Shakespeare's 'marke' on a deed of 15 October 1579
8.
Macbeth and Banquo meet three 'weird sisters or faeries', in Raphael
Holinshed's Chronicles, 1577
9.
A map of the world in Sir Humphrey Gilbert's A Discourse of a Discovery
for a New Passage to Cataia, 1576
10.
Shakespeare's Consort in Sir Nathaniel Curzon's drawing of 1708
11.
Anne Hathaway's cottage, from an engraving of a sketch made in the
summer of 1794
12.
The Grafton Portrait
13.
London Bridge and the city from the south, from a copy of an engraving
by C. J. de Visscher
14.
The Bear Garden and the rebuilt Globe in 1616, from a copy of Visscher's
engraving
15.
The Chandos Portrait
16.
Will Kempe, from Kempe's Nine Days Wonder, Performed in a Dance
from London to Norwich, 1600
17.
Robert Armin, from Armin's Two Maids of Moreclacke, 1609
18.
Robert Greene, from John Dickenson's Greene in Conceit, 1598
19.
'Shakespear ye Player by Garter', an outline drawing with a note by Ralph
Brooke, the York Herald, in 1602

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20.
The title-page of the First Folio, 1623
21.
Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton
22.
Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange
23.
Richard Burbage
24.
Ben Jonson
25.
John Fletcher
26.
The Mountjoys' house as shown in the 'Agas' map of London
27.
Shakespeare's bust in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Stratford
28.
Shakespeare's signature on the third page of his will
29.
Signature of Gilbert Shakespeare
30.
Signature of Susanna Hall
31.
Signature of Elizabeth Nash
32.
Signature of Elizabeth Barnard
33.
Shakespeare's monument in the Church of the Holy Trinity
34.
The Birthplace shortly before its restoration
I should like to acknowledge the following sources of facsimile illustrations:
Colgate University Library, Hamilton, New York (plate 10); Dulwich Picture Gallery,
London, by permission of the Trustees (plate 23); Folger Shakespeare Library, by
permission (plates 1, 4, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 33, 34);
Edgar I. Fripp,
Shakespeare: Man and Artist
(1964.) vol. i, facing p. 81 (plate 6); The Huntington
Library, San Marino, California, by permission (plates 8, 9); John Rylands University
Library of Manchester, reproduced by courtesy of the Director and University
Librarian (plate 12); National Portrait Gallery, London, by courtesy (plates 15, 21); Mary
A. Porter, by kind permission (plate 22); Public Record Office (plate 28); Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust Records Office, Stratford-upon-Avon, by permission (plates 2, 3, 5, 7,
11, 29, 30, 31, 32).

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