The Early Life Story
of William Shakespeare
Stratford, England, 1564-1569
(Page 9: His Family Grew)
An excerpt from "William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Genius"
by Anthony Holden
As the Shakespeare family prospered, so it grew. A second son, Gilbert, was christened on 13 October 1566; like William he managed to survive infancy, living until 1612. Named after John Shakespeare's friend Gilbert Bradley, a fellow glover and council member, Gilbert Shakespeare appears to have followed his brother to London, where he is described in 1597 as a haberdasher of St Bride's, before returning to Stratford, where he seems to have fallen into undesirable company and occasionally foul of the law. The record of his burial, on 3 February 1612, four years before William, shows that he died adolescens, or unmarried.
In September 1567 we find their father being addressed for the first time as 'Mr Shakespeyr', a title of some considerable dignity. Another year, and he has been elected bailiff, or mayor, in his mid-thirties, in a three-way contest with Robert Perrot and Robert Salisbury held on 4 September 1568. On 1 October John presided over his first council meeting as bailiff, and five days later over his first Court of Record.
As an impressionable four-year-old, Shakespeare would now have seen a po-faced clutch of mace-bearing sergeants arrive at Henley Street early each day to escort his fur-trimmed father, with great ceremony, in a procession through the streets of Stratford to preside over the morning meetings at the Guild Hall. On Thursdays and fair-days the same parade would snake through the market and the fair, and on Sundays process solemnly to church, where the Shakespeare family now sat in the front pew. As bailiff, John Shakespeare shared with one other senior alderman the duties of Justice of the Peace: issuing warrants, hearing cases of debt and local by-law violations, negotiating with the lord of the manor. On Thursdays, after market, he would set the price of corn, and thus of bread and ale, for the following week, amid furious lobbying from bakers and brewers.
In 1569, midway through John Shakespeare's year in office as 'the Queen's officer & chief of the town', there occurs the first recorded visit to Stratford by a travelling troupe of players. 'Can this be mere coincidence?' it has rightly been asked. 'The substantial sums payable to players had to be authorised and disbursed by the local council; and the father of a great playwright may well have evinced a special interest in and feeling for staged entertainment.' By virtue of his role as censor, moreover, the mayor — and no doubt his family — enjoyed the privilege of a private performance by the Queen's Players.
With civic honours came further commercial prosperity. On 4 November 1568 Mayor Shakespeare sold five hundredweight of wool to John Walford of Marlborough — a debt he was still to be found pursuing more than thirty years later; and in 1568-70 he was recorded as the tenant of Ingon Meadow, a fourteen-acre estate two miles north-east of Stratford, in the parish of Hampton Lucy.
As his worldly success spread to the countryside of his and Mary's roots, to the very land farmed by his wayward brother Harry, John stepped down from Stratford's top job, choosing not to exercise his right to run for another term of office. Most likely, having achieved all he could by way of civic eminence, he deemed it more than time to return his attention to the family business. But he remained a respected elder of Stratford, his advice valued by the corporation, who in September 1571 elected him Chief Alderman and Justice of the Peace for the coming year, and ex-officio deputy to the new bailiff, his old friend and Henley Street neighbour Adrian Quiney, a mercer. In January 1572 the two rode together to London as ambassadors for the borough, deputed by their fellow councillors to report on parliamentary affairs affecting Stratford and represent its interests 'according to their discretions'.
During 1569, the year of the birth of the second Joan, John Shakespeare had mustered all his confidence to describe himself as 'Bailiff, Justice of the Peace, the Queen's Officer and Chief of the Town of Stratford' in his formal application to the College of Arms for the ultimate in self-made respectability: a coat of arms. This outward sign of his worldly success would set the seal, literally, on two decades of solid achievement.
But it was not to be — not, at any rate, for another quarter of a century, until his increasingly successful playwright son reapplied on his father's behalf in 1596 to the College of Arms, then as now on the banks of the Thames at Blackfriars, directly opposite the Globe theatre. Then, at last, the Clarenceux King-of-Arms duly noted that John Shakespeare 'was a magistrate in Stratford upon Avon. A justice of the peace, he married a daughter and heir of Arden, and was good of substance and habileté.' But this first application in 1569 was declined by the authorities in London — for reasons which are nowhere documented, if not difficult to surmise.
Copyright © 1999 by Anthony Holden. All rights reserved. Posted with permission of http://www.twbookmark.com. Click here for ordering information for "William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Genius" at Amazon.com.
