XII-THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE
Table of Contents
Shakespeare's practical temperament.
Shakespeare, in middle life, brought to practical affairs a singularly sane and sober temperament. In 'Ratseis Ghost' (1605), an anecdotal biography of Gamaliel Ratsey, a notorious highwayman, who was hanged at Bedford on March 26, 1605, the highwayman is represented as compelling a troop of actors whom he met by chance on the road to perform in his presence. At the close of the performance Ratsey, according to the memoir, addressed himself to a leader of the company, and cynically urged him to practise the utmost frugality in London. 'When thou feelest thy purse well lined (the counsellor proceeded), buy thee some place or lordship in the country that, growing weary of playing, thy money may there bring thee to dignity and reputation.' Whether or no Ratsey's biographer consciously identified the highwayman's auditor with Shakespeare, it was the prosaic course of conduct marked out by Ratsey that Shakespeare literally followed. As soon as his position in his profession was assured, he devoted his energies to re-establishing the fallen fortunes of his family in his native place, and to acquiring for himself and his successors the status of gentlefolk.
His father's difficulties.
His father's pecuniary embarrassments had steadily increased since his son's departure. Creditors harassed him unceasingly. In 1587 one Nicholas Lane pursued him for a debt for which he had become liable as surety for his brother Henry, who was still farming their father's lands at Snitterfield. Through 1588 and 1589 John Shakespeare retaliated with pertinacity on a debtor named John Tompson. But in 1591 a creditor, Adrian Quiney, obtained a writ of distraint against him, and although in 1592 he attested inventories taken on the death of two neighbours, Ralph Shaw and Henry Field, father of the London printer, he was on December 25 of the same year 'presented' as a recusant for absenting himself from church. The commissioners reported that his absence was probably due to 'fear of process for debt.' He figures for the last time in the proceedings of the local court, in his customary role of defendant, on March 9, 1595. He was then joined with two fellow traders-Philip Green, a chandler, and Henry Rogers, a butcher-as defendant in a suit brought by Adrian Quiney and Thomas Barker for the recovery of the sum of five pounds. Unlike his partners in the litigation, his name is not followed in the record by a mention of his calling, and when the suit reached a later stage his name was omitted altogether. These may be viewed as indications that in the course of the proceedings he finally retired from trade, which had been of late prolific in disasters for him. In January 1596-7 he conveyed a slip of land attached to his dwelling in Henley Street to one George Badger.
His wife's debt.
There is a likelihood that the poet's wife fared, in the poet's absence, no better than his father. The only contemporary mention made of her between her marriage in 1582 and her husband's death in 1616 is as the borrower at an unascertained date (evidently before 1595) of forty shillings from Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been her father's shepherd. The money was unpaid when Whittington died in 1601, and he directed his executor to recover the sum from the poet and distribute it among the poor of Stratford. [187]
It was probably in 1596 that Shakespeare returned, after nearly eleven years' absence, to his native town, and worked a revolution in the affairs of his family. The prosecutions of his father in the local court ceased. Thenceforth the poet's relations with Stratford were uninterrupted. He still resided in London for most of the year; but until the close of his professional career he paid the town at least one annual visit, and he was always formally described as 'of Stratford-on-Avon, gentleman.' He was no doubt there on August 11, 1596, when his only son, Hamnet, was buried in the parish church; the boy was eleven and a half years old.
The coat-of-arms.
At the same date the poet's father, despite his pecuniary embarrassments, took a step, by way of regaining his prestige, which must be assigned to the poet's intervention. [188a] He made application to the College of Heralds for a coat-of-arms. [188b] Then, as now, the heralds when bestowing new coats-of-arms commonly credited the applicant's family with an imaginary antiquity, and little reliance need be placed on the biographical or genealogical statements alleged in grants of arms. The poet's father or the poet himself when first applying to the College stated that John Shakespeare, in 1568, while he was bailiff of Stratford, and while he was by virtue of that office a justice of the peace, had obtained from Robert Cook, then Clarenceux herald, a 'pattern' or sketch of an armorial coat. This allegation is not noticed in the records of the College, and may be a formal fiction designed by John Shakespeare and his son to recommend their claim to the notice of the heralds. The negotiations of 1568, if they were not apocryphal, were certainly abortive; otherwise there would have been no necessity for the further action of 1596. In any case, on October 20, 1596, a draft, which remains in the College of Arms, was prepared under the direction of William Dethick, Garter King-of-Arms, granting John's request for a coat-of-arms. Garter stated, with characteristic vagueness, that he had been 'by credible report' informed that the applicant's 'parentes and late antecessors were for theire valeant and faithfull service advanced and rewarded by the most prudent prince King Henry the Seventh of famous memories sythence whiche tyme they have continewed at those partes [i.e. Warwickshire] in good reputacion and credit;' and that 'the said John [had] maryed Mary, daughter and heiress of Robert Arden, of Wilmcote, gent.' In consideration of these titles to honour, Garter declared that he assigned to Shakespeare this shield, viz.: 'Gold, on a bend sable, a spear of the first, and for his crest or cognizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent, standing on a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled as aforesaid.' In the margin of this draft-grant there is a pen sketch of the arms and crest, and above them is written the motto, 'Non Sans Droict.' [189] A second copy of the draft, also dated in 1596, is extant at the College. The only alterations are the substitution of the word 'grandfather' for 'antecessors' in the account of John Shakespeare's ancestry, and the substitution of the word 'esquire' for 'gent' in the description of his wife's father, Robert Arden. At the foot of this draft, however, appeared some disconnected and unverifiable memoranda which John Shakespeare or his son had supplied to the heralds, to the effect that John had been bailiff of Stratford, had received a 'pattern' of a shield from Clarenceux Cook, was a man of substance, and had married into a worshipful family. [190]
Neither of these drafts was fully executed. It may have been that the unduly favourable representations made to the College respecting John Shakespeare's social and pecuniary position excited suspicion even in the habitually credulous minds of the heralds, or those officers may have deemed the profession of the son, who was conducting the negotiation, a bar to completing the transaction. At any rate, Shakespeare and his father allowed three years to elapse before (as far as extant documents show) they made a further endeavour to secure the coveted distinction. In 1599 their efforts were crowned with success. Changes in the interval among the officials at the College may have facilitated the proceedings. In 1597 the Earl of Essex had become Earl Marshal and chief of the Heralds' College (the office had been in commission in 1596); while the great scholar and antiquary, William Camden, had joined the College, also in 1597, as Clarenceux King-of-Arms. The poet was favourably known to both Camden and the Earl of Essex, the close friend of the Earl of Southampton. His father's application now took a new form. No grant of arms was asked for. It was asserted without qualification that the coat, as set out in the draft-grants of 1596, had been assigned to John Shakespeare while he was bailiff, and the heralds were merely invited to give him a 'recognition' or 'exemplification' of it. [191] At the same time he asked permission for himself to impale, and his eldest son and other children to quarter, on 'his ancient coat-of-arms' that of the Ardens of Wilmcote, his wife's family. The College officers were characteristically complacent. A draft was prepared under the hands of Dethick, the Garter King, and of Camden, the Clarenceux King, granting the required 'exemplification' and authorising the required impalement and quartering. On one point only did Dethick and Camden betray conscientious scruples. Shakespeare and his father obviously desired the heralds to recognise the title of Mary Shakespeare (the poet's mother) to bear the arms of the great Warwickshire family of Arden, then seated at Park Hall. But the relationship, if it existed, was undetermined; the Warwickshire Ardens were gentry of influence in the county, and were certain to protest against any hasty assumption of identity between their line and that of the humble farmer of Wilmcote....
