I pride myself somewhat on not wasting time over things which everyone knows - which you know, sir, and you know also, madam - but that I prefer rather to select the small, the forgotten, detail.
Singularities: that's what I'm after.
And I work through metaphorics, not metaphysics.
Of course, no one knows what Shakespeare's life was, even one who knew him as well as I did. It occurs to me today, with just half the rent paid, that every attempt to find out the truth of another man's life, and to write his Life, throws light on the person who makes the attempt, as much as on the man biographied. There, I have even invented a new verb. In the main, though, I protest I am not an inventor.
Inventories, however, are quite a different matter, and much to my liking, and here in this box I have one such which I trust will interest the reader. It was compiled by Emma Careless, wife of that Reverend Henry Heicroft already mentioned, vicar of Stratford from 1569 to 1584.
I have this feeling, do you see, that there is more to say about Jenkins - that Jenkins is peculiarly important to Mr Shakespeare's story. Where else might the poet have picked up certain tricks of his diction than from the verbal habits of a Welshman? I mean such characteristic locutions as his way of balancing two contrasting adjectives on the sea-saw of an 'and', and having both of them qualify a third word, always a noun. For example:
A beauty-waning and distressed widow.
That's from Richard III. And then, from The Tempest, some twenty years later:
To act her earthy and abhorred commands.
I contend that what we hear on these sea-saws of sense is a development of what Shakespeare heard from the lips of Thomas Jenkins in his Stratford schoolroom. He makes fun of Jenkins and his mispronunciations in The Merry Wives of Windsor. 'What is the focative case, William?' But if Jenkins, like Evans in that play, made fritters of English, still Shakespeare fed on those fritters, for a purpose all his own.
Pickleherring suspects that Jenkins brought a touch of Welsh wizardry to Stratford too, perhaps telling his pupils tales drawn out of a book called The Mabinogion which collects such myths and legends. How else explain the way that notion of the cauldron of inspiration and science survives in local gossip as representing something that bubbled in the corner of Mary Shakespeare's kitchen? Such a cauldron figures in Welsh stories about the poet Taliesin, so I have heard. Other elements from those tales seem remembered in The Tempest.
Alas, having promised you 'more about Jenkins', I have to confess that the 'more' which we really require - if my thesis has truth in it - is to hear how he spoke, and what young Will heard. That's where Emma Careless comes in. For some reason (probably for amusement), the vicar's wife drew up an inventory of the goods and chattels of the Welsh schoolmaster, writing it down in a manner which makes a burlesque of the sound of Jenkins' voice. It is the nearest we'll ever get to hearing what Shakespeare heard. You may judge for yourself if the poet learnt anything from it.
Han Infentory of the Couds
of Thomas Jenkins ap Hughes
(B.A. 1566), Schoolmaster
Imprimis, in the Wardrope - One Irish rugg, 1 buff frize shirkin, 1 sheepskin tublet, 2 Irish stocking, 2 shooe, 6 leather point (two proken).
Item, in the Tary - One toasting shees, 3 oaten-cake, 3 pints of cow-milk, 1 pound of cow-putter, eggs.
Item, in the Kitchen - One cridiron, 1 fripan, 2 white pot, 3 red herring, 9 sprat (for hur own eating).
Item, in the Cellar - One firkin of wiggan, 2 gallon sweet sower sider, one pint of perry, 1 little pottle of Carmarden sack, alias Metheglin, wort, and malmsey.
Item, in the Study (hur was almost forgot hur!) - One Welch Pible, 2 almanac, 1 Seven Champions, for St Taffy sake, 12 pallat, one pedigree, one most capricious Ovid.
Item, in the Closet - 2 sorrow-struck and mortal hat, one pouse, 4 napkin (one for hursulf, one for hur wife Shone, two for cusen ap Powell when was cum to hur house).
Item, in the Yard, under the wall - One fickle wheel, two pucket, 1 ladder, 2 frantic and forsaken rope, one mouse-trap.
Item, in the Carden - One ped of carlike (for to mend hur kissing), 9 honourable onion (hur eyes smell hem), 12 leek (for heating upon St Davy's Day), 12 viperous and surprising worm, 6 frog.
NB: A Note of some Legacy of a creat deal of Coods bequeathed to hur Wife and hur two Shild, and all hur Cusens, and Friends, and Kindred, in manner as followeth:
Imprimis - Was to give to hur teer wife, Shone Jenkins, all the coods in the ped-room.
Item - Was to give hur eldest and digressing sun, Plack Shack, 40 and 12 card to play at Whipper-shinny, to sheat hur cusen.
Item - Was to give to hur second sun, little Jenkins ap
Jenkins, hur short ladder under the wall in the yard, and 2 rope.
Item - Was to give to hur Cusen Lewellin Morgan ap William, whom was made hur executor, full power and puissance to pay awl hur tets, when hur can get sum money now at usance.
This Infentory taken Note (ferbatim) in the Presence of Emma Careless of Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1579, upon the Ten and Thirtieth of Shun. The above-named Thomas Jenkins then quit the parish.
I say that Jenkins served William Shakespeare in the same capacity as Holofernes served the young Gargantua. He taught him his ABC backwards.
Chapter Thirty-Nine John Shakespeare when sober
When sober, John Shakespeare taught his son the spartan vices.
When a gentleman has had his arms and legs broken, he used to say, and two slow sword-thrusts through his belly, then, and not till then, he may say, 'Really, I don't feel well.'
Once when William was thirteen he fell and broke his arm when walking in the Forest of Arden. His father told him not to tell his mother because she had been looking peakish and the news might put her off her food.
Yet there was the occasional unexpected paternal gentleness in William Shakespeare's upbringing also. His father did not approve of children being wakened too abruptly, for instance, and he would wake his son by singing to him, softly at first, then getting louder and louder until he had called the boy back to the waking world.
Perhaps it was when he was sober that John Shakespeare took William to witness the Coventry plays. These mysteries were presented each Corpus Christi Day at Coventry by the trade guilds on waggons moving in procession through the streets from station to station. Father and son stood there in the street, watching one waggon after another as it rolled up, delivered its story, and then rolled away.
I think that the Coventry play which made the deepest impression upon our Shakespeare was the one acted by the Guild of Shearmen and Tailors, in which Herod of Jewry takes the leading role. Why so, sir? I will tell you why. Because in that play there is a stage direction which says that Herod is to leap off the pageant-waggon and into the crowd of spectators: 'Here Herod rages in the pageant, and in the street also.' We may well suppose that the vainglorious braggart was costumed in red cloak and red gloves and that to punctuate his anger he carried a big club stuffed with wool (don't forget that these were shearmen). Further, we might well suppose that he employed this club to belabour all who came within his range (don't forget that these were rude mechanicals). Is it beyond supposition, then, to imagine an enthusiastic actor bearing down with all the terror of this club upon the future dramatist?