Listen to the voices from
Shakespeare's Circle
Imagined accounts, written by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells, and based on the contributions to the book.
These creative scripts are read by friends of The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.
It’s very comfortable here in New Place, where
I’ve been living since John died in1601, and...
Mary Shakespeare
It’s very comfortable here in New Place, where I’ve been living since John died in1601, and my daughter-in-law Anne is a wonderful housekeeper. That’s just as well since dear William has to spend so much time in London. We all look forward to Lent, when he regularly rides home, meeting up with old friends and neighbours, and checking up on his business interests. But he comes up at other times, too. Mind you he does spend a good deal of time in his study, with his books around him – thinking up his next play, I suppose. He was always a great reader and he used to love it when I told him old tales that I’d heard from my mother and grandmother. And he did very well at school. I would send him off every morning well scrubbed and with his satchel over his shoulder.
They even kept him on after he’d finished his education to help to teach Latin grammar to the younger boys. When he came back in the evening he was a great help with his younger brothers and sisters, teaching them their letters. I used to worry that he got married too young – and with a baby on the way, too – but it’s turned out well in the end, even though he has to spend so much time away from home. And he looks after us very well, and lets his sister Joan live in the house on Henley Street. I wish we saw more of him but the carrier Master Greenaway often brings news, and we were very excited and proud to hear about him wearing the new King’s livery in the coronation procession, with his gentleman’s sword by his side.
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I was really pleased when William got us the coat of arms. Mind you we ought to have had it twenty years before,...
John Shakespeare
I was really pleased when William got us the coat of arms. Mind you we ought to have had it twenty years before, when we first tried. William had a bit of a struggle with the College of Heralds because of his being a player, as they call it. But he’s doing well. He has a good job with the Lord Chamberlain’s company of players, and works really hard, they tell me, acting and helping to run the company as well as writing plays for them – and he makes a decent amount of money out of it. ‘Not without right’ our motto says. Indeed not, after all I’ve done for this town since moving in from the country and setting up home here in Henley Street. It’s not everyone who rises from being apprenticed to a glover to becoming an alderman, and eventually the town’s bailiff, not to say representing its interests in London. And that without a grammar school education.
But I can read well enough, and sign my name with a mark at least. Well, I had enough of public service in the end and started concentrating on my wool business up and down the country. It’s had its ups and downs, but by and large I’ve made a success of it and been able to help William with his investments. He’s a good lad, the way he keeps up an interest in his home town. Now he’s been able to buy New Place, the grand house he used to pass on his way to school, bless him. Of course it would be good if we saw more of him, but he comes down whenever the playhouses are closed, regularly in Lent and of course in time of plague. And I’m glad to help with the grandchildren now that his wife is so busy running a fine house with servants and all.
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Of course I was captivated by him – who wasn’t? He spoke beautifully – it was like listening to music on...
Anne Shakespeare
Of course I was captivated by him – who wasn’t? He spoke beautifully – it was like listening to music on occasion – and he loved reading poems aloud to me. He jumbled up several sonnets which were addressed to me in his collection of 1609, and one of them – Sonnet 145 – puns on my family’s name. I had said I hated him, for getting me pregnant, but no one could hate Will for very long. I liked to pull his leg about how he lived up to his name in more ways than one. Strong-willed, passionate, always after his own way (which he usually got). Like the purchase of New Place. He really pushed for that, and how proud I was moving into the largest house in the borough and becoming mistress of it. I knew there were probably mistresses in London. Tom Green, his distant cousin, who liked lodging with us, told me about his lawyer friend at the Middle Temple, John Manningham, nicknaming him William the Conqueror. But I turned a blind eye, because he had conquered me. As the children got older, I used to go down to London from time to time to see him and his latest play at the Globe.
We did miss him at New Place, especially during the Christmases when he was performing at court, but he’d come back during Lent and at other times, always laden with gifts for us all: the new spices and delicacies from the merchant ships, and then we would feast – far into the evenings, often a suckling pig or two for our Stratford neighbours or visiting actor colleagues. I was proud of my housekeeping, and the money I made from all that malting! My William was taken from me much too young. When he lay dying, he called me in to discuss his will and explained he had to refer to my widow’s rights as leaving me the second-best bed. The bequest had to be squeezed in to the late draft, but it was all part of my continuing to live at New Place once Susanna and John had taken over. But there was nothing ‘second-best’ about the bed we shared. ‘Where there’s a will, there’s always a way’, he would often joke, winking at me.
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Was I my father’s favourite? That’s a windy question, and I should blow you away with it! And it’s not fair...
Susanna Hall
Was I my father’s favourite? That’s a windy question, and I should blow you away with it! And it’s not fair on Judith. He wrote plays for both of us, you know. He deliberately changed Juliet’s age from the original story so that she was the same age as me – and she is the very pattern of love; and Judith was Viola, reunited with our poor Hamnet at the end of What You Will. But there were always books and papers around us, and he let us read whatever we wanted to. When he came home he used to allow us to engrave things on the windows. The panes in my bedroom were covered with the names of actors, fragments of his verse, Juliet’s speeches – even some Latin. And he taught us both how to play chess. Here I can boast. I had a much better head for it than Judith, and I could even beat our mother when I set my mind to it, which is saying something! John Hall came into my life when I was twenty-four. He was thirty-one. Devoted every moment to medicine he had, and, looking back, I think I was a bit star-struck by his learning and his, well, goodness. We loved; we laughed – I more than he perhaps – and we raised our daughter, Elizabeth. I’m not going to go into all that nasty business with John Lane and all he said about me. Suffice to say, my husband and father stood by me and all ended well.
It seemed quite natural my becoming mistress of New Place, looking after mother. I eventually took up all of the family industries, but we don’t produce so much these days. Except malt – mother showed me how to do that, and it still brings in a tidy sum. I do like visiting London from time to time, and try and see it through my father’s eyes. Elizabeth and I go on shopping sprees and bring back fancy goods. My husband never said very much when we got back, but we both like dressing up, and visiting the neighbours - cheering up those who are sick. And, of course, the Queen Henrietta Maria herself came to stay at New Place last year! She was on her way to meet the King Charles in Oxford. She talked to me most kindly about my father’s plays – told me how the King enjoyed them, too – so I gave her one of my father’s books. I think he had been given it by that nice Huguenot family, the Mountjoys. Years ago! Anyway, I didn’t want it anymore, and I’m told her Majesty was most grateful.
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It’s not easy being a twin, Judith tends to get all the attention, because she’s a girl, and very...
Hamnet Shakespeare
It’s not easy being a twin, Judith tends to get all the attention, because she’s a girl, and very pretty, whereas I’m sickly-looking and often ill in bed, and can’t go to school or play with the neighbours’ children in the way she does. And Daddy’s so often away from home that I miss him dreadfully. Mummy is terribly busy with the cooking and the housekeeping and the animals, and making sure the servants are working properly. I like to watch Grandpa making gloves and sometimes he takes me to Shottery to see the farm animals, which I like very much. I can’t go to the Petty School where my sisters learn their letters and to do sewing and that sort of thing.
But my mother teaches me how to form letters and reads to me, and when Daddy is at home he lets me into the secrets of the great speeches he’s been writing and allows me to try them out like a real actor. He also makes up stories for me and sometimes he takes me walking by the river to see the ducks and the swans. Granny is very kind to me and tells me stories about giants and monsters and fairies, and sometimes gives me sweetmeats and a cuddle. I love playing with my cat, Pyramus.
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It’s thirty years since the two Williams in my life died. I know you want to know more about William the First – my elder brother...
Joan Hart
It’s thirty years since the two Williams in my life died. I know you want to know more about William the First – my elder brother. What is there to say? People are still talking about him in Stratford-upon-Avon, even after all these years. I keep those two big editions of his plays in my late husband’s dresser in my little cottage. I browse through them from time to time and marvel at where all his knowledge came from. But I have vivid memories of him retiring into his closet at New Place of an evening and not wanting to be disturbed. But, oh, he was always a kind brother to me. I did my stint looking after our ma when she lay a-dying, mind, but what else is a daughter for? I’d nursed my poor husband (my other William) well enough. We named our first after my mother, but our young Mary died the year before mother. She was only four, poor lass. Then Thomas – a good strapping lad (takes after his father he does), and looks out for his old mum now – and then there was Michael (after the archangel), who God took from us when he was only ten. My late husband wasn’t, as they say, very good at credit, so times could be tough, but my William the first liked to help us out.
He only charged us 12 pence a year rent, and we knew we were on to a good thing there. And then there was the year my brother asked us if my William could make all the hats for the company. Up to all hours he was – hats for kings, and dukes, and gentlemen – you name it. And that summer we all went off to the Globe to see my husband’s hats used on stage – and then to court they went before His Majesty King James himself! Strange that my William the Second should die only a week before my first William. Left me £20, my brother did, and his clothes (worth quite a bit - from some London tailor), and my Thomas got £5. Memories, eh? The folks at the Maidenhead used to like to look out for me, but it’s full of soldiers these days. Roundheads shouting, and coming and going at all hours. Little do they know how I like to sit up in bed and read some of William the First’s most royal speeches when I hear them carrying on.
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I was the youngest by quite a long way: there are six years between me and Richard and sixteen...
Edmund Shakespeare
I was the youngest by quite a long way: there are six years between me and Richard and sixteen years between Will and me. He and Anne were more like my uncle and aunt while I was growing up in Henley Street. He was always open with me in a way that he wasn’t with the others – perhaps because of the age gap. I’d see him lose his temper occasionally, even cry sometimes. An abiding memory is him opening a parcel he’d carried back from London and showing us his name in print on that poem about Venus and Adonis. I was thirteen, and I’d just been reading the story in Ovid at the grammar school, and then there was my big brother’s version - so much more detail than in the Latin original! And humour. I used to like memorizing Will’s jokes and sayings to try out on my friends. My only one up on him (so far!) is that I actually managed to complete my apprenticeship as a glover. But our father died shortly afterwards, and then Will suggested that I join him in London for a while. I made good friends among the actors, and I used to kip with Will in his lodgings with the Mountjoys, or sometimes with our brother Gilbert over in the St Bride’s parish. He is the one who helps Will out the most.
Will and Gill: Shakespeare & sons, I like to quip. Quite a business partnership sometimes. Gill doesn’t have the responsibility of a wife – nor does Richard come to that – so he is able to help Will a bit in his business affairs. When Will bought all of that land from the Combes a few years ago - 107 acres was nearly as big as Stratford-upon-Avon itself! – it was Gill who stood as witness for the purchase. But I’m happy in London - most of the time. I travel back with Will and Gill to Stratford to see our folks. Back in the summer, my young woman bore me a son, but he died within a few hours. He’s buried at St Giles, Cripplegate, rest his little soul. How Will could cope with losing poor Hamnet, I’ve no idea. We still mourn that young lad. But my missus-out-of-law is bearing up. We’ll be moving in with some close friends soon - at The Vine in Paris Garden: close to the theatres, and perfect for me! And I’ve just registered as an official communicant in the nearby church, too.
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My own father was more of an astrologer than a medical man – interested in alchemy, too, and the stars...
John Hall
My own father was more of an astrologer than a medical man – interested in alchemy, too, and the stars. I was always more excited by flesh and blood, and how to cure it. After my father died, I became good friends with one of his household servants, Matthew Morys. He followed me to Stratford – after I’d come down from Cambridge University and that spell I had travelling the continent. Morys named his two children after my good wife and me: Susanna and John. As medical as I am, I never use the title of ‘doctor’, and don’t really like to hear it used either. ‘Mr’ John Hall is good enough for me – actually I prefer just John Hall. I know my father-in-law would have been very disappointed about my turning down a knighthood a few years ago – I used to think that he was after a knighthood himself. But he was always fascinated with what I had to say about the human body, and its ‘thousand natural shocks’, as he would call them. He liked including the characters of doctors in his plays sometimes – but he was never seriously inclined to medicine.
Susanna said he wouldn’t take kindly to correction, but in the end it was the idea of healing, of healing the soul, that he was most interested in. Cerimon in Pericles says ‘this Queen shall live.’ The number of times I’ve said that to myself as I’ve trotted away from a patient who I knew would pull through! I’ve treated quite a lot of his friends, over the years: Francis Collins’s daughter, Alice; Thomas Green’s daughter, Anne – and gentle Michael Drayton when he was staying over at Clifford Chambers. And I treated my father-in-law, too, but there was nothing to be done. That wretched ditch running down the side of New Place probably gave him the final bout of fever. Susanna and I soon cleaned that up when we moved in, and we always had to keep an eye on it. His books are still there in New Place, but I’m too busy with my daily calls to spend much time with them.
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It was a privilege to be asked to supply the wine for the Queen when she visited New Place on her way to join Prince Rupert in...
Thomas Quiney
It was a privilege to be asked to supply the wine for the Queen when she visited New Place on her way to join Prince Rupert in Oxford, even though I had to pay for it all myself. Poor lady, it was a troubled time and she needed all the comfort she could get. I think they chose me because I understand French – I learnt it when I was training to be a vintner. So I was able to talk to her personal maid about it. Pretty girl she was, too. Judith and I were living at the Cage then – it was before my brother Richard moved in. He was very good to me – I’d retired by the time he died but he kindly left me £12 a year, almost enough for my wife and me to live on, as well as £5 to bury me when I go too.
Our boys had all passed away by then – two of them dead of the plague – but Judith and I got on well together in spite of all the trouble I got into just before we got married. She was very forgiving about that – more than her father was, he left her far less well provided for than her sister Susanna. Mind you he left her a beautiful silver-gilt bowl: we lent it to the folks at New Place when they were entertaining the Queen. And I can sign myself gentleman no less than my father-in-law Master Shakespeare could.
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The Shakespeare families and mine go back a long way together, right back to the time of my grandfather in the 1550s...
William Walker
The Shakespeare families and mine go back a long way together, right back to the time of my grandfather in the 1550s, over a hundred years ago now, and if I may say so we’ve done a lot for this town between us. Master William’s father was an alderman and became bailiff, and so did my father, and I after him. Quite a line of succession. Of course Master William himself wasn’t able to take much of a part in the town’s affairs, spending as much time in London as he did, but he left a decent sum of money for the town’s poor people. He was my godfather you know, and I used to play with his granddaughter Elizabeth in the Great Garden of New Place.
He left me twenty shillings in gold – that was a nice touch, he knew I’d appreciate the bright and shiny coins. I could hardly bear to part with them, but in the end I bought a fine hobby horse and a fishing rod, which I think he’d have approved of. Elizabeth is ‘my lady’ now, lives in the great house at Abingdon, so we don’t see much of her. But Mr Ward the vicar and I talk about Master Shakespeare sometimes, and his daughter Judith is still around, we enjoy chatting about the old times and she’s shown me the great book with all his plays in it, but of course they can’t act them any more now that Master Cromwell has closed all the playhouses.
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One branch of my family hails from nearby Warwick, and I was brought up being told about my distant...
Thomas Greene
One branch of my family hails from nearby Warwick, and I was brought up being told about my distant cousins, the Shakespeares, in Stratford-upon-Avon. I was just finishing my law studies at the Middle Temple when I happened to meet my cousin Shakespeare there. Our gossipy friend, John Manningham, introduced us. Shakespeare had come with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to perform Twelfth Night. I remember joking with my lawyer friends: DzYou may as well call it what you will, Willdz. So he rather adopted that as a subtitle –Twelfth Night, or What You Will.I heard through my cousin that Stratford-upon-Avon was on the look out for a good legal mind to serve on the Town Council as clerk. So, that’s where I went, and lodged at New Place from the summer of 1603. My wife, Lettice, was with me, and there was plenty of space for all of us. We had our own set of rooms – a bit like a college really, with that nice square of green in the middle. Will used to pop over with a new scene sometimes, and we’d try it out together. He used to say he liked the way I read aloud, he’d say DzNot bad – for a lawyerdz. And two of my three children were born in New Place. We named our girl Anne and our lad William. Afterwards, when we’d moved around the corner to the great house, St Mary’s, opposite the church, we had our Elizabeth; we named her after Elizabeth Hall. I liked to consult with my cousin William about almost everything – especially the financial side of things.
He was always good with the pounds, shillings, and pence, and encouraged me to buy the other half of the shares in the tithes as soon as they came up for sale, which I did in 1609, which we dubbed and celebrated as the year of the Tithes - and Shakespeare’s Sonnets! The Stratford Corporation certainly kept me busy but I was pleased to serve them as I did – popping across the road from New Place to the Guildhall. There was all that nastiness about those threatened enclosures upon on Welcombe, but we stood firm, and the Combes did not get their own way on that occasion. I came to sell St Mary’s in the end, which I let the Corporation buy for far less than it was worth. Will would be turning in his grave now, and I know he would have made me drive a harder bargain. But I wanted to move on. My family and I left the town about a year after Shakespeare died, but I can look back on those years in Stratford-upon-Avon and New Place as among my happiest. And I still go back to visit Anne and the rest of the family. Susanna and Judith like to call me Uncle Tom.
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Isaac Jaggard has just slipped me a copy of his latest book – Master William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and...
Richard Field
Isaac Jaggard has just slipped me a copy of his latest book – Master William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies! How extraordinary to think that little Will, who used to swim with me in the Avon when he wasn’t swotting away at his Latin all those years ago, should be author of the first-ever collected book of plays by an English dramatist! And what a shame he didn’t live to see it! By the time he came to London I was already out of my apprenticeship as a printer, and had married Jacqueline, my master’s widow. I was glad when Will gave me the job of publishing his first poem, Venus and Adonis, and then of printing Lucrece – runaway successes they were, too, especially Venus. When word got round about how sexy it is all the chaps at the Inns of Court were queuing up for copies, and so were their girl friends. We stayed friendly, and I gave him the run of my shop so that he could look over my latest publications. He was a great reader, always looking for stories he could use for his plays.
We had a bit of an upset when the Lord Chamberlain’s Men took over the Blackfriars – I couldn’t get out of the signing of the petition against it, all the comings and goings and noise of coaches every afternoon – but we soon made it up – as it happens I was asked to print a book that included one of his poems, a strange piece about a phoenix and a turtle dove, a few years later. We used to meet up for a drink from time to time and he’d tell me the latest news about our old friends in Stratford – he went back more often than I could. And I was really touched when I went to see his play Cymbeline – a pretty weird piece that is, too – at the Blackfriars to hear the boy player calling himself Richard du Champ – my name in French – appropriate enough considering all my French connections! After that he started spending more time in Stratford and we lost touch till I heard he’d died and that his colleagues were putting together this great book that’s just come into my hands - what a tribute to my old school pal!
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A playmaker and poet. When I was studying at the Middle Temple I used to see him on...
Thomas Combe
A playmaker and poet. When I was studying at the Middle Temple I used to see him on stage in his own plays at the Globe and the Blackfriars, and I would boast to my friends that I knew him and his family in Stratford. They owned New Place – a decent-sized house with a fine garden and orchards in the middle of town, close to the Guildhall and the school. He was good friends with my bachelor Uncle John, who left him a fiver in his will. He also left money for his really rather splendid monument - far grander than Shakespeare’s - that you can still see in the church. They had a jokey kind of relationship, there was a story about an epitaph making fun of Uncle’s money-lending. Master Shakespeare and his wife dined with us at the College from time to time, and when I was a lad I used to play with his two daughters and their brother, Hamnet, a sickly boy who died young.
Later I became involved with their father over the enclosure of land that my family owned at Welcombe. He’d bought land there from us, so we asked for his support against the commoners who wanted it to remain as pasture land, but he was inclined to sit on the fence, so to speak. What was surprising was that in his will he left me his sword, the ceremonial one that he used to wear along with his scarlet livery as a member of the King’s Men. It would surely have gone to Hamnet if he’d been alive. Maybe the old boy had a soft spot for me. Well, that was all thirty years and more ago, and here I am, a bachelor still, living at Welcombe on the land there was all that trouble about long ago – and it’s still not enclosed!
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Master Shakespeare was a modest man. He was already famous for having written a long...
Christopher Mountjoy
Master Shakespeare was a modest man. He was already famous for having written a long and somewhat reprehensible poem about Venus and Adonis, and plays such as Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet. But he took lodgings with me and my family in our house in Silver Street. Students at the Inns of Court were clamouring for his portrait to pin up in their studies - he was a good-looking fellow. He was recommended to us by our friend Richard Field – they’d been at school together. I gather he had a grand establishment in Stratford-upon-Avon: New Place – even though it was quote old when he bought it. He would go up there whenever he could, to see his wife and family and to write, especially when the playhouses closed in Lent, riding the horse that he kept in our stables not far from here. But the travelling took at least two days, more usually three, both ways, so it was quite a journey.
Our house is quite a way from the playhouses on the other side of the river where he worked most afternoons, but I think he was after a bit of peace and quiet. He was a kind man, took a bit of a shine to my daughter Marie, and was tactful and helpful when she fell for my apprentice, Stephen Belott. Master Shakespeare liked him and actually conducted the handfasting ceremony that took place before their church wedding. He was a hard worker, often staying up late, writing by candle light, and when his fellows sent messages asking him to come to the tavern with them, as often as not he would ask me to send word back that he was in pain and didn’t feel up to it. In the end he moved away and I haven’t seen him for several years now.
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Well we certainly had similar backgrounds. His father made gloves and mine was a brick-layer,...
Ben Jonson
Well we certainly had similar backgrounds. His father made gloves and mine was a brick-layer, neither could afford to send us to university. We were grammar-school boys – and when I talk about his ‘small Latin and less Greek’, I mean to praise the lad and all of his Warwickshire cheek! Both of us left school with a limited knowledge of the Classics, but it never held us back. I went on reading and studying and making those Romans and Greeks more my own; Will showed that even by only having been to grammar-school he could rival some of the greatest authors of all time. Not a bad actor, either. Well, all right – he was bloody good. I saw that immediately he took up that part in my Everyman In His Humour. But can I just say for the record: he took my Stephano and Matheo and turned them into Andrew Aguecheek and Toby Belch in his slight, Ilyrian comedy. Little did I know we had a thief in our midst! And Thorello, my jealous husband, got transformed into his Othello – even the names are similar. I challenged our Warwickshire Will, and in public down the Mermaid, and all he could say was "well, isn’t it interesting how similar your bragging soldier Bobadillo is to my belovèd Sir John Falstaff" (he emphasised the knighthood, too), and, furthermore, he got to his hind legs, isn't the case therefore altered to one of everyman for himself?
And set the whole table on a roar! You've got to hand it to him – and I often did in our cups – did that evening a few weeks before he died up in Stratford, too – reckoning to share all our ideas with Drayton, and listening as intently as possible to each other to see who was really ahead. But Will always had this belief in magic and miracles, and I never did. Now I pride myself in following Cicero in these matters: comedy must imitate life, custom, and truth. There are classical rules and unities to be obeyed which he didn’t give a toss about. We differed on love, too – in the poems we wrote for that Welsh chappie, Sir John Salusbury, in Love’s Martyr. For me true love comes when passion is chastened by reason, and Will goes and tries to trump this with his Phoenix and his Turtle-dove showing us that ‘Love hath reason, reason none.’ I do miss his wit, his musical verse, his unashamed sense of the old-fashioned.... I mentioned to Drummond the other evening: we were each other’s best foil – like Hamlet and Laertes – and occasionally we struck home and, yes, used our wit to wound.
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I don’t know how Will Shakespeare first became aware of me, but maybe it was when he was acting...
Earl of Southampton
I don’t know how Will Shakespeare first became aware of me, but maybe it was when he was acting at court even before he helped to found the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. Anyhow it came as quite a surprise when I had a letter from him asking if he might dedicate a poem to me. I got my secretary to reply a bit guardedly, but saying I’d be willing to read it, to see if I liked it. He sent me a manuscript, and as soon as I started to read I could see he had real talent – but it was also a bit cheeky, a really sexy poem about a beautiful young man – how could I fail to see myself in Adonis? – resisting the advances of the goddess of love – and all this just at the time when I was telling my guardian Lord Burleigh that I hadn’t the faintest intention of marrying the Earl of Oxford’s granddaughter, however large her dowry! Anyhow I quite fancied having a clever long poem written in English dedicated to me, so I told him he could go ahead, and he brought me the first printed copy along with a sonnet beginning with the words ‘Lord of my love’, and that really did it. He was ten years older than me, brimming with creative energy, witty and sexy. He completely bowled me over, and before long I was in thrall to him.
Of course it wasn’t easy for us to meet, because of the difference between our positions, on top of his being a married man, but he came down to Titchfield whenever he could and we had great times together. Then he wrote another long poem - a deadly serious one this time, about Lucretia – and I allowed him to dedicate that to me, too, which he did in rather passionate terms. Shortly afterwards, I knew he wanted to buy shares in the new theatre company, and, a bit later, a big house in Stratford, for his wife and family. So I gave him really a rather large amount of money. My mother was furious, of course, and so was Lord Burleigh. But it was my money, after all. After that Shakespeare became terribly busy once the theatres reopened after the plague had abated. I had to get married, and went to Ireland with Essex, but I found consolation there with one of his captains. When I got back, Rutland and I went to see Shakespeare’s plays as often as we could. Essex has just asked me to help him get Richard II put on for a special performance at the Globe, buthe’s being a bit secretive about why. I hope all will be well, but when Essex is on the rampage like this, I fear the worst.
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Pancakes and mustard! That’s what I like to say. That’s why he chose me! You know - Touchstone in As You Like It! It...
Robert Armin
Pancakes and mustard! That’s what I like to say. That’s why he chose me! You know - Touchstone in As You Like It! It was my first part in the new Globe. What a great year 1599 was: in some ways the start of my acting career – certainly my major break. The days of grammar school back in King’s Lynn and those seven years training to be a goldsmith seemed far behind me, as I sat and watched the Lord Chamberlain’s Men: Augustine Phillips, Henry Condell, Will Sly, Richard Burbage, John Heminges, Thomas Pope, Christopher Beeston, John Duke – all of them great in their way. And funny Will Kemp was there, too, showing off as usual, always saying a bit more than was set down for him. Anyway, Will Shakespeare had invited me to perform before the company to see if they wanted to take me on, and I was watching a performance of theirs just beforehand.
‘It’ll give you a sense of our mettle’, Will had said. And he even made sure I had a special seat in the Lord’s Room. But he didn’t have to butter me up. I know what it is to write – all those ballads of mine, verses and a play: The Two Maids of Moreclack. I like to think that title gave Shakespeare the idea of writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. And I knew I wanted to work with Will. Needless to say they took me on. Will Kemp – ever popular - was just on his way out – nothing acrimonious, but he was ready to move on. And along I came. And then Feste, which used my full talents of singing: A great while ago the world begun, With hey ho, the wind and the rain, But that’s all one, our play is done, And we’ll strive to please you every day! And that’s what we all did. We tried our best to please.
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Master Shakespeare and I got on fine - at first. We joined together with Burbage to found the Lord...
Will Kemp
Master Shakespeare and I got on fine - at first. We joined together with Burbage to found the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. I was already quite a star. I’d travelled to the Low Countries as an entertainer with the Earl of Leicester and made a reputation for myself not just as a comic actor but also as a writer of jigs – those comic song and dance pieces performed after plays. I always acted in them myself , which meant that I always got the last laugh. And Shakespeare wrote some great parts for me. Admittedly Peter in Romeo and Juliet didn’t stretch my abilities, but Dogberry always went down well with audiences. But as the years rolled by we didn’t always see eye to eye. I bought a share in the Globe but never actually acted there.
Shakespeare’s plays were getting more serious, and he started wanting his comics to sing sad songs, which wasn’t in my line at all. So I decided to break away. And it didn’t do me any harm, either. My morris dance from London to Norwich really drew the crowds all along the way. I was well rewarded for it by the Mayor of Norwich and it was great publicity for me, as was the book I wrote about it, which I called Kemp’s Nine Days’ Wonder. And after that I was able to make a good living as a freelance, and to travel overseas again, as I’d always wanted to do. I don’t bear Master Shakespeare any ill will, and I’m glad he’s doing well, but I’m not sorry I broke away. I’m a bit of a law unto myself, you know.
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That Will Shakespeare’s a very promising young man. We were born within a couple of months of each other,...
Christopher Marlowe
That Will Shakespeare’s a very promising young man. We were born within a couple of months of each other, and we’re both grammar school boys, but he’s been a bit of a slow starter, maybe because, unlike poor Robert Greene, and George Peele, and me, he didn’t go to university. I’ve seen him act in some of my plays at the Rose. I think he found The Jew of Malta rather too cynical – he’s romantic by nature, always inclined to see the best in people. He’s a decent actor and has a great sense of theatre, but I think his future lies more in writing plays, and even poems, than in acting. I was pleased to lend him a manuscript of my poem Hero andLeander, and shouldn’t be surprised if he were to try something in the same vein, especially now that the plague has closed the playhouses and he needs to find a new way of earning a living.
He has a good head for business, which could be a help when the playhouses open again. He’s become friendly with the Earl of Southampton, who may be able to give him a leg-up. I get on very well with Will, and we’ve talked about collaborating on a play about English history, but I must make sure he doesn’t get to know about the work I’m doing for the government. The theatre is a hotbed of gossip and I’m not always as careful as I should be about what I say about all manner of things – religion, the Queen, sex... I’ve always been inclined to live dangerously, but Will is more cautious – maybe because he has a wife and family back in Warwickshire. I like going to taverns – there’s a really good one in Deptford, I’m going there tomorrow - but he’s more of a stay-at-home. Well, everyone to his own taste.
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It came as a surprise to my family that I went into the theatre. My father was a bishop...
John Fletcher
It came as a surprise to my family that I went into the theatre. My father was a bishop, a bold preacher, not afraid of rebuking even the Queen when he thought it right to do so. When I was only eight years old he had to be with her cousin, Queen Mary of Scotland, on the scaffold begging her to convert to the Protestant faith... He was able to tell me all about her execution. But my Uncle Giles was a poet, and so are my cousins, and my own brother writes verses in Latin from time to time. And of course my plays are mostly in verse. It was getting to know Francis Beaumont that made me a man of the theatre. We were very good friends, kept house together, it was a terrible blow to me when he got married. But, oh, I was dazzled by Master William. He took it in very good part when I wrote a sequel, The Tamer Tamed, to his early play The Taming of the Shrew. And when his inspiration was flagging a bit he asked me to work closely alongside him writing for the King’s Men.
I think he admired my energy and how I would tell him exactly what I thought of his own contributions to the play we were working on. My interest in Spain and my knowledge of Spanish literature came in handy when we decided to base a play on the Cardenio episodes of Don Quixote. It’s a good piece of work, which I still hope may get into print. And when we wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen, based partly on Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale (like my favourite of all his plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream) we sat up all night together working out details of the plot and composing the dialogue. Then there was All is True, in which good Queen Elizabeth actually comes on stage as a baby to be baptized in the final scene. The words I wrote for Cranmer to speak brought back memories of how my father would talk. But that was an unlucky play for us all. If only we hadn’t decided to use cannon fire for a special effect! You know, Will never recovered from the burning of the Globe.
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I always enjoyed writing in collaboration with other playmakers, like Thomas Dekker and William Rowley, early...
Thomas Middleton
I always enjoyed writing in collaboration with other playmakers, like Thomas Dekker and William Rowley, early in my career. It was hard work – the companies were crying out for new plays and we had to write at great pressure, often late into the night. And it didn’t help when Dekker got thrown into prison because of his extravagant ways. But there was a real excitement about the camaraderie of the playhouse, knowing the actors you were writing for, thinking what would please audiences best, and hoping to surprise them, even shock them out of their settled ways from time to time. It was a special privilege to be asked to work with Master Shakespeare. Of course I knew his work well before getting to know him personally, and his biggest hit, Hamlet, was a great inspiration to me when I came to write The Revenger’s Tragedy. So I felt really privileged when Master Heminges told me one day that William had got stuck while writing a play about Timon of Athens.
We worked on it together in his lodgings in Silver Street, and got quite a long way, but sadly we never got round to putting the finishing touches to it. I don’t think Heminges and Condell should really have included it in the First Folio, but maybe there’s something there that could be successfully reworked. Anyhow I kept up my links with the company and after William died I was pleased to be paid to revise two of his plays, including Measure for Measure. Macbeth I was able to bring up to date and make more suitable for the Blackfriars playhouse by adding some songs and dances of my own.Mind you it would have been nice to be acknowledged in the First Folio – I blame Ben Jonson for that, he was always jealous of me.
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It was the burning down of the Globe that broke his spirit. He loved that place. He’d helped to put it up...
John Heminges
It was the burning down of the Globe that broke his spirit. He loved that place. He’d helped to put it up, after that exciting time when we all got together to lug the timbers of the Theatre across the river and make a new playhouse out of them close to the Rose and under the very eyes of our old rival Philip Henslowe. Will’s greatest triumphs had been there. Henry V, with himself as the Chorus; Hamlet – I’ll never forget the first time we did that, Dick Burbage at the top of his form, everyone else in the company giving it their all. And I wasn’t bad as Polonius, if I may say so. After that, what a run of parts for Dick Burbage – Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Leontes, Coriolanus – just one triumph after another. Will took it all very modestly, just going on doing his bit for the company, popping off to Stratford when he could, to see his family and look after his business interests there. And of course getting on with a new play whenever he could find a bit of peace and quiet. Mind you, towards the end he lost a bit of his popular appeal. Sometimes you’d have thought he was writing for himself – that Cymbeline – not much for the groundlings there. So we got handsome young John Fletcher and clever Tom Middleton in to help him out. Still, he never gave up, till that terrible summer day when we are playing All Is True and a stupid apprentice pointed a cannon in the wrong direction and the thatch caught fire.
When we first saw the smoke we tried to keep the play going but before long everyone was screaming, rushing out of the doors as fast as they could. It’s a miracle no one was burned to death – just one lad has his breeches set on fire, but someone had the presence of mind to drench him with a bottle of beer they had handy. I rushed out, I don’t mind telling you, even though the lads were making fun of me for stuttering. Will seemed all right at first, but broke down when he saw the devastation – blackened timbers, precious costumes stained, valuable musical instruments charred and, worst of all, some of our precious prompt books burned to a cinder. We tried to comfort him, and he kept on working, but after that his heart wasn’t really in it and he did no serious writing for the last two or three years of his life. Henry Condell, Dick Burbage and I rode up to Stratford and we started to plan a collection of his plays, to rival Ben’s. Dick died, too, in 1619, but Henry and I soldiered on till at last, at the end of 1623, there it was – MasterWilliam Shakespeare His Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies! We took a copy up to Stratford for the family, and I’ve never been so proud in all my life!
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He used to come and worship with us quite often at St Mary’s, Aldermanbury, which was only ten minutes...
Henry Condell
He used to come and worship with us quite often at St Mary’s, Aldermanbury, which was only ten minutes from his lodgings. Heminges and I were churchwardens there – though looking back, I don’t know how we managed all that and the work at the playhouses. I met Heminges when Lord Strange’s Men visited my home town of Norwich, back in 1593. I moved up to London with my mother shortly afterwards. We’d inherited my uncle’s tavern, The Queen’s Head, near the Middle Temple. My lovely wife Elizabeth gave me my big break, though – always very generous with her money she was, and I was able to buy shares in the King’s Men in 1603, and the Globe a couple of years later. I acted for our pal Ben Jonson, too – Sejanus, Volpone, The Alchemist, and Catiline. And good John Marston even cast me as myself in the induction to The Malcontent. I didn’t mind coming across as slightly bossy – because someone has to be around theatre folk! And I was able to show off some of my Latin, too. I was trying to tot up with Heminges the other day the number of times we’ve taken part in performances at court before their majesties Elizabeth, James, and Charles.
We reckon on at least 250 times –so far, and – very likely more! But, you know, putting together Will’s folio – it was was really quite an undertaking. How we slogged away – and for six of the plays we actually had to use Shakespeare’s own manuscripts. Now let me see... The Comedy of Errors, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, or what you will (he was always keen on that subtitle – unusual for him), All’s Well That End’s Well, and Antony and Cleopatra. Yes – that right. Not sure what happened to the prompt copies, but thank goodness, the originals had all been preserved by his goodwife Anne at New Place. And it is true – there wasn’t a single crossing out on any of his fair pages. Sir John Salusbury even dedicated a poem to Heminges and me when he’d received his copy of our Folio, mentioning our ‘undaunted pains’ and how we ‘did not dig for gold’. He knew it was a labour of love!
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As soon as I heard that Master Shakespeare had died at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon I thought he should be buried in...
William Basse
As soon as I heard that Master Shakespeare had died at his home in Stratford-upon-Avon I thought he should be buried in the Abbey. After all Chaucer and Spenser are there, and it was only a few weeks since Francis Beaumont had joined them – a fine writer especially when he worked with Will’s great friend, John Fletcher, but look what Shakespeare accomplished – two great poems, a wonderful book of sonnets (even though it didn’t make much of a splash when it came out) – and all those plays! –histories, comedies, and above all tragedies – he was the greatest of them all. So I made the case in my little poem, and lots of people agreed with me and have told me that they copied it into their notebooks. Of course surly old Ben Jonson made fun of it in the poem he wrote for the big collected book of plays, but I still think Shakespeare deserved a place in the Abbey, whether along with his great predecessors or under a monument to him alone.
Anyhow, in case you haven’t read it, here goes: Renownèd Spenser, lie a thought more nigh To learnèd Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie A little nearer Spenser to make room For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb. To lodge all four in one bed make a shift Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fifth Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain For whom your curtains may be drawn again. If your precedency in death doth bar A fourth place in your sacred sepulchre, Under this carvèd marble of thine own Sleep, rare tragedian Shakespeare, sleep alone, Thy unmolested peace, unsharèd cave, Possess as lord, not tenant of thy grave, That unto us and others it may be Honour hereafter to be laid by thee.
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I expect you’re surprised to find me in this company aren’t you, after all the...
George Wilkins
I expect you’re surprised to find me in this company aren’t you, after all the trouble I’ve been in? Up in court time and again for being drunk, for beating women up, for keeping a disorderly house (as they call it) - you name it. But there was a time when I thought I might make a respectable living as a writer. My father was a poet, he knew Edmund Spenser and people like that. I know Latin, and I’ve translated some books, and I’ve written plays for the King’s Men, no less. There were those terrible happenings up north - the Calverley family – a man who murdered his wife and kids and was tried for it and pressed to death with stones, heavier and heavier until he could stand it no more – a terrible way to go, he lasted for hours before giving up the ghost. Well I read all about it in a pamphlet, and so did my pal Thomas Middleton. He started to write a play called A Yorkshire Tragedy – never got round to finishing it, but a publisher got hold of it and pretended it was by Shakespeare.
And I wrote a play about it too, called The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, a good piece of work though I say it myself, and it was put on by the King’s Men and published. By that time I’d gotten to know Shakespeare, we’d come across each other when he was lodging with a family called Mountjoy, up in Silver Street. It began to look as if I might make a decent living as a playmaker, and Shakespeare wanted to write a play about Pericles and needed help especially with scenes set in a brothel, which is where I came in handy, and we wrote it together and soon afterwards I turned it all into a book called The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre which was printed. And the play was printed too, in a lousy edition and did very well on stage but I never made a penny out of it, and I took to drink and – well, that’s it, really.
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I was only eight years old when grandfather died, but I remember what a solemn time it was. New Place...
Elizabeth Barnard
I was only eight years old when grandfather died, but I remember what a solemn time it was. New Place was all hung with black, and hundreds of friends and neighbours came to the funeral. Of course not many of his London friends and colleagues could make the journey, but Michael Drayton came across from Clifford Chambers where he was staying, as he often did, and promised that he would tell Master Jonson all about it next time he was in London. My grandmother was very sad. I think she rather regretted that grandfather left me most of his silver plate as she often used it for entertaining visitors, but of course I had no use for it at that time, and I let her keep it till I married my first husband, Tom. We got married in Holy Trinity on 22 April because that was as close as we could get to grandfather’s birthday, and I laid my flowers on his grave.
When grandfather’s bust was hauled into place in the church Master Jonson, who had done a lot to help with the arrangements, and wrote the inscriptions, walked all the way from London to be present. He said it was good training for the walk to Scotland that he is planning. After Tom died, it was a blessing to carry on living in New Place with my mother, but now I’m married to my dear John and we live away from Stratford in an even grander house, Abington Hall. I would like to keep up the Stratford connection especially through the Hathaways. My Sir John and I treasure grandfather’s coat of arms and the beautiful book of his collected plays which his friend Heminges gave me when it first appeared. Grandfather’s books and papers are all in the attic - I’ve no idea what will eventually happen to them.
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My father? Yes, I suppose he was an important man. He had a fine coat of arms and a scarlet livery and...
Judith Quiney
My father? Yes, I suppose he was an important man. He had a fine coat of arms and a scarlet livery and a sword, and he had to go to London a lot, and they say he knew the King quite well, and other important people. And he wrote books. He owned a lot of land around here, and half of the parish tithes. We liked to say we lived in the largest house in town (which is true), with a great garden and barns, and we owned another house on Henley Street that he’d inherited from my grandfather – the place where he’d made gloves and dealt in wool. Father’s sister, Aunt Joan, and her family lived in it till she died and her sons are still there. There’s a fine monument to Father in Holy Trinity, though not as grand as the one to John Combe who lived in The College. Father left our big house to my sister, Susanna, and now it belongs to her daughter, my neice, Elizabeth, Lady Bernard. But she lives away now, in another grand house, in Northamptonshire.
Of course, Susanna was the eldest, and Father was very worried about me when he made his will because my husband, Tom, had got into a spot of trouble, and Father thought he might not look after me properly. Actually we did very well and had three boys, the eldest was born soon after Father died, so we called him Shakespeare: Shakespeare Quiney, you know, but sadly he only lived for a few months, and our two other boys died young, like my poor twin brother Hamnet. But Tom and I had a good business. We kept a tavern and lived on the High Street in The Cage. It was called that because it had been some sort of prison. Anyway, Tom died last year, over seventy he was, and I’m on my own now. Our lovely new vicar, Mr Ward, keeps saying he wants to have a proper talk to me about Father and I’d be glad to tell him what I remember - if ever he has the time.
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