Transcript Understanding Shakespeare

“He who desires to study Shakespeare must […] be able to bind
Elizabethan London to the Athens of Pericles, and to learn Shakespeare’s
true position in the history of European drama of the world”
Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist (1891)
“At age 436, His Future Is Unlimited”
New York Times headline, 23 April 2000
…my gentle verse,
Which eyes not yet created shall o’er-read,
And tongues to be, your being shall rehearse,
When all the breathers of this world are dead,
You still shall live (such virtue hath my pen)
Where breath most breathes, even in the mouths of
men.
(Sonnet 81)
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Holy Trinity Church Register records
Gulielmus filius Johannes
Custom: 26 April 1564 as baptism / 23 April
as birthday
“Three-day rule” in 18th century  link to St.
George
1599 baptismal practices
St. Mark’s Day: unlucky?
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Two April 23rds
Mid-sixteenth century  Julian calendar 10
days behind solar year
1582, Pope Gregory XIII’s “name change”
European change versus anti-papal English
1752—stability (2 Sept, 14 Sept)
1564, then: 23 April = 3 May
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Age five  Petty
Abecedarius  READ
Grammar school after two years, ‘til the age
of 14
LONG DAYS and Sabbath observances
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King’s New School
University graduates
Scholarly acclaim
1569 Walter Roche  1571 Simon Hunt 
1575 Thomas Jenkins  1579 John Cottom
Only SEVEN, after all… (Roche out)
No Cottom
1576, John’s financial straits, Hunt and
Jenkins
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WHIPPING
Buttocks have a purpose in language
learning?
Time-honored and entrenched practice
Final exam “fitness”
Learning Latin = male puberty rite
Terence, Plautus, language learning by acting
Unknown if it happened in Stratford
But hard to dispute its influence…
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Hornbooks (appears in to Love’s Labour’s
Lost and The Two Noble Kinsmen)
The cross-row (appears in Richard III)
ABC books (appears in King John)
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Rough estimates from 1600 place pop at no
more than 2,500—probably less
Growing from 1550 estimates (Countryside to
town)
Villages still present (market town, though, by
1600 conventions)
1200 grid pattern
Wood Street/Bridge Street axis
Filled in by Shakespeare’s time (row of bldgs up
Bridge Street)  Shakespeare was writing in a
new idea of “enterprise”
Shops balanced with open areas/countryside
The parish church of Holy Trinity
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/conten
t/view/13/13/
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Travel more than walking was possible in
Shakespeare’s time
Five mile radius dependence for farmers
Such need prompted fairs and weekly
markets in Stratford and other towns
Many merchants, many trades
Thursday  market day
Market’s influence on town
Stratford conveniently located
Malting
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/conten
t/view/13/13/
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Charter of Incorporation (1553)
Form of Town Council, High Baliff
Properties formerly of the Guild of the Holy
Cross
Constructed Shakespeare’s Stratford
Nominated, not elected
John Shakespeare’s presence there
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/conten
t/view/13/13/
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Entirely separate church court from the Corporation
(Town Government—a psuedo-American church/state
division)
Surprisingly, Bishop oversaw adherence to many
matters
Exception in Stratford—Vicar
Religious upheaval—the English Reformation and its
consequences
Stratford’s quarrel with religion by the end of the 16th
century
Catholics against Puritan reformers—NO BISHOPS!
Corporation slow to respond to Protestant energy,
though they came to a head with the Vicar in the
1620s and 30s
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/conten
t/view/13/13/
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Tainted water and hygiene concerns
No formal sanitation (livestock)
The Corporation’s response? Muckheaps
Policies against littering from local merchants
Staggering survival rates as Will’s born
BUBONIC PLAGUE
FAMINE (1590s)  resultant riots/protests
Malsters’ grain use restricted
‘Noate of corn and malt’ of 1597, Will and
New Place
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/conten
t/view/13/13/
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Exacerbated famine and sanitation issues in 1594 and
1595
No equipment to combat such a force (a constant hazard)
Buildings of timbre and thatch
At least 120 houses destroyed in these two years (perhaps
a quarter of the housing stock)
The blamed cause: Shoddy backland developments to
protect poor migrant drifters
700 paupers—1/3 of the population!
Caused increased enforcement against vagrants
Regulations against abettors
Never really improved during Shakespeare’s lifetime
– 1608 smallpox, 1614 fire, 1616 disease breakout (probably
typhus)
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/conten
t/view/13/13/
NO MERRY AGE OF ENGLAND IN
WHICH OUR WILL FOUND
HIMSELF
http://www.shakespeare.org.uk/conten
t/view/13/13/