Shakespeare and 'the missing years'

Could Shakespeare have a Cheshire connection? It ‘s not unlikely. It is all part of the general mystery surrounding Shakespeare’s early years. Whereas his later life is fairly well documented, very little is known of the years before he became established. Tradition has it that he ran away from home at Stratford -on-Avon in 1587 after he had been caught poaching from Sir Thomas Lucy, a local landlord. In 1592 he was already known as a rising playwright but no-one is certain what happened in the years between. The mystery is exacerbated by the fact that before he left home he seems to have been remembered mainly as a young tear-away whose only distinction was that he was forced into a shot-gun wedding and quickly fathered three children. What happened to convert the hobbledehoy of 1587 into the playwright of 1592 can never be known for certain - or can it?

There are three main theories of what happened to him after running from home. One is that he ran away with a group of strolling players, another that he went to London and earned a living holding horses while their owners attended the Theatres while a third has him as a tutor to a wealthy family in Lancashire. The trouble is that none of the three really hold water.

That he acted as an assistant schoolmaster at Macclesfield Grammar School might also seem unlikely on the face of it, but the more one examines the facts the more possible it becomes.

What is often forgotten is that the Shakespeare family, though latterly in somewhat reduced circumstances, was by no means a collection of nobodies. William’s father was an Alderman and had been Chamberlain of Stratford -on-Avon, which was a sort of Mayor. Modern research shows that the family’s reduced fortunes may indeed have been caused by faith rather than fecklessness because of a secret adherence to the proscribed catholic religion.

William’s mother herself, was the daughter of a wealthy farmer and a member of the important Arden family in the days when family, position and property were of supreme importance. It must also be appreciated that a totally different attitude existed in the 16th Century towards acting as a profession . Playwrights were accepted , indeed they were often aristocrats or graduates but actors, particularly strolling ones if they were without some noble patron, were officially classed as ‘rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars’ who could be whipped and sent back to their home parishes. Shakespeare may well have become an actor, but later on and in an established company with a noble patron. The thought that the eldest son of an Alderman of the town would throw in his lot with a gang of strolling players, as has been suggested seems most unlikely. One can hardly imagine William telling his parents the sixteenth century equivalent of ‘ Bye Mum. Bye Dad. I'‘m off to become a strolling player and a rogue and vagabond. Would you mind looking after the wife and kids while I’m away?’

The theory that he suddenly appeared as a tutor to the son of a wealthy Lancashire family seems equally flawed . There is no record of the Shakespeare family having any connections in Lancashire and it seems hardly likely that a young man appearing out of the blue and with no background would be given the considerable responsibility of teaching the family’s offspring.

The appointment seems even less likely if they had found out William’s true background as a runaway poacher!

However, the idea that William did indeed become a teacher is based on solid fact according to William Beeston, who was the son of one of Shakespeare’s friends and a fellow actor. ‘Though Ben Johnson says of him that he had but little Latin and less Greek, he understood Latin pretty well.’ Beeston affirmed,‘ He had been in his younger days a schoolmaster in the country.’ This might possibly explain, though not entirely, Shakespeare’s astonishing almost total recall of Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles of England, Scotland and Wales’ which was considered the most definitive history book of the times. No less than fourteen of his plays are believed to have their origin in this book, even to some of the exact wording! And there still remains, Shakespeare’s acknowledged, but never adequately explained, unusual knowledge of law which he displayed both in his plays and throughout his life.

If we allow two or three years for Shakespeare to establish himself as a playwright of consequence then all this knowledge must have been acquired somewhere between 1587,when he ran away from home, to 1588 or 1589. It seems a very short time to change a small-town tearaway into to a literary genius. There are a number of clues as to how this might have come about and curiously enough they all point towards the Cheshire area.

We know that William’s mother Mary was a member of the Arden family. It is unlikely that she would openly boast about this at the time as the most prominent member of the family, Sir Edward Arden of Castle Bromwich, had recently been hung as a Catholic traitor. Curiously enough, one of the chief instigators of this was Sir Thomas Lucy, the man on whose land William had been caught poaching. There was another branch of the family however, the Ardernes of Stockport, who were not only staunchly Protestant but were also extremely prosperous. Living near there was another person who might also have been called upon to help the family in time of trouble, an old friend of the Shakespeare family, John Brownsword, the Headmaster of the Grammar School in Macclesfield, only a few miles from Stockport.

Brownsword had been a schoolmaster at Stratford-upon-Avon Grammar School while William was still a little boy. The two families, the Shakespeares and the Brownswords, had been very close. It was John Shakespeare, William’s father, who had helped the Brownsword’s, then newly weds, bring their belongings over when Brownsword had arrived to take up post in Stratford, and helped them settle in. The friendship must have deepened when both wives became pregnant about the same time, Mrs Brownsword with her first child and Mary Shakespeare with her second.

The family left Stratford in 1568, when John Brownsword took up residence as headmaster at Macclesfield Grammar School. He must have been a remarkable man and an exceptional teacher since a brass memorial to his excellence can still be seen in Macclesfield Parish church - a memorial paid for by an ex-pupil, Thomas Newton, who later became, thanks to Brownsword’s encouragement, a major Elizabethan poet. “The first of poets, the leader of grammarians and the flower of schoolmasters”. Few schoolteachers can surely have received such memorials from their pupils.

Am I suggesting that it was Macclesfield where Shakespeare had ‘been a schoolmaster in the country’? Not necessarily but I am suggesting that the possibility exists. There are certain strange coincidences that support the theory? For instance, one of the specialities of Macclesfield Grammar School’s syllabus at the time was its specialisation in teaching law as the basis for entry into the profession. We know that Shakespeare had an unusual knowledge of law and its procedures. But perhaps most extraordinary is that Shakespeare’s deep and almost exact knowledge of Holinshed’s ‘Chronicles of England, Scotland and Wales’ might be due to that book was most surely the standard history book in the school. How can we be so certain? The author was a local man, Ralph Holinshed having been born in Sutton just down the road, and as such was more than likely to have been an ex-scholar at the school. The book, written by a local man, must surely have been required reading for the pupils.

Even the timing lends itself to the theory. In 1587 Brownsword was no longer well and the arrival of a well educated young man who, in view of the circumstances, would not quibble too much about fees would have seen to be heaven sent at the time. Brownsword’s health finally forced him to retire in 1588 and he died the following year. That too is the likely time that Shakespeare began to work and gain a reputation in London. His arrival in the Metropolis around 1588-9, on the death of Brownsword and the appointment of another Headmaster of Macclesfield Grammar School would appear to fit the already known facts completely.

But what about the theory that Shakespeare might have originally set off for Stockport? Why did he stop at Macclesfield? Once again there is coincidence. If Shakespeare had indeed visited the Brownswords he would have quickly learned that John Arderne of Stockport was the last person likely to give him refuge. Arderne was actually a close friend and business partner of Sir Fulk Lucy, younger son of Sir Thomas Lucy of Stratford, the very man Shakespeare had run away to avoid. It would have seemed far better to lie low at Macclesfield for a while - and I believe that is just what he did.

The evidence after all this time can at best be only be circumstantial but there are too many coincidences for the theory to be unlikely. There is the contemporary statement that Shakespeare served at one time as a schoolmaster . There is the long time Headmaster friend of the family with failing health who would undoubtedly and so conveniently be delighted to help. The Headmaster himself was a poet. The Headmaster was responsible for encouraging at least one other Elizabethan poet and playwright. His school made a speciality of teaching law. There was the local man who was writer of the standard history most commonly used by Shakespeare, a book obviously used by the school. That is the family connections in the area. The coincidences multiply. May we then perhaps owe the glory and greatness of our national poet and playwright to the stimulus and influence of a humble and little known Macclesfield schoolmaster? May it be more than just a romantic idea, that the experience of this particular schoolmaster was able to discern and nurture the love of poetry and literature that lay under William’s young and otherwise rather brash facade.

There are certainly too many coincidences for the theory to be dismissed out of hand.

Doug McCaskill

What do you think? Contact me on DJMcCas@hotmail.com with any comments.

©D. McCaskill 2001