Robert Nye - The Late Mr Shakespeare

Our hero's mother was born Mary Arden. She was a farmer's daughter, and she grew up under the apple-boughs in the sweet village of Wincot, which lies three miles to the north-west of Stratford in leafy Warwickshire. But this Mary was almost not Mr Shakespeare's mother. How so? It came about like this.

Near by John Shakespeare's butcher shop, on a small tributary of the River Avon, there stands a mill. It is ruined now, that mill, another casualty of the late Civil Wars. The place closed down for a lack not of corn but of men who knew how to grind it, in the old ways, to the ancient specifications, with water and stones, furrows and thumbs. In Shakespeare's day there was always a miller there.

The miller's taste was in his thumb. The art, on the other hand, is in the stone. It looks crude, it looks easy, two girt stones grinding together, what could be simpler? But in the cut and clarity of the furrow, the way the miller marks his stone, or the miller's man, his amanuensis, there you have it, the whole lost art.

When he opens the gate the stream runs straight. If he opened it full it would bring the mill down. So he opens it half, and the water flows through, the green water, and round and round the wheel goes, and the chalky walls shake and you can smell the flour fly, the oatmeal in the air, in the low gloom, though it's a long while now since they bore sacks up the thin stair, spread corn to warm on the worn stones, lit the fire under, and let the wind spin the chimney as it would. When you look up it still moves slightly, that chimney, then the whole twisted roof moves, and you're lost. Have you noticed millers always have bad breath?

Now when young Mr John Shakespeare was first making his way in the butchery business, the miller in that mill had a beautiful daughter. She had long, silky hair and her lips pressed together like two red rose petals. Her name was Juliet, wouldn't you know. John and Juliet did not marry because their fathers spoilt it. How did they spoil it? By plotting matrimony.

'Listen, John,' said his father to him, 'I want you to marry the miller's daughter.'

'Juliet, listen,' her father said to her, 'I want you to make a good catch for yourself - that John Shakespeare, the butcher boy, for instance.'

'Speak nicely to her,' said Shakespeare's father's father.

'Be agreeable to the man,' commanded the miller.

Next day the would-be lovers met.

'Mr Shagsper,' said Juliet, 'my father told me to marry you.'

'Is that so?' said John Shakespeare. 'Well, in that case I think we should sleep together first to find out if we're suited.'

The miller's daughter did not demur or delay. That night they lay together in her bed above the mill wheel. The air was salty with flour. His eyes pricked. She gnawed her lower lip in the blue darkness.

'Mr Shagsper,' she whispered at last.

'Yes, my love?' John whispered back.

'Did you come round the mill pond by the dovecots?' Juliet asks him.

'Yes, my darling,' John says, panting.

'And did you notice a great big heap of dung under the wall?' asks Juliet.

'I did,' John Shakespeare answers, somewhat surprised by the question.

'Well,' says Juliet, 'that's mine.'

'Yours?' John Shakespeare said.

'I did it,' Juliet told him, 'every bit.'

The miller's daughter was a lovely lovely creature, but she did have the one shortcoming which makes me glad she was not our hero's mother - she lacked conversation.

Chapter Five How to spell Shakespeare and what a whittawer is

So Mr John Shakespeare married Mary Arden--

But before we get into that I'd better say something about the way Juliet the miller's daughter said the family name.

Shakespeare is a not uncommon surname in Warwickshire and the counties round about, along with little variations on its martial music: Shakelaunce and Brislelaunce, Lycelance and Breakspear. One of the tribe last-named, Nicholas Breakspear, even became Pope, the only Englishman to have sunk so low, calling himself Hadrian IV when he sat down in the papal chair.

What the miller's daughter said - Shagsper - is just one possible spelling and pronunciation of the name. Both in Stratford and in London people say it variously, and I have come across it in many different forms. Here are a few of them:

Shakaspeare Shakespey Shakstaff Shakispeare Shaxpur Shakeshaft Shakyspeare Sakesper Sacaspeer Shakespire Shaxberd Sakeespeer Shakespeier Shexper Shakeschafte Sakespeier Schacosper Shakespere Saxpey Scakespeire Shaxber Saksper Saxper Shakespaye Sakspere Saxberd Schakkyspare Shagspere Schaftspere Shakespur Shaxbere Chacsper Shakespure Shagspare Saxshaffte Shaxpay Shaxpear Chacspeire Chacsberde Saxpar Sacksper Sexper Shakesbear Shakesides Shagstuft Shuckspere Shagsshaft Sexspear

The saying and the spelling being so mutable, you might conclude that all this speaks of a quality of mystery in the man himself. I'd not deny this. But I spell it Shakespeare. Why? Because that's how Mr Shakespeare spelt it himself in the printed signatures to the dedications of his two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece , when his mind must have certainly been on the job. It is in fact the form in nearly all the printings of his plays in my possession. And it is also the way his name is spelt in the text of all the legal documents relating to his property that I have seen, and in the royal licence granted to him in 1603 in his capacity as a player.

So while I must admit that you could find his father's name spelt sixteen different ways in the Council books at Stratford (the commonest being Shaxpeare), it is my firm conclusion that all these variaments express the way that other people said the family surname. As such, each variance bespeaks how these others perceived a member of the family. ( Shagsper , for instance, tells what the miller's daughter had in mind.)

But, in sum ...

SHAKESPEARE is how our poet wrote it (for the most part).

SHAKESPEARE is also how he said it.

SHAKESPEARE is finally how I always knew and called him.

Quod erat demonstrandum, gentlemen.

Ladies, you may take it that SHAKESPEARE is how to spell Shakespeare.

By the way, a whittawer is a white-tawyer, which is to say one who taws skins into whitleather. (I love these old country words.) This tawing was the second side of the senior Mr Shakespeare's trade in Henley Street, though in his later life it became his main line, so that some have spoken of him as a glover. The truth is that he was always a man with different coloured hands. For instance, he dealt in wool from the sheep he slaughtered, as well as their meat.

I confess to a certain disease at having told you that the sign above his shop said BUTCHER & WHITTAWER. This seems to me unlikely, even though the building was quite commodious - in fact it was two premises knocked into one, as can still be seen. However, I have been assured of that BUTCHER & WHITTAWER wording by several ancient citizens of Stratford, including Mr William Walker, the present Bailiff, who is Mr Shakespeare's godson, and who was remembered in the poet's will with the gift of twenty shillings in gold.

The disposition of having meat and leather for sale in the same shop is scarcely salubrious. But then things were ordered differently a hundred years ago, and not always for the better. Perhaps all that needs to be remarked, for our present purpose, is that Mr John Shakespeare made such a success of his various trades in the first two acts of his life that he rose to be Bailiff himself in 1568, and then in 1571 Chief Alderman. It was while he was Bailiff, and his son William still a boy, that the players first came with their plays to Stratford, at the town's expense. His fortunes declined in acts three and four, but more of that later.