Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd Chapter 70

Chapter 70!!  Twenty-one chapters to go!!

Tut I am in Their Bosomes

The affairs of Stratford also claimed Shakespeare’s attention.  For a moment with his wife, Anne, re-enters the historical record in a minor role.  The will of a neighbouring husbandman, Thomas Whittington of Shottery, left forty shillings to the poor of Stratford “that is in the hand of Anne Shaxspere, wyf into Wyllyam Shaxpere, and is due debt unto me.”  It has been suggested that Anne was forced to borrow money from Whittington because her husband was not maintaining her in the proper fashion.  This is unlikely as she was living in New Place, one of the most valuable properties in town and it would have been a disgrace to the family if she didn’t receive the means both for upkeep and for her standing in the town.  All evidence suggests that Shakespeare regularly sent large sums of money to his family.  The will only means that Anne owed Whittington money and it is likely he gave her the money for safekeeping, confirming the impression that she was a reliable and trustworthy housekeeper.

There is one other small episode of the period that also merits attention.  At a slightly later date, William Shakespeare sued a Stratford apothecary by the name of Philip Roger, upon a consignment of malt.  He had sold twenty bushels at the price of 38 shillings and on top of that lent Rogers two shillings.  Rogers himself had repaid only six shillings of the total amount, so Shakespeare went to court to get the remainder of the what was owned plus ten more shillings for damages.  This episode testifies to Shakespeare’s strong sense of financial justice and suggest that Anne ran something of a small household business in Stratford itself.

There were in fact excursions in the town which find a strange reflection in the drama that Shakespeare was about to compose.  At the start of 1601 the lord of the manor of Stratford, Sir Edward Greville, had challenged the rights of the borough by enclosing some common land.  Six of the town’s aldermen then levelled the hedges that marked the enclosures; whereupon Greville accused them of riot.  Shakespeare’s cousin, Thomas Greene, went to London to enlist the advice of the Attorney General; among those who had signed a statement concerning the town’s right was John Shakespeare.  But no immediate help came and the whole affair turned into an aggressive confrontation between the two parties.  It is a nasty story of rivalry between the two parties.  In the spring of 1602, Richard Quiney, a friend of Shakespeare’s was attacked during one of the many brawls between the two groups and died soon after. 

It has its counterparts in other country towns where the problem of enclosures had arisen, but in this case, it involved people Shakespeare knew.  It is not stretching credulity too far to see something of this local drama in the plot of Coriolanus, where the tribunes of the people are matched against a haughty and domineering patrician.  Yet, even here it is impossible to say if Shakespeare takes “sides”.  He needed this detachment from the events around him in order to invest so much energy in his imagined drama.