2. On Shakespeare and Class

Being the second post I've made on Substack

Over the last year, I’ve been increasingly involved in reading and thinking about William Shakespeare. I’ve always loved his plays, and have long wanted to write something more substantial about him or his world, whether fictional or non-fiction.

The funny thing about Will Shakespeare is that - partly because of his sheer genius - he has inspired, since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a group of people to believe that he couldn’t have been the playwright. I won’t go into all the reasons why they believe this, but the fallacy mostly rests on misunderstandings, misapprehensions, and sheer ignorance.

One of the premises of the Shakespeare deniers’ case is to do with class. William Shakespeare, they say, was the son of a glover. How, therefore, could he possibly have become a playwright?

Let’s knock that on the head, by looking at other playwrights from the Elizabethan and Jacobean period.

George Peele was probably the son of a clerk, James Peele, who was responsible for London city pageants.

John Lyly was the grandson of a scholar, William Lily, who helped to bring humanism to England, and was high master of St Paul’s School. John’s father, Peter, was a registrar to Archbishop Parker. His mother was a member of the gentry family of Burgh, and John married an heiress, Beatrice Browne, the daughter of a Rokeby.

Anthony Munday, the son of Christopher Munday, a stationer. In Mirrour of Mutabilitie, Munday refers to his parents’ spending a lot on his education. He was an apprentice printer. There are Mundays in my family, and I’ve always wondered whether there’s a connection.

Thomas Kyd’s father was a scrivener, and it can be demonstrated that Thomas has very neat handwriting.

Christopher Marlowe’s father was a shoemaker, and his family, though never rich, was of the aspirant class which nurtured plenty of literary talent (like William Shakespeare’s).

William Shakespeare - his father was a glover and whittawer; his mother was an Arden.

Robert Greene’s parentage is unclear; but his father was probably either a saddler or a cordwainer who kept an inn.

George Chapman was the second son of Thomas Chapman, a yeoman, and Joan Nodes, the daughter of George Nodes, who had been in charge of Henry VIII’s hunting dogs. Chapman, of course, translated the Iliad in the early 17th century (later read by Jonathan Keats).

Ben Jonson was of Scottish descent; his grandfather served King Henry VIII and was a gentleman. Ben adopted their armorial bearings. We don’t know much about his father but he may have lost all his estate under Queen Mary. He was a clergyman, and died when Ben was young; Ben’s mother married again to a bricklayer, possibly Robert Brett, who was master of the Tylers’ and Bricklayers’.

Thomas Dekker’s parentage is unclear. We know nothing about his parents; could possibly be of Dutch descent. Was beset by debt all his life.

John Marston was the son of a lawyer, also called John Marston, and Maria Guarsi, who was possibly descended from Katherine of Aragon’s Italian physician.

Thomas Heywood was possibly the son of a rector, Robert Heywood. His uncle, Edmund, was granted a coat of arms.

John Webster’s father was a carriage-maker, and his mother, Elizabeth Coates, was the daughter of a blacksmith.

Thomas Middleton’s father, William, was a bricklayer who had been granted a coat of arms. His father died when he was small, and his mother married again to a young gentleman grocer.

John Fletcher’s father was dean of Peterborough and bishop of London.

Francis Beaumont was the third son of a judge, and his older brother was the poet Sir John Beaumont. They were a leading county family in Leicestershire.

William Rowley - we know nothing about him; he could be the brother of Samuel Rowley, also an actor and playwright.

Philip Massinger was the son of Arthur Massinger, a fellow of Merton College Oxford, agent for the earl of Pembroke, and Anne Crompton, whose father was a merchant.

John Ford - his father was a Devon landowner and JP; as a younger son, he was destined for a professional career.

Richard Brome - parentage unknown, but he worked as a servant for Ben Jonson and was from a very humble background.

James Shirley - his father was probably a shopkeeper.

So what we have here is a selection of the sons of tradespeople, professionals, and younger sons of minor gentry families. In short, they all occupy the same thrusting middle class, which offerred them the opportunities to enter the world of playwriting. Some of them are from families with links to writing and theatres; others are not. The scale is fairly broad, from Richard Brome the servant, to John Ford the landowner’s younger son; but all of them would have had to make their way in the world. Adam Nicolson’s recent book, Gentry, describes the often precarious world of this peculiarly British class: neither aristocratic nor commoners, and full of people who either shot upwards quickly, or came down in the world just as fast. What you can bet is that every single one of these men showed talent in composition, and had a yearning to write plays which pushed them onwards. (Even my secret favourite, John Webster, who only wrote a handful of plays.)

Shakespeare’s milieu, then, was not unusual for his time, and it was certainly not an unusual background for a young man to go out into the world of London and the theatre and make his way there. We also know that Will Shakespeare reapplied for a grant of arms for his father, John (who had married Mary Arden, of a minor gentry family); and thus Will Shakespeare himself became, by virtue of this coat of arms, a gentleman, as is shown on the title pages of his works.

To say that Will Shakespeare couldn’t have been a playwright because of his class is to deny the class backgrounds of every single other playwright in the country at the time. What we also see in this list is: not a single aristocrat.

So much for having to have an aristocratic background in order to write plays.