Shakespeare was my favourite thing to study when I was in English. Even though the language was different, I found myself being able to understand what he was saying. This, to me, was a revelation that maybe I wasn't as thick as I thought I was. I could understand things that some of my classmates couldn't or just weren't interested.
For the first time I felt smrt. I mean smart.
So here is to the dead guy I adore!
Shakespeare: The Biography
by
Peter Ackroyd
Part One: Stratford-Upon-Avon
Chapter 1: There Was A Starr Dunst, and Under that I was Borne
William Shakespeare is supposed to have been born on St. George's Day (23 April 1564).
After his birth, he would have been washed and swaddled tightly in soft cloth by the mid-wife who would then present the baby to his father.
After that, our little bundle of joy would have been taken back to his mother and given a small portion of butter and honey (not really sure why). In the county of Warwickshire, it was also custom to give the baby hare's brain that had been reduced to jelly (again, no idea why. Maybe to fight off evil spirits and/or disease?).
Three days later (26 April 1564) baby Shakespeare was carried by his proud father from the house on Henley Street down to the church and would have been accompanied by his god parents. His mother would not have been at the baptism.The name of the infant would have been given before he was dipped into the baptismal font and the sign of the cross marked on his head.
(In the registry the clerk had written Guilelmus filius Johannes Shakespere, though Johannes should have been spelled Johannis)
After the baptism, a white linnen cloth was palce on his head and remained there until his mother had been purified by the church. It was called the "chrisom cloth" and if the baby died within the month would have been used as his burial shroud
There was of course no certainty that such a young baby would survive. Nine percent died within a week of their birth . In the year of William's birth there was an average of 62.8 baptisms with the annual average of 42.8 child burials. You would have had to have been tough, even as a baby, and from a fairly prosperous family to beat the odds.
The first test of little William's toughness came three months after he was born. In the parish register on 11 July 1564,beside the record of the burial of a weaver's young apprentice was written: Hic incipit pestis. The plague.
In a period of six months about two hundred and thirty residents died in Stratford. About a tenth of the population. A neighbour, a family of four died on the same side of the street as where the Shakespeare lived.
But the son of John and Mary Shakespeare survived. Most likely because he and his mother fled town, to her family in the country because only those who stayed in town died.
His parents were terrified to lose this baby as they had already lost two daughters before him. The care they devoted to their little boy must have been close and intense.
Such children tend to be confident later in life as they feel they have been protected from the harsh world around them.
It is through these circumstances that Shakespeare's strength of character probably came to fruition.
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