The Early Life Story
of William Shakespeare
Stratford, England, 1564-1569
(Page 6: Shakespeare's Mother Mary Arden)
An excerpt from "William Shakespeare: The Man Behind the Genius"
by Anthony Holden
The journey back and forth to Wilmcote, presumably after hours, would have taken its toll on John's extra-curricular activities. Having established a secure base in the heart of Stratford, he returned to his rural roots for his bride, while still intent on social advancement. Mary Arden was not just the daughter of a prosperous farmer, his father's landlord; hers was one of Warwickshire's most prominent families, tracing its ancestry back beyond the Norman Conquest to the Domesday Book, fully four columns of which were filled by the landholdings of Turchill of Arden — more than any other individual.
Mary was the youngest of eight daughters of the widowed Robert Arden, whose second marriage in April 1548 (to Agnes Hill, née Webbe, widow of another prosperous farmer) added four stepchildren to the substantial brood already crammed into the two-storey Wilmcote farmstead. Whether it was the timber-frame house in Featherbed Lane identified in the late eighteenth century, and today visited by flocks of tourists, as 'Mary Arden's home', we cannot be sure — any more than we can be sure that her son William was born in the Henley Street manse today known as The Birthplace. But it would have been very similar, with its stone foundation and gabled dormers, timbered ceilings and rough-hewn oak beams, stone hearths and inglenooks, its main walls bedecked with painted hangings which would pass from the playwright's childhood memory into his first play to be performed, The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster (later known as Henry VI Part 2):
Like rich hangings in a homely house,
So was his will in his old feeble body.
So powerful an impression was left by the biblical and mythological scenes dominating the main rooms of his mother's family home that William remained wide-eyed at the age of thirty, when he published his poem The Rape of Lucrece:
Who fears a sentence or an old man's saw
Shall by a painted cloth be kept in awe.
This painting by John Constable (1776-1837) features "Glebe Farm," which is now
believed to be the birthplace
of William Shakespeare's mother Mary Arden. Click here for John Constable poster information.
No record survives of John Shakespeare's marriage to Mary Arden, but it must have taken place — presumably in the parish church of St John the Baptist, Aston Cantlow, where no register was yet kept — towards the end of 1557. Their first child was born in the ninth month of 1558; but Mary would not have married during 1556, as her father lay dying. On 24 November that year Robert Arden made his will, whose terms suggest that his youngest daughter was, like King Lear's, also his favourite. Beyond the customary ten marks, Mary's father left her his most valuable possession in its entirety: the Arden estate in Wilmcote, named Asbies, 'and the crop upon the ground sown and tilled as it is'.
Such was the handsome dowry Mary Arden brought to her marriage to the Stratford glover, by whom she would bear eight children in all — four sons and four daughters — over twenty years. A decade or so older than his wife, John would live into his seventies, well beyond the average span of his day, and Mary would outlive him by some seven years.
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.
