Bearman Robert - Shakespeares money: how much did he make and what did this mean?

It is not possible to write a biography of William Shakespeare within the normally accepted meaning of the word. One would hardly think so in view of the number of attempts which have been made, but the basic requirement for such an exercise simply does not existnamely, a body of evidence allowing insight into the subjects feelings and views backed up with details of his or her day-to-day life and of the opinions of others on the subjects shortcomings, achievements, and appearance. Even in the most fully documented of lives, there will be gaps, but, provided other, and longer, episodes of the subjects life can be explored through the survival of letters, diaries, and a wide range of other documents in which he or she may feature, a full enough picture will emerge. But for Shakespeare, such material is almost entirely lacking: in fact, Shakespeare is mentioned by name in handwritten documents drawn up during his lifetime on fewer than a hundred occasions. None of these is in his hand (though four are signed by him) and only two or three can be said to establish his own feelings in a direct mannerhis attitude, for example, towards the attempt to enclose some open field area at Welcombe, just outside Stratford, in which he had a vested interest, and some of the clauses contained in his will. A similar number may reflect views which his contemporaries had towards himRichard Quineys letter, for instance, asking him for help in negotiating a loan of 30. We also have Ben Jonsons appraisal of Shakespeares abilities and character, which, because it may never have been intended for publication, has the air of a genuine assessment, even if by a person with his own agenda and written some years after Shakespeares death. In the face of such meagre resources, we might normally expect a biographer to abandon hope. A scattering of references to the potential subject might perhaps be used for a skeletal reconstruction of his or her life, but such a study would not be the stuff of biography as it is normally understood. A man who rarely emerges from the shadowsand whose sporadic appearances then pose as many questions as they answerwould under normal circumstances be thought too challenging, if not impossible, a subject.

There is, of course, nothing suspicious about this poor harvest. The survival of documentary evidence from this period depended overwhelmingly on whether or not it remained in the hands of either an institution or a great landed family with the resources to provide a safe haven over a period of time. Governmental records, at parish, county, and national level, and those of educational, ecclesiastical, and other official institutions, therefore form the bulk of what has survived, buttressed by the archives of land-owning families who managed to maintain their status over several generations. This is far from saying that the archives falling into such categories have survived in anything like their entirety. Here huge tranches have been lost too, but at least there was a framework of sorts to catch some of them. Alongside these, the most common survival are bundles of title deeds for the simple reason that the owners of freehold property from all social levels took zealous care to preserve them as proof of title and to pass them on when properties changed hands. Beyond this, the chances of survival of any personal or business papers, once they had served the immediate purpose for which they had been created, were very slim indeed. It follows that biographical data for particular individuals, especially at this early period, depend largely on whether or not they came within the orbit of record-keeping agencies. If he or she (usually he) operated from within one, of course, data are comparatively plentifulfor example, we know more about the daily life of Shakespeares father John, because of his involvement in the affairs of the Stratford Corporation and whose records have survived in some abundance, than we do about Shakespeare himself. If he or she was frequently involved in legal disputes, either as plaintiff or defendant, then further revealing data can often be unearthed from the records of central and local courts. For members of the countrys landed elite, and those who worked for them, data can normally be retrieved both from family papers and the records of the institutions in whose affairs they became involved. Shakespeare, however, attended a school whose records are lost, did not go to university, was hardly ever involved in legal proceedings, and worked for most of his life, not within a government institution or for a great landed family, but for a theatrical company whose records no longer survive. We do have his title deeds for the very practical reason that his successors in title took care to preserve them, but otherwise, for him as for countless thousands of his contemporaries, we largely depend on the number of times his activities were recorded in the files of those organizations whose archives have come down to us. Thus our knowledge of Shakespeares involvement in the Welcombe enclosure comes not from his papers but from those of Thomas Greene, which he left behind him in the Corporation archiveshe was the towns stewardwhen he sold up and left Stratford in 1617. Similarly, the precious bundle of Richard Quineys correspondence, including the famous letter to Shakespeare and its other references to him, has survived simply because it was subsumed into the Corporation archives as the result of Bailiff Quineys death in office in 1602. On other occasions, Shakespeare and his family are recorded in parish registers, wills, surveys, and tax records on a disappointingly meagre number of occasions, but entirely typical of many other men and women who lived and worked outside the official establishment or the households of the great. There are important exceptions to this, of course, often the result of the chance survival of rare or atypical archive material. The diary of Philip Henslowe, for instance, the manager of the Rose Theatre, crucial for our understanding of the Elizabethan theatre, only survived because it passed into the hands of his son-in-law, Edward Alleyn, and thence into the care of the college he founded at Dulwich. Records for Shakespeares companythe Chamberlains, later the Kings Menwhich must also once have existed, unluckily, though typically, have not come down to us.