William of Stratford Part 2: 'He Wears The Rose of Youth Upon Him'

**Philip Rowe** (0:09)
Welcome to The History Of European Theatre podcast, and thanks for joining me on this journey through millennia of theatrical history. Episode 118, William Of Stratford, Part 2 He Wears The Rose Of Youth Upon Him.
Last time, I looked at the life and times of John Shakespeare, Stratford businessman, glover, and at his height, chief alderman of the town. From that episode, there are a couple of corrections that I need to make, pointed out to me by listener John. I mentioned that after his time as a bailiff in 1568, John Shakespeare was not re-elected, and I suggested that this could be seen as an indication of his growing financial problems. In fact, the records show that no alderman was re-elected for the following year after his term of office, so this was not at all unusual, and the way that I linked those two things is not necessarily correct, and I'm happy to be corrected on that. The usual practice was in fact for the previous bailiff to become the next bailiff's deputy or high alderman, which makes perfect sense from a point of view of giving experience and continuity in these civic roles. And on another point, I placed the fire that burned a good portion of the town in September 1594 It was in fact in May that year.
The narrative of John's life is perhaps not as simple as the failed businessman that had become the shorthand. For all that has been pieced together about him, the trail he leaves in the record is sketchy, and we certainly don't have any recorded evidence about how he felt about his first-born son's rise in the world of London Theatre or any other of his life choices. There have been attempts to read Shakespeare's attitude to his father in how fathers are represented in the plays, but that is, I think, a rather slippery slope. It would be unreasonable to think that every father in every play represented Shakespeare's personal experience of or attitude towards his own father, but also perfectly reasonable to think that there must be some comment driven by personal biography within the plays. How can we separate the two, the imaginative from the biographical? Personally, I think that's impossible. So it's time to move from John's story and take a look at his son's early years and an Elizabethan childhood.
As with his father, we have to be honest up front and say that we know very little, in fact virtually nothing, of William's early life in Stratford. Beyond his christening, he doesn't turn up in any official records and this is not at all surprising. However precocious he may or may not have been as a child, no one knew that he was to become such an important figure. Indeed, it would have been widely assumed that he would follow his father into the Glover's trade and live out his life in Stratford. But we can make some educated speculation about what his childhood was like. We know that John ran his gloving business and his sidelines from the family home. The workshop was the domain of John and his apprentices and we believe involved cutting and sewing leather as well as carrying out some elements of the tanning process. An opening with a shelf onto the street served as a shop front to catch any passing trade interested in purchasing his gloves. But the main selling opportunities was Stratford's market held once a week.
The living areas in the house were the female domain. John's wife Mary probably would have kept one or two maids to help with food preparation, household duties and childcare. That preparation of food was much more than just cooking. Plucking birds, gutting fish and preparing meat would probably have been undertaken outside to avoid too many noxious smells in the house and for easier disposal of waste. It's assumed that children, especially girls, were brought up to help in such tasks at an earlier age than is common now and they probably fulfilled their share of childcare for younger siblings too. We can only assume that the Shakespeare's conformed to this standard pattern of an Elizabethan family set up as their detailed domestic arrangements and John's low-level business activities leave no trace in the record. However, in the area of religion, because it was much more prescribed and better documented, we can be a little more sure about how life progressed. Children attended church, both the Sunday services and at times daily Mass, matins and even song. On Holy Days, of which there were many, all the shops and markets were shut. As I have mentioned before, church attendance was obligatory and defiance could result in extreme cases in excommunication, which implied social ostracism, as well as the denial of the religious rights that were your path to heaven. This was serious stuff. From an early age, a knowledge of the word and actions of God was built up by the repetition of biblical stories, Bible quotations and the Christian message generally. For the boys, catechism, the oral instruction and doctrines of the church, was taught by the local priest. This was a very regimented approach to the dispersal of the word of God. Readings from the Bible, from 1568, that was the Bishop's Bible, revision of the earlier Great Bible of 1540, formed a core of the services. The Book of Common Prayer was the other guide for the services, prescribing prayers and readings for every day and occasion. Shakespeare's plays carry the proof of the depth and breadth of his familiarity with the Bible. They contain numerous quotations from and allusions to biblical texts and it's said that these come from 42 books in the Bible, all but equally sourced from the Old and New Testament. The first three chapters of Genesis are particularly well represented in this way. We can't say if Shakespeare quoted from the Bible from memory or how often he had to look up references, but because Bibles are some of the best preserved documents from the period, it's possible to see where he used later versions of the Bible and, in some cases, where he misquoted his source. Of course, we can't always see if those misquotes were intentional or an error of his memory. The plays also include quotes from and references to the Book of Common Prayer, suggesting a similar degree of immersion.