The Early Life Story
of William Shakespeare
Stratford, England, 1564-1569
(Page 7: The Plague)
An excerpt from "William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Genius"
by Anthony Holden
William was the third of their children to be born, but the first to live beyond childhood. A daughter, Joan, had been christened on 15 September 1558 by Roger Dyos, a Catholic priest driven from his post soon after Queen Elizabeth succeeded her Catholic half-sister Mary on the throne later that year. No record has been found of poor Joan's death or burial; but the fact that the Shakespeares christened another daughter by the same name eleven years later, on 15 April 1569, amounts to melancholy proof that the first Joan did not survive childhood, probably dying at the age of only one or two, as the register for the years 1559-60 is particularly sketchy. A second daughter, Margaret, was baptised on 2 December 1562 by the newly arrived Anglican priest, John Bretchgirdle, who also performed her funeral only four months later, in April 1563.
The Shakespeares' third child was himself lucky to survive infancy. William was less than three months old when the plague struck Stratford, imported from the slums of London by itinerant traders and vagabonds. 'Hic incepit pestis' reads the dread entry in the burial register for 11 July 1564, beside the name of Oliver Gunne, an apprentice — only the twentieth person to be interred since 1 January, compared with 240 during the remaining five months of the year. It is a fair estimate that more than 200 souls — or one in seven of Stratford's population — were carried off by the grim disease, those most at risk being the community's youngest and oldest members. The records show that the plague claimed all four children of the Green family, neighbours of the Shakespeares in Henley Street. It seems highly likely that Mary, having already lost two daughters in their infancy, would have evacuated her firstborn son to the safety of her family home at Wilmcote, still occupied by her widowed stepmother, for the duration.
Already a burgess, an elected member of the council, her husband attended an emergency meeting that August, held alfresco to avoid the dangers of contagion. John Shakespeare contributed three shillings to a fund to assist victims of the plague, which did not abate until December, with the onset of the midwinter cold. By then, the turn of the year 1564-65, Shakespeare's father was a rising star of the Stratford council chamber.
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.
