Magpie 47

Rosse: "I have words that should be howl'd out in the desert air. And the main part pertains to you alone."
Macduff: "If it be mine; keep it not from me. Quickly let me have it."
Rosse: "Your castle is surprised; your wife and babes savagely slaughter'd."
[A pause; Macduff says nothing.]
Malcolm: "Merciful heaven! What, man, give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the oer-fraught heart, and bids it break."
Macduff: "My children too?"
Rosse: "Wife, children, servants -- all."
Malcolm: "Let's make us med'cine of our great revenge."
Macduff: "He has no children. All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O, hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens, and their dam?"
Malcolm: "Dispute it like a man."
Macduff: "I shall do so, but I must also feel it as a man! Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?"
Malcolm: "Be this the whetstone of your sword; let grief convert to anger."
Macduff: "Front to front, bring thou this fiend of Scotland and myself; within my sword's length set him!"

Laid-Back Shakespeare #6

If you've been following this series, "Laid-Back Shakespeare," you know we've spent some time on the story of the coat of arms, the heraldic device that meant so much to William Shakespeae and his father John and that would allow them to move up to a position among the gentry.

This is the sixth post in the series.

Theoretically the rank of "Gentleman" was an honor given because of family and service to the nation, but it was actually bought: you paid off someone to get it, in other words. Even so, there were standards you had to meet.

Over twenty years after John had applied to the College of Heralds for the rank of gentleman and didn’t get it, his son had moved on up to become a successful London playwright, actor and theatrical businessman. William Shakespeare felt he was in a position to try for the prize again.



The application was renewed. In 1596 Sir William Dethick, Garter King-of-Arms, granted the Shakespeare family a coat of arms, a rough sketch of which is shown above.

It has the items one might expect to find on such a device, a falcon, a spear, etc.; it was simple but it would do the job. Both father and son could now stop signing their names as Mr. Shakespeare and each could sign as Mr. Shakespeare, Gentleman – and Will, at least, did.

There had been some criticism that lately honors had been given out to too many types of people; riff-raff had to be kept out. In awarding the rank, Garter Dethick mentioned the Shakespeare connection to the Arden family, an ancestor of which had performed “valiant service to King Henry II of famous memory.” There is no historical evidence of any Arden doing anything of the kind, but perhaps Garter was simply trying to defend his decision for Shakespeare – who had paid well for the honor – and to avoid any future criticism. In addition, Dethick went on, the father, John, had served as bailiff, which meant he had been a Queen’s officer, and that was true.

Take another look at the sketch above. There are two lines scribbled at the bottom: they give a glimpse into the squabbles and rivalries that went on in the granting of such honors.

It seems that Garter, Sir William Dethick, was a contentious sort, but he may have met his match in the York Herald, Peter Brooke, who obviously felt granting such an honor to a commoner like this Shakespeare person was a huge mistake.

He wrote at the bottom of the sketch: “Shakespeare the player. By Garter.”

A whole world of Elizabethan custom, tradition, class, prejudice, rivalry, whathaveyou, is summed up in those two lines.

What Brooke is saying is this: “This guy is an ACTOR, for God’s sake! You don’t grant a coat of arms to actors.” Which was certainly, for the most part, true.
It’s difficult for us in our 21st century to realize the low esteem in which theatrical people, and the theatre generally, were held. There was then, to many, something shameful about this type of work.

It’s fascinating to note what his son-in-law, Dr. John Hall, wrote when Our Will retired to Stratford. Dr. Hall kept very careful records, noted down just about everything that happened, in his medical practice as well as in the daily goings-on of his family. He found himself now living with William Shakespeare, the greatest playwright who ever lived. And what he wrote about his famous father-in-law was – nothing, not a word. Hall was a Puritan.

He was probably simply embarrassed: perhaps he thought, all right, so he made a lot of money down there in London, but it was not respectable work.

The other line the York Herald wrote on the sketch, “By Garter,” was his way of saying, “It was Dethick who was responsible for this; I had nothing to do with it.”



For the final version of his coat of arms, Will Shakespeare wrote the words, in Old French, “Not Without Right.” I take this to mean: “My dad and I struggled for years to get to this place. We’re here and we have a RIGHT to be here – get used to it!”

Magpie 46

This week's prompt reminds us of the very important part gloves played in the life of William Shakespeare.
This bumpkin from a country town, who had started out on life’s ladder on one of its lowest rungs, went on to become the most prominent playwright of the London theatre as well as the greatest figure in the history of English literature.
You don’t usually hear much about his dad’s career, but in its own way it too was amazing. John Shakespeare, an illiterate farm laborer, was driven and ambitious. His business -- making gloves -- became successful.

There was a need on the part of the English gentry for gloves, exquisitely made gloves, often of white leather, and John specialized in such items.
He was known as a “whittawer,” someone who whitened leather, but that was just one of the irons in his fire; he came to be what we would call an entrepreneur, involved in quite a number of money-making deals. He must have achieved, over the years, a certain degree of literacy.

And he began climbing the local social and political ladder. He was on the town council; one of the first positions the town gave him was as ale-taster – which sounds like a joke, but it was a serious position. Everyone drank ale (you shouldn’t drink the water), so it was important that it be of safe quality.
John S. went on to rise rapidly: from making gloves to chamberlain to alderman and right on up to the highest rank, bailiff. The bailiff was the equivalent of mayor of the town.
What a time that must have been for his son! 11-year-old Will must have stood in awe when his dad prepared to go to the guild hall. The bailiff didn’t just stroll to work; this was Elizabethan England, which meant ceremony. John Shakespeare would wear his expensive scarlet gown and official ring and would wait by the door for the arrival of two colorfully uniformed sergeants, who would then escort the mayor through the streets, the whole town watching in admiration.
John had moved on up; he could now apply, and he did, to the Court of Heralds in London to be granted the coat of arms that would make him a gentleman.
But he never got it. Something happened.
What happened is one of those fascinating Shakespearean mysteries. Young Will Shakespeare was 13 or so years of age and had to stand by and watch as his dad’s marvelous career crashed and burned. And no one today is sure why.
The records show that his parents began selling things, including the acres of land John had received as dowry, and before long they didn’t have anything else to sell. Shakespeare senior was unable to pay his debts. The man who had been mayor of Stratford didn’t go to church – although church attendance was a legal requirement for everyone – because his creditors could get at him there. He didn’t even pay the four pennies a week for poor relief, which he had always paid before.
There are theories. When it comes to the Shakespeare story, there are always plenty of theories.
John had become an alcoholic, and spent most of his time dead drunk – except there isn’t a shred of evidence for such a supposition. A gambler? No evidence. He had a stroke, a heart attack? Again, no such evidence. He was a secret Catholic who had decided to proclaim his religious belief openly (which would have been a fatal mistake, politically speaking, in that Puritan town as well as in Elizabeth’s Protestant England)? But that too is just a guess. Or perhaps he was the victim of a general recession -- sounds familiar – the market for beautiful gloves having dried up.

Fortunately for his son, young Will, the grammar school, the King’s New School of Stratford, one of the best schools of its kind in the country, was free.