Fraser Russell A. - Shakespeare: a life in art

Shakespeare

RUSSELL FRASER

WITH A NEW PREFACE
AND INTRODUCTION
BY THE AUTHOR

Originally published in 1988 and 1992 by Columbia University Press

Published 2008 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2006053015

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fraser, Russell A.

Shakespeare : a life in art / Russell Fraser ; with a new introduction by the author.

p. cm.

Originally published as two volumes by Columbia University Press: Young Shakespeare, 1988, and Shakespeare: the later years, 1992.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4128-0605-3 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-4128-0605-4 (alk. paper)

1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. 2. Dramatists, English-Early modern, 1500-1700--Biography. I. Fraser, Russell A. Young Shakespeare. II. Fraser, Russell A. Shakespeare, the later years. III. Title.

PR2894.F65 2007
822.33--dc22
[B]

2006053015

ISBN 13: 978-1-4128-0605-3 (pbk)

For Ted and Lloyd St. Antoine

Mes compaignions cui jamoie et cui jaim
(Companions whom I love and love still)

Richard Coeur de Lion

Some biographies of Shakespeare live in their aperus, some are distinguished for pace or exuberance, some excel in their marshalling of fact. But no biography of Shakespeare offers a comprehensive and scrupulous account of the life and a worthy consideration of the art. This is the book I have sought to write. It brings together in one volume Young Shakespeare (1988) and Shakespeare: The Later Years (1992), both published originally by Columbia University Press. My title, a new one and long cherished, puts the emphasis where I want it, on a life rooted in art.

Shakespeares life is only worth recording because of the art, and I have tried to do it justice, not at great length but sufficient. This obligates readers to know something of the plays. They seem to stand on their own, and saying where they and poems come from or what they reflect needs self-discipline and a large dose of tact. Shakespeare, less forth-coming than Henry James, left no notebooks intimating connections. A few supers in the plays were known to him in person, like Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, and that Paolo Marco Lucchese who ran a restaurant in St. Olaves parish, London, and is summoned by the duke in Othello. As a rule, however, the more life affects him, the less he lets on.

But energizing doesnt mean troubled. Whatever the subject, Shakespeares art is happy. Its burden may be grief and vexation, but the unseen good old man behind the arras converts it to profit. Living much in the world, he takes frequent notice of contemporary business, like the baptizing of James VI of Scotland, later Englands king. But he works a seachange on his material. For example, the allegorical pageant that went with the baptismal ceremonies. It should have featured a lion drawing a cart, but you couldnt bring in a fearful beast like a lion, not among ladies, so Jamess courtiers used a blackamoor instead. This tale of Scottish naivet, going the rounds in London, came to Shakespeares ears and he gave it scope in A Midsummer Nights Dream.

Creatures of darkness lurk about the edges of his fabulous play, not only the lion but thorny hedgehogs, newts and blindworms, spotted snakes, spiders, the clamorous owl.

They mean mischief, and the ladies have reason to fear. Pluck this crawling serpent from my breast! one of them cries, waking from nightmare. Tragedy is potential in the psychology the play develops, and the moon looks down with a watery eye. That tragedy is averted is a piece of good luck, but that isnt why we are happy. The play makes us happy because it finds serious matter in a forgettable occasion and turns it to permanent use.

On other events of the period, personal to Shakespeare or too risky to accommodate, he is silent. His silences are often speaking silences, however, and what he doesnt address in so many words turns up in his fictions, lively but encrusted. The Gunpowder Plot, the Midland riots of 1607, and the death of his only son are examples.

The man who was Shakespeare isnt just like the rest of us, and Jonsons famous tribute, fair enough, is misleading. He was not of an age, but for all time! In fact, Shakespeare both transcends his age and takes its pressure. The age, like our own, was more or less myopic, and its vision of things was what he had to work with. Cultural historians, alert to that, emphasize the timeserver, truckling to the establishment or the groundlings in the pit. But he shows his back above the element he lived in, and that is why he is transcendent. At the same time the element sustained him, even buoyed him up. All art is privation, part of its charm, its efficiency too. artists worth the name estimate their confinement, a necessary imposition, and make a virtue of necessity. How Shakespeare did this is part of his story.

Older biographies of him are apt to indulge the authors fancy. Approved modern biographies, the ones I grew up with, take disrespectful note and are often reserved to the point of taciturnity. Many in their reserve throw out the baby with the bathwater, saying, for example, Every writer who wishes to write about the man William Shakespeare longs, but longs in vain, to see him in his habit as he lived. Caveats are useful, and Shakespeare being of magnitude no one is going to see him plain. But there is a kind of unholy glee in asserting that he cant be apprehended at all. Shakespeares biography is hardly barren of facts, and a multitude of them crowd its margins. Inert in themselves, the facts are like a newspaper obit. Sometimes they quicken, though, hinting at the man in his habit (or habits).

In setting forth the facts, I attempt to construe them, saying what they mean. I have a point of view and dont hesitate to assert it. The portrait of Shakespeare that emerges in these pages wont meet everyones agreement, neither will my sense of his career, for instance the order the plays were written in. Befitting my subject, I have done my best to get it right, and hope at a minimum that readers will call tenable what I put for true.

Much of the material concerning Shakespeares life is now in the public domain. That being so, I have left the documentation to one side. I refer readers who want to know where I am coming from to the notes in the earlier volumes.

Russell Fraser
Honolulu, 2006

T HE TALLY of Shakespeares biographies is long, and many are worth going back to. This will surprise readers who assume that old and obsolete are the same. For biographies of Shakespeare, old is often livelier and fraught with possibility for getting us next to their subject. We are introduced to a more fully fleshed playwright and a larger cast of characters. According to one authority, the hero, growing up in Stratford, was contemporary with another butchers son...not at all inferior...but died young. We wonder about this mute inglorious Shakespeare. Some, sponsoring a Shakespeare over lusty at legs, have him fathering a bastard child. He would have married another Anne had he not got Anne Hathaway pregnant. He wasnt cut in alabaster.