Filling in the Holes in the Biography of William Shakespeare

Shakespeare was a man surrounded by controversy.  He, himself, has a biography filled with holes and question marks. Some have even held that the great English Bard could not have been one man.  Although the idea that Shakespeare was really a compilation of men has been dismissed by most critics, the idea highlights a significant issue in trying to pin down the exact biographical and historical surroundings of the playwright.

As critic Sam Leith points out, many critics and scholars of Shakespeare have no problem, and really no choice, with using phrases such as, “’would have’, ‘could have’, ‘probably’, ‘possibly’, and ‘might’,”1 when discussing the details of Shakespeare’s life.  Regardless, these possibilities and holes in the Bard’s biography help form some coherent and interesting thoughts about his life and most famous works.

His Life

Critic Daniel Wackerman argues in his essay, “To Be or Not to Be (Catholic, That is),” that there are many biographical reasons to believe that Shakespeare was a catholic.    He writes about how from his birth Shakespeare was in the presence of some strong catholic influences. Wackerman and some other scholars, including Eamon Duffy, have pointed to the family’s religious affiliations to back this up.  The Bard’s maternal grandfather was Edward Arden, Wackerman writes that, “Arden, was patriarch to ‘one of the most prominent Warwickshire Catholic families.”  He is even said to have secretly kept his own catholic priest, disguised as the family gardener.”2 

Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt in his book Will in the World supports the claim that Edward Arden was a catholic.  He adds that Mary Arden, Shakespeare’s mother, was “the youngest of eight daughters, Mary was her father’s favorite.”3  The tradition of Catholicism would have likely been passed down from father to daughter.  If the claim that Edward kept a private priest is true, it is clear that Mary would have had some sort of opportunity to converse and interact with him.

Wackerman goes on and cites scholarship that claims Mary Arden, “made specific mention of the Blessed Virgin Mary in her will, a practice long out of fashion for all save Catholics in 16th-century England.”4  This with the connection to Edward Arden essentially captures the Catholic connection on the maternal side of the Bard’s family; however, since the England of Shakespeare’s time was thoroughly patriarchal it is important to examine the religious affiliations of the Bard’s father.

John Shakespeare was the father of William.  Many scholars have highlighted the presence of a ‘spiritual testament’ that was found hidden in the rafters of John Shakespeare’s house after his death.  Literary critic Ralph Berry writes about the testament, “The Spiritual Testament of John Shakespeare, William’s father, proves him a Catholic; the document no longer exists but its authenticity is generally accepted.”5  This idea is supported by Greenblatt, Wackerman, and others.  They all discuss the testament that declared John Shakespeare a Catholic.  Considering that his mother and father were Catholic then it is likely that the Bard would have been raised with the religion of his parents.

His surroundings would have all but guaranteed that he end up with Catholic beliefs by the time that he left for his career in London.  His hometown Stratford-on-Avon was still very much a Catholic stronghold after the country officially moved to Protestantism.  Even though it was nominally Protestant the town still held firmly to its old ways.  Greenblatt writes about the cultural influences of Catholicism on Stratford,

"Stratford had nominally become Protestant, like most of the kingdom […] Officially, England had decisively broken away from Rome.  But in matters of religious belief, families in early-sixteenth-century England were characteristically fractured, and many individuals were similarly fractured inwardly.  It would have been an unusual extended kin group that did not have at least some of its members holding on to the old faith."[6]

Even the leadership and the elites of Stratford were associated with the old ways of Catholicism.

The vicar of the town was expelled from duty after being accused of “popery,” and one of the schoolmasters from Shakespeare’s school left his job to become a Catholic Jesuit priest.  Wackerman writes about this in his article, “[the] vicar was expelled for ‘popery’ [and] Shakespeare’s own schoolmaster, Simon Hunt, abandoned his teaching post in 1575 to become a Catholic priest – a Jesuit.”7  Greenblatt also writes about the Bard’s schoolmaster,

"Originally from Lancashire, in the north of England, where the old faith was clung to most tenaciously, Simon Hunt, Will’s teacher between the ages of seven and eleven, took the drastic step of leaving Stratford in 1575 for the Continent to attend the Catholic seminary at Douai and, eventually, to become a Jesuit […] the decision meant that he would have to spend the rest of his life in exile or return to England in secret."

Greenblatt goes on and writes that Hunt did not keep his ideas to himself and that he actually took a student with him to the continent.  The teacher that replaced Hunt was also either a Catholic or was sympathetic to the Catholic cause.8