William Shakespeare. - Review - book review

Contemporary Review, July, 2000 by Ralph Berry

William Shakespeare: His Life and Work. Anthony Holden. Little, Brown. [pound]20.00. 367 pages. ISBN 0-316-64185-5.

'The Shakespeare mythos' was Samuel Schoenbaum's term for the overgrowth of folklore, semi-reliable anecdote, and speculation that sprang up around Shakespeare's life. For him it was a coppice to be cut back. Anthony Holden welcomes its luxuriant growth and makes the mythos the cardinal feature of his biography.

This is a life that elevates gossip into speculation, which then becomes word-spinning. Nine pages on Davenant's claim -- that he was Shakespeare's bastard son -- is excessive. The idea that Brutus is the Earl of Essex is not worth house room. Holden is convinced of Shakespeare's 'guilt' at his prolonged absences from his wife and family, a view for which there is not the remotest evidence.

I liked however the speculation on 'bath', the key word (four mentions) in the last two sonnets, numbers 153 and 154. Capitalise the initial letter, says Mr Holden, and you 'could see the 24-year-old Shakespeare on the road with the Queen's Men in 1588':

I sick withal the help of Bath desired

And thither hied, a sad distempered guest...

The poet becomes 'a sick player. . . seeking solace in the waters of the West Country spa, already renowned for their medicinal properties. The Queen's Men made a documented visit to Bath in 1588'. The manifestly autobiographic sonnet, number 110, has 'Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there,/And made myself a motley to the view', and Shakespeare must surely have spent much time on tour.

I also liked Mr Holden's alertness to theatrical in-jokes. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hermia and Helena are physically contrasted. Put that alongside Benedick's remark that Claudio is in love with 'hero, Leonato's short daughter'. It is then 'an elementary deduction that the leading boy-actors of the Lord Chamberlain's men at the time were respectively tall and fair, short and dark'. On the same lines are the identikit portraits of Rosalind and Celia whom Oliver is to seek out (As You Like It, 4.3.87-90). When Polonius says 'I did enact Julius Caesar', this is probably Heminges speaking, who might well have played the title role in Julius Caesar. Mr Holden is usually good on the theatrical dimensions of the texts. The author is not, however, well versed in those texts. Mostly he sticks to brief epitomes of the play. Coriolanus shows the dangers of more ambitious coverage. Mr Holden seems to think that Valeria is the mother of Coriolanus's son: he has confused her with Virgilia. The monster, Volumnia, is ' a discreet private homage to the late Queen', which is wildly implausible.

More seriously, Mr Holden treats Coriolanus as a vista on Shakespeare's politics. The Tribunes 'shape the nearest he ever came to a statement of his own political views'. The essence of Shakespeare is duality, ambivalence, an infinite capacity to see all sides. Of course the Tribunes make a good cause against Coriolanus. Anyone could. But to admit them as the true spokesman for Shakespeare is to fall into gross error. It is on a par with the claim to recruit Shakespeare as a man of the right, on the strength of Ulysses' speech on 'Order' in Troilus and Cressida (1.3). Left and Right have to admit Shakespeare as their common sponsor.

Anthony Holden has written a smooth, professional, and undemanding life. It is vitiated by a constant urge to infer the inner life from the plays. Authorial beliefs cannot be deduced from dramatic speeches, nor can politics. My own guess is that Shakespeare thought radical and voted conservative. Most writers do.