William Shakespeare (1955)

He was born sometime in April, 1564. The parish register records the baptismal date, 26th of April. But the birth date is not known. Nor is there any further record concerning William Shakespeare until fully 18 years later. Stratford-upon-Avon in the late 16th century was a thriving Warwickshire market town of perhaps 2,000 people. Its fairs and weekly market days were events of some importance to Warwickshire farmers and to Stratford merchants. Among these was John Shakespeare, a former high bailiff or mayor of Stratford, and a dealer in wool and fine leathers. Market day brought excitement and vigor to the town, but it was ever much the same. For the order of things was fixed and unhurried in 16th century England. Shadows of the Middle Ages still fell long across Warwickshire fields and across the minds of Warwickshire men. For the sons of substantial Stratford men, there was the free grammar school, but the lessons were mostly Latin and dull. The discipline severe. Young Master Shakespeare, tardy once again, I see. As God has sanctified the rod and correction to cure the evils of their conditions, to drive out that folly which is bound up in their hearts, to save them from hell, to give them wisdom, so the rod is to be used as God's instrument. But for schoolboys away from their books, there were summer days and the River Avon. There is a willow grows aslant a brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? You see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel. By the mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed. And for a Warwickshire lad already more than half in love with words, there was something more. Bag and baggage with clowns and trumpets and their cart full of props, the players had come to town. Deemed by many as little better than rogues and vagabonds, they were the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. They would act this night in the Great Guildhall, bringing to Stratford the wonders of the world abroad, of a nation awakening to the glories of its past. Why then, with one voice and like true English hearts, with me throw up your caps and FOR ENGLAND CRY, "SAINT GEORGE!" On the 28th of November, 1582, two Warwickshire farmers posted a bond of £40 at the consistory court in Worcester. Sealed and signed, this bond guaranteed that Will Shakespeare, then 18, should marry no one but Anne Hathaway of Stratford in the diocese of Worcester, maiden. It is not known for certain in which church of the diocese the wedding took place. And there is still another mystery. On the day before the Warwickshire farmers pledged their £40, a marriage license had been issued to young Will Shakespeare and a certain Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton. But of this other Anne, little more is known. Anne Hathaway was 26, 8 years older than her husband. In May following their marriage in November, a daughter, Susanna, was born. There is little more to be known of these long years. Early in 1585, however, the first child was followed by twins. Hamnet and Judith, son and daughter to William Shakespeare, were baptized in Holy Trinity. But as for the young man himself, was he apprenticed to his father's trade? Was he writing at this time? We do not know. These are the hidden years. London's on. A splendid city of mansion and hovel cramped within medieval walls. A terrifying city of the plague. If two hens for I must go, where is it's not beautiful now. With the wind and the weather, weather, weather, weather, weather. Oh, weather, weather, weather. Thou hast sworn thy love to be thou hast sworn it not to me. Then we thy joys be with thee. Then we thy joys be with thee. A city of music and of laughter. In a new theater built in Shoreditch, in the courtyard of inns, a young actor, Richard Burbage, and his company of players have the citizens of London doubled with laughter. But it is not broad comedy alone which enchants both prince and commoner. It is poetry. He jests at scars that never felt a wound. But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Arise, Workman on holiday, merchant and prentice, elegant gentleman and his lady, how London doth pour out her citizens. For Will Shakespeare has the city by its ears. To William Kemp, William Shakespeare, Richard Burbage, servants to the Lord Chamberlain, for two several comedies or interludes showed by them before her majesty the Queen. This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war, this happy breed of men, this little world, this precious stone set in a silver sea, which serves it in the office of a wall or as a moat defensive to a house against the envy of less happier lands, This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England is now leased out. I die pronouncing it. Like to a tenement or pelting farm. But England that was wont to conquer others hath made a shameful conquest of itself. The king is come. Deal mildly with his youth. For young hot colts being raged do rage the more. What comfort, man? How is't with age? The early years are lost to us. But we know that by the winter of 1596 William Shakespeare had become the wonder of the Elizabethan stage. How is he, Anne? He died, Will. His only son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11. Grief fills the room up of my absent child. Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me. Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words. Then have I reason to be fond of grief. With the tragic record of his son's death, we find references once again to William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. William William Shakespeare In October of 1597 a deed recorded the purchase of New Place, largest and finest house in Stratford. His playwriting and acting, particularly his acting, were bringing him considerable wealth. But he was never to have another son to whom he could pass on the name Shakespeare. Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden O the very casks that did affright the air at Agincourt? The vasty fields of France and much more indeed were to be crammed within the splendid theater newly built across the river Thames. And William Shakespeare's life in London was now that of his theater, his fellow actors, his plays. His theater, the great Globe, concerned daily with props and rehearsals, with conferences between leading actor and playwright, with costume fittings for skilled boy players who enacted the women's roles. A bustle of activity among a fellowship of actors to whom Will Shakespeare's latest play was the thing. Richard Burbage was more than ever the idol of London, creating on the stage of the Globe Shakespeare's greatest characters. Shakespeare himself was a working actor, Adam in As You Like It, the Ghost in Hamlet, the leading role in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour. Shivering on the tongue, you mouth the words. Whatever his merits as an actor, he was certainly the company's leading dramatist. He found his plots everywhere. In old Italian novels, Holinshed's Chronicles, forgotten dramas, whatever fell to his magic hand. From Plutarch's pages, Julius Caesar, in which the noble Brutus comes to terms with his destiny. Our legions are brimful. Our cause is ripe. The enemy increases every day. We at the height are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now float, and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures. Then with your will, go on. We will along ourselves and meet them at Philippi. From an old play by Thomas Kyd and an older legend, the tragical history of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Now the king drinks to Hamlet. Come, begin. And you, the judges, bear a wary eye. Come on, sir. Come, my lord. One. No. Judgment. A hit, a very palpable hit. Well, again then. Stay. Give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine. Here's to thy health. I'll play this bout fair. Set it by awhile. Come. Hamlet, Othello, Lear, Macbeth, the greatest monuments of human misery and despair in the literature of the world. How to account for these? Years had passed. His father was dead. There is the mystery of a certain dark lady, the woman colored ill of the sonnets. There are, beyond these few facts, the despairing words of Macbeth. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. For more than 20 years, his working day world was that of the theater. If music be the food of love, play on. Give me excess of it. Behold, where stands he with Arthur's frosted head. Fly, MY LORD, FLY! LEAD me to the caskets to try my fortune. Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest. Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day. It was the nightingale and not the lark that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. There is my dagger. Strike as thou didst Caesar. Thus far, with rough and all unable pen, our bending author has pursued the story. In little room confining mighty men. By 1610, at age of 46, he was back in Stratford. He owned farmlands in the parish of Old Stratford and Welcombe. His eldest daughter, Susanna, was living nearby. She'd made a good marriage. Her husband was Dr. John Hall, a well-known physician. Dr. Hall was working on a book, Select Observations on English Bodies. His learned conversation must have been of interest to his father-in-law, who in his plays had written much of baleful weeds and precious juiced flowers. His wife, Anne, was still living, as was his youngest daughter, Judith, twin to Hamnet, the son who had died at 11. London and the great Globe must have seemed far away. And yet we know that his retirement from the life of the theater must have been gradual. And it is certain that he sent or took himself at least three more plays to his fellows at the Globe, plays which were as calm and serene as his tragedies had been troubled and somber. The Winter's Tale, The Tempest. On June the 29th, 1613, during a performance of Henry VIII, the Globe Theater burned to the ground. On the 25th of March, 1616, he executed his will. After providing for his family, he remembered his fellow actors in London. Item, I give and bequeath to my fellows, John Heminge, Richard Burbage, and Henry Condell, 26 shillings and eightpence apiece to buy them rings. Rings to remember Will Shakespeare by. Our revels now are ended. These are actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air. And like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great Globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a wreck behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.