3 – Half a decade of Shakespeare’s life is missing, and nobody has the slightest clue about where he was or what he was doing
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
Jaques in As You Like It
The paucity of documents that survive from the time of William Shakespeare’s life has been mentioned previously, and that leads us on to our next mystery. While there are a plethora of sources that can inform us of what The Bard was getting on with once he’d already produced a few plays – which create playbills, records of performances, actor’s payslips and the like – there is very little that covers his life from leaving school until making it in the theatre. In fact, there’s a whole six-year period, smack bang in the middle of his early career, about which we know basically nothing at all.
We leave the recorded history of Shakespeare in 1586 when he is married to Anne Hathaway (no, not that one) and she has borne him three children, Susanna, with whom she was pregnant at the time of their wedding and about whom we will discuss in the next chapter, and a pair of twins, Hamnet and Judith. Hamnet died in 1586 – a formative moment for Shakespeare, many suggest – but again, about which we know almost nothing. There are no historical traces of William from 1586, when he is tangentially mentioned as part of a court case involving his mother’s estate, to 1592, when he is described as an “upstart crow” in a pamphlet written by a London thespian, Robert Greene. What he did in the meantime, how he came to be in London and how he managed to inveigle his way into the world of acting are all a mystery to historians.
The closest historical accounts to Shakespeare’s life claimed that he had left Stratford under a cloud, having been accused of poaching deer and writing a satirical song about the squire who had made the allegation. Later biographers placed him in Lancashire, well to the north of his native Warwickshire, with a documentary source from the time speaking of “William Shakeshaft, now dwelling with me”. This seems a good lead, but it must be factored in that Shakeshaft, which was a name which had been used by William’s grandfather, was a very common name at the time in Lancashire, and William was one of the most common given names as well.
It is thought that, as an educated man, he would have gone to university, were that path not forbidden to men already married. He would have needed to earn money to support his young family, and thus the obvious thing for an educated individual to have done would have been to become a teacher, as many suspect that he might have done. Various important Lancashire families – all of whom, incidentally, were also accused of being recusant Catholics – were linked to his mother’s Arden family and could well have provided him with work and lodging.
This could also explain how he came to London and the theatre. Many London theatre companies would travel the country, performing at the estates of wealthy families, and it is known that two of the Lancashire houses associated with the Ardens, the Heskeths and the Houghtons, hosted plays by companies which William was later associated. Some suggest that he might have fallen in with them and traveled with them on to London.
A second theory holds that Shakespeare remained in Stratford, only to have fame foist upon him when a touring theatre company came to town. The Queen Elizabeth’s Men, a company who regularly visited Stratford, were in town when one of their actors, William Knell, was stabbed to death in a pub fight in the town. Some historians have subsequently alleged that William, who was interested in drama and clearly had talent, stepped in for Knell and continued on to London with them. His father John was at the time the High Bailiff of the town, responsible for touring theatre companies, and had previously been the Stratford constable, responsible for keeping law and order, so perhaps it is not too far-fetched an idea.
Wherever he was, he reemerged in London in 1592, an already successful playwright. He had transitioned from actor to writer and was independently wealthy – but when he moved to London, he left his wife, children and the whole family in Stratford behind him.