Ungently does it

 

Balzac had to be set aside when the library said they'd got this in for me. It's been some time since I read any further into Shakespeare biography having thought I'd gone as far as I would. I'm glad I fed the mild obsession with it one more time.

Published in 2001, Katherine Duncan-Jones's Ungentle Shakespeare doesn't attempt a full account of the life but is Scenes from his life, concentrating chapters on periods or issues of particular interest. Maybe that saves her from having to fit the whole story together but her research is deep, her insights compelling and she is scholarly and convincing throughout. That must have been an erudite and cerebral dinner table when she was married to A.N. Wilson.

Katherine offers a number of correctives to several details usually assumed, imported or taken for granted in the majority of Shakespeare biographies. As it happens she is happy enough to accept the birthday on April 23rd as an estimate as good as any and so undermines my little joke about him dying on his birthday but not being born on it. The 'lost years' are most likely to have been spent as a lawyer's clerk and although she makes that story favourite in what is an open field, the way she lines up her reasons and apparently has no agenda apart from what her huge knowledge and understanding leads her to think make it easy to want to follow her.

She has Shakespeare in the Queen's Men by 1589 but since they usually recruited the best talent from other companies he will have needed a season or two to have come to their notice. I'd like to have him out of Stratford by May 1584 for my purposes and her estimate that 'conjugal relations' with Anne ended some time in the 1580's doesn't preclude the 'twins theory', often cited on this website but derided elsewhere, that Hamnet Sadler was father to the twins. Contrary to every other account I've seen, she credits the real authorship of the Groatsworth of Wit, which is the first official sighting of Shakespeare in London, in 1593, to Thomas Nashe who published it under the name of Robert Greene as his deathbed confession because the dead can't be libelled or sue for libel. It's already lively and bringing the litany of supposition and likelihoods vividly back to life. It might be of use to have read a more 'traditional' biography first, like Ackroyd, Holden or even Burgess, in order to appreciate that Duncan-Jones was fresh and original work.

The 'ungentleness' is thematic, with Shakespeare's provincial, non-aristocratic, non-university background and his pursuit of gentlemanly status central to his motivation. It is seen as something of a handicap compared to Ben Jonson's 'singularity' in being himself and not aspiring to be otherwise but Jonson is more often the envious party as Shakespeare is taken up by students as a fashion in the same way they idolized pop stars 400 years later and much more successful overall.

There seems little doubt that the Earl of Southampton is the 'fair youth' of the Sonnets, she plays down the idea of a 'tragic period' in the early 1600's being due to a dark episode in the dramatist's life and makes mention more than once of his ability to 'please all', not least by writing,

comedies that were very nearly tragedies...and tragedies that were full of mad scenes and of comic or partly comic material,

which Stephen Fry has explained is what he wrote for every essay on Shakespeare he did at Cambridge having first adjusted whatever the question was to fit his stock answer.

In a number of contemporary or personal parallels in the plays, Katherine finds Jonson in Jaques and possibly the boy, Hamnet, in William Page in Merry Wives. The 'tradition of ironic self-presentation' is maintained in Malvolio's cross-gartering on yellow stockings being an obvious reference (to his contemporaries) to his much-maligned coat of arms that was so important to his gentlemanly status. Chaucer, Thomas More and Philip Sidney are cited as precursors in self-ridicule but sadly Ungentle Shakespeare was published before my own poem, The Lepidopterist's Wife, in which,

the man next door who reeks of gin

and loss, who watches horse racing all day

on a wide screen, a penniless mischief

 

was a self portrait but it was probably not on the Duncan-Jones radar. It's great to have taken part in such a rich tradition, though.

The collaborations with the likes of Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher and George Wilkins are all borne out in case anybody wants to argue that, no, in fact, Shakespeare didn't write every word of the plays attributed to him but he is here credited with A Yorkshire Tragedy and, yes, there was a Hamlet play extant in 1589 and the similarities of John Marston's Antonio's Revenge, written at the same time, to the 1600-01 masterpiece suggest they were written either in competition or with knowledge of what each other were doing. It seems remarkable that so much of this detail was not in any of the shelf-ful of books I have on the subject.

The contentious issue of the will is faced full on with Katherine in no doubt that Shakespeare had little residual sympathy for his wife or 'daughter', Judith and only angrily and even begrudgingly made the provision for them that he did. This lack of consideration for women runs back through the book to there being more evidence of same-sex relationships than with heterosexual activity and the disgust that women provoke in him, with special reference to the Sonnets and the dark lady. Neither has she any time for the relaxed, happy retirement back in Stratford. The Droeshout portrait and the monument in Holy Trinity church show someone 'well-fed' and if portraits tended to flatter, he could have been fatter than that. It is suggested that he didn't become ill and die because he drank but that he drank because he was ill and then died.

There isn't much here that stands in direct contradiction of 'twins theory'. It's only a shame that even a scholar as astute as Katherine, who is far cuter than the legions of others who have attempted such lives, hasn't thought of it or, at least, doesn't think it worth a mention. Much of the circumstantial detail fits but she presumably still thinks the Sadlers were good friends and godparents. She even has the idea in plain sight and misses it when,

It is very striking that in the document , of the 1620's, in which Shakespeare's settlement of this large parcel of land is recorded, it is also stated, wrongly, that he 'had one daughter'.

There's just a chance it might not be wrong and that everybody else ever since has been. 

But that's not the basis of 'twins theory'. It just happens to fit with the catalogue of other circumstances that make the life less of a mystery. Certainly, those sentimental sorts who like the idea of an uxurious bard have a game on with Katherrine who comes with immaculate credentials, immense research and fine instincts. This is the best book on the subject I've seen and since the subject is one that I like to think I have a bit of a speciality in (or did until I read this), it's an obvious candidate for the shortlist for Best Book I've Ever Read. I had thought that using the library might save me buying quite so many books but I must have my own copy of this. It's essential. It's okay, though, you can get one for a fiver.