If pride might be said to be the making of God in our own image, a lesser form of pride is the making of our gods, our idols, into our own image. This latter form of pride, what might be called pride in the lower key, is made manifest in the multifarious ways in which idolaters turn their idols into ideals of their own contrivance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of William Shakespeare. In the popular sphere, films such as Shakespeare in Love and All is True present the Bard in terms of our own modern understanding of “love” and “truth”. In the first film, “love” is shown to be nothing but irrational emotion-driven passion in which the Bard is depicted as an irrational emotion-driven person. In the latter, “truth” is shown to be what we want it to be, essentially subjective, with Shakespeare choosing to betray his wife and family in pursuit of homosexual self-gratification. Needless to say, neither of these films is based upon the actual facts of Shakespeare’s life as they exist in the historical record. In both cases, they reflect the sort of image of the Bard that the writers and directors of the films want to project, an image which is largely a mirror image of themselves, the remaking of Shakespeare in their own image. Pride in the lower key.
As a means of replacing these distorted mirrors with a true picture of the real William Shakespeare, it is necessary to stick to the known facts. These present themselves to posterity in two ways. The first is the historical record of his life, the biographical evidence understood within the historical context of the times in which he lived. The second is an understanding of his work as considered in the light of the biographical record and the historical context. (As a sidenote for those seeking to dig deeper, the present author has written two books which explore the biographical evidence from Shakespeare’s life and the textual evidence from his works: The Quest for Shakespeare: The Bard of Avon and the Church of Rome and Through Shakespeare’s Eyes: Seeing the Catholic Presence in the Plays.)
It is not possible to begin to discuss all the facts that we know about Shakespeare’s life within the confines and constraints of a solitary essay. It is, however, possible to show that the image of the Bard as a bawdy breaker of moral and sexual convention is contradicted by what we do know about his life.
One of the closest sources to Shakespeare is William Beeston, the son of Christopher Beeston, an actor in Shakespeare’s company and presumably a friend or at least a close acquaintance. Beeston told the antiquary John Aubrey that Shakespeare was “the more to be admired, he was not a company keeper. [He]… wouldn’t be debauched, and if invited to, writ [i.e. wrote] he was in pain”.[*] It seems, therefore, that Shakespeare was not inclined to a life of drunkenness and debauchery but that, on the contrary, and as expressed in the opening words of one of his sonnets, he believed that “th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action”.
There is, however, the question of Shakespeare’s marriage, which is popularly believed to have been unhappy and ultimately a failure. Did Shakespeare leave his wife and children in Stratford so that he might seek his fortune in London? Did he desert them? If so, it could be argued that the sort of person who would walk out on his own family was one who flaunted convention, including sexual convention, and that he must have had other sexual relationships.
So much for the argument that could be made if Shakespeare was indeed the disloyal husband and the miserable failure as a father that such a scenario conjures in our imagination. This is indeed the argument that has embedded itself in the popular imagination, thereby furnishing the furtive and fetidly fertile musings which animate the screenplays of Shakespeare in Love and All is True. But how true is it that Shakespeare left his wife and deserted his family? What evidence is there for such a presumption? In order to address such questions and to answer them, let’s look at the facts that are known about Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway.
They married in 1582 and remained married until Shakespeare’s death in 1616. They had three children, two daughters and a son. Tragically, the son died when he was only eleven-years-old. In 1597, Shakespeare purchased New Place, one of the largest houses in Stratford, as the family home. It was here that he would die nineteen years later, presumably attended at his deathbed by his wife and daughters. Intriguingly, he bequeathed to his wife in his will the “second best bed” which has been taken by some ill-informed Shakespeare “scholars” as being a deliberate and final insult to his wife. In fact, however, the “second best bed” was the marriage bed, the one shared possession which embodied the sacred intimacy of their relationship. It was “second best” because it was well used by husband and wife over many years. (The “best bed” was the one reserved for guests.) Far from being a final sadistic snub to a wife he never loved, the bequest of the bed was one final act of intimacy, one final expression of his love for her.
All this is very well, we might hear the devil’s advocate say, but the fact is that Shakespeare did not live with his wife for most of the time but in London, a hundred miles away. How can a marriage be considered happy if the husband and wife are separated by such a distance for so much of the time?
This would appear to be a good question but it doesn’t follow that Shakespeare spent his whole time in London. He would have been there for the production of his plays but would he have written his plays in London? Is it not possible, perhaps likely, that the plays were written in the relative seclusion of Stratford, which would necessitate Shakespeare spending part of the time at home with his family and part of his time away from home in London? William Beeston, the son of the actor in Shakespeare’s company and, therefore, as we have seen, one of the closest and most reliable sources on the Bard’s life, reported that Shakespeare made at least one long visit home each year, perhaps for the purposes of writing, and it is likely that he made shorter visits for business dealings and special family occasions.
The trip from London to Stratford, via Oxford, would have taken between two and four days, which would not have been that unusual nor considered all that arduous or onerous in those far less hurried times. Nonetheless, the fact remains that these circumstances would have necessitated Shakespeare spending long and protracted periods away from his wife and family. Now, however, thanks to the rediscovery of a long “ignored” letter, it seems that Anne Shakespeare might have accompanied her husband on his trips to London and perhaps have lived there with him.
Recent research by Professor Matthew Steggle of the University of Bristol has unearthed a letter fragment addressed to “good Mrs Shakespeare” which indicates that William and Anne Shakespeare might have lived together in London between 1600 and 1610. According to a report in April this year in the Independent, a national newspaper in the UK, the discovery “marks the first concrete evidence suggesting Anne’s presence in London alongside her husband, potentially reshaping our understanding of their relationship”.
It might be hoped that such “concrete evidence” will temper the desire of those who want to create Shakespeare in their own twenty-first century image, transforming him into an icon of modern decadence. Since, however, there are none so blind as those who will not see, or those, blinded by pride, who only see what they want to see, we can expect to see the continuation of nonsense disguised as Shakespeare “scholarship”.
But what of the question asked at the outset? Is Shakespeare a saint or a sinner? We can say, without doubt, that Shakespeare was a sinner because even the saints were sinners. We must hesitate to paint him as a saint but he would seem to be much more saintly than many would have us believe. One thing is for sure. Like King Lear, the Bard of Avon is more sinned against than sinning.
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[*]Aubrey MS in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
The featured image is the “Flower portrait” of William Shakespeare (c. 1820-1840) by Anonymous, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.