The Fictional Lives of Shakespeare by Gilvary Kevin

Author:Gilvary, Kevin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

In A Documentary Life, these events are described in 108 pages (1987, 3–110) out of a total of 262 pages of total text. In the next chapter (‘The Upstart Crow’), there is a nine page discussion concerning one allusion in Groatsworth. However, the allusion is ambiguous and might not refer to Shakespeare. Lukas Erne argues against the interpretation that either Green or Chettle were referring to Shakespeare: “The cumulative effect of the evidence against Shakespeare [as the recipient of the Chettle apology] is such that it partakes of mythology, rather than biography, to keep drawing inferences about Shakespeare’s early years in London from Chettle’s apology” (1998, 440). In the next chapter, Schoenbaum devotes seventeen pages to ‘Plays, Politics and a Patron’ in which he can only cite Shakespeare in the dedications to Venus and Lucrece. Thus 26 more pages are based on just three allusions. The first 134 pages, more than half of the entire study, expand just seven allusions to Shakespeare.

Schoenbaum describes the family and hometown context in about a third of his study (1987 3–95). He dismisses the suggestion of Richard Davies (c. 1690) that Shakespeare ‘dyed a papist’ (55). He perpetuates Rowe’s unevidenced assumption that Shakespeare spent his childhood in Stratford, where he attended the local school (62–72). Schoenbaum states: “we need not doubt that Shakespeare received a grammar school education” (63). The phrase “we need not doubt” indicates the absence of any supporting evidence. He adds: “Shakespeare was lucky to have the King’s School at Stratford-upon-Avon. It was an excellent institution of its kind, better than most rural grammar schools” (65). He uses the circular argument that Shakespeare was so well-read that he must have received a wonderful education in Stratford; consequently, he was so lucky to have received such a wonderful education! In his introduction, he notes that historical researches show how “children were educated, families worshipped, and officials busied themselves with the task of local government” (xi). The unspoken assumption is that the experiences of any one child somewhere in England during the Elizabethan period coincided with the experiences of any other. However, we are uncertain whether Shakespeare even attended the King’s School at Stratford, what exactly was taught there, or even if he was in Stratford during this period at all: no record mentions William from his baptism in 1564 until his marriage licence in 1582.

Having ignored the undocumented years from 1564 to 1582, Schoenbaum considers as ‘lost’ only the years from 1585 to 1592 (95–117). He reports the anecdote about the drinking competition in Bidford, but is aware that “Shakespeare’s drinking exploits [at Bidford] may have no more authoritative basis than (in Chambers’s phrase) “the inventiveness of innkeepers’ [WS ii. 286–87].” The drinking ‘exploits’ were first mentioned in 1762, nearly two centuries after the supposed events. Schoenbaum frequently quotes Rowe’s ‘biography’ and in the absence of evidence to the contrary accepts Rowe’s assertions with little or no doubt.

But, if we may give credence to another and better established tradition, the Warwickshire lads

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