Shakespeare and the Catholic network

Contemporary Review, April, 2005 by Ralph Berry

IF anything can change our understanding of Shakespeare's life, it is likely to be a massive research project that has gained momentum of recent years. The usual shorthand for this project is 'Shakespeare's Lancashire Connection', stemming from E.A.J. Honigmann's brilliant Shakespeare: The 'Lost Years' (Manchester University Press, 1985). I prefer to think of it as 'the Catholic network'. It all centres on one big fact (which is itself ambivalent) and a myriad smaller facts which, like tiny fish, seem to point the same way as the large pilot fish.

Baptism, marriage licence, and the christening of his children aside, we know nothing of Shakespeare's life until September 1592, when Robert Greene attacked him in print. Shakespeare was then 28. What was he doing during those 'lost years'? The antiquary John Aubrey, writing in the seventeenth century, cited a report that Shakespeare 'had been in his younger years a schoolmaster in the country'. But there was no confirmation, and the matter remained uncertain for centuries.

Now for the big fact, first mooted by Oliver Baker and taken up by Sir Edmund Chambers. In August 1581, Alexander Hoghton, a gentleman of Lea (in Lancashire) made his will. In it he bequeathed his stock of play clothes and all his musical instruments to his brother Thomas, or, if he did not choose to keep players, to Sir Thomas Hesketh, and added: 'And I most heartily require the said Sir Thomas to be friendly unto Fulk Gyllome and William Shakeshafte now dwelling with me and either to take them unto his service or else to help them to some good master, as my trust is he will'. Hoghton also provided annuities for eleven of his servants. Fulk Gyllome and William Shakeshafte each got forty shillings. Could this 'Shakeshafte' be Shakespeare? He could indeed.

Names were not thought of as fixed and unalterable in that era. Chrisopher Marlowe is also referred to in contemporary records as Marley, Morley, Marlin. Chambers, the foremost Shakespearean scholar of the twentieth century, lists a staggering 83 spelling variants of 'Shakespeare' in his monumental William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems (II, 371). To my mind, the most significant variant comes in the Revels Accounts for 1604-5, the official records of Court performances. Several plays by Shakespeare were performed, including The Merchant of Venice, The Comedy of Errors, and Measure for Measure. In each case the 'poet' is given as 'Shaxberd'. Here is the most successful Court dramatist at the height of his fame, clearly the favourite of King James himself--who ordered a repeat performance of The Merchant of Venice two days after the first--and yet the Court officials failed to get his name right (to our way of thinking). Moreover, the name 'Shakespeare' had appeared on the title page of a number of plays, published as quartos. It was a looser, less precise era in these matters. If Shakespeare could be 'Shaxberd' to the Court, he could also be 'Shakeshafte' to Alexander Hoghton.

There is also the possibility that in a dangerous era Shakespeare may have felt it advisable to be a little less than precise about his name. 'Shakeshafte', a common name, is not an alias but could foster some confusion. Besides, a later age is accustomed to having actors vary their birth name somewhat. We might see his Hoghton name as a 'tweaking' of 'Shakespeare'. What follows? Honigmann says rightly that we need a scenario to account for the identification: 'how does a gifted youth from provincial Stratford, without a university background, find employment as a schoolmaster?' He goes on:

    The obvious answer is that he must have been recommended as capable
    of the work of a schoolmaster, or an assistant master, even though
    he had no degree. Anyone in Stratford could have recommended him,
    but one person in particular would have been an invaluable referee:
    the schoolmaster at Stratford's grammar school, who would be able to
    give an expert opinion of young Shakespeare's scholarly attainments.

That seems highly plausible. Shakespeare, though we have no documentary proof, must surely have studied at King Edward VI Grammar School. Now comes the breakthrough. The schoolmaster at K.E.S. during Shakespeare's mid-teens was John Cottom, an Oxford graduate, who held the post from 1579 to 1581 or 1582. Cottom returned in 1582 to Tarnacre, in Lancashire, where his family owned property. Tarnacre is ten miles from Lea. This looks like more than coincidence; and then Honigmann discovered that one of the legatees in Hoghton's will was one John Cotham, who might well have been the teacher from Stratford.

Assume the link as given, and the underlying story comes out plain. The Hoghton family had strong Catholic sympathies. Lancashire was a hotbed of Catholicism. John Cottom was the brother of the Catholic priest Thomas Cottam, who was captured by the authorities and executed as a traitor in 1582. Shakespeare himself may well have come from a Catholic family. It is in the nature of things that external evidence should be meagre, for Catholics were persecuted and tried to keep their religion a secret. The Spiritual Testament of John Shakespeare, William's father, proves him a Catholic; the document no longer exists but its authenticity is generally accepted. (A recent article is supportive of the Testament's authenticity. See 'Bearish on the Will: John Shakespeare in the Rafters', Dennis Taylor, The Shakespeare Newsletter, Spring 2004.) And an Anglican clergyman, at the end of the seventeenth century, wrote that Shakespeare 'died a papist'.