The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Thirty-Two Did Shakespeare go to school at Polesworth?

I had a friend among the younger players who could never believe that Shakespeare was taught in Stratford. He insisted that the poet went as a boy to the old school attached to Polesworth Abbey, deep in the Forest of Arden.

I have found no actual evidence that would support this. All that is certain is that in 1571, John Shakespeare, as bailiff, entertained Sir Henry Goodere of Polesworth at the Bear Inn in Bridge Street. Sir Henry was in Stratford to give judgement in an arbitration case. I have consulted the Corporation accounts, and they twice mention payments for his horse-hire.

A year later, according to my friend, John Shakespeare somehow persuaded Sir Henry to take Will into his household. There, in the rambling manor house at Polesworth, the lad served as a page. The place was quite a nest of singing birds. The poet Michael Drayton, one year older, was already a page there. Thomas Lodge (whose story Rosalynde provided Mr S with the plot for As You Like It) seems to have kept popping in and out. Ralph Holinshed lived in the parish, and might even have taught history at the school.

If you ask me, it is all just a bit too convenient. Especially when you add the detail that this Goodere was also friends with the father of Shakespeare's future patron, the Earl of Southampton. Of whom more anon, as my grandfather the bishop used to say.

Anyway, madam, if you can credit it, perhaps it was at Polesworth that William acquired his Latin, and got introduced in due course to polite society.

Speaking of which, there is always Goodere's daughter. (I say 'always' advisedly, since her monument still leaves a space for the date of her death. I have seen it at Clifford Chambers, which is not far from Stratford.)

Well, sir, this girl's name was Anne, and she was by all accounts remarkable. If Shakespeare ever lived under the one roof with such a creature, then I think we would have heard. Drayton was most certainly in love with her. She was the first inspiration for the figure of 'Idea' who appears throughout his work. The marvellous sonnet beginning Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part was addressed to her. When her father died, she married Harry Rainsford, who was knighted at the coronation of James I. Drayton himself never married, but continued to spend his summers in her company. In later years, so they say, Anne was still straight-backed and beautiful. It was impossible to tell whether she was young or old. I had this information from Mr Shakespeare's son-in-law, John Hall, who was her doctor. He was a sober fellow, not given to romance.

There is symmetry, of course, in having William Shakespeare go to school with Michael Drayton. They were certainly good friends in the London years. And some say that it was after a drinking bout with Drayton and Ben Jonson that Mr Shakespeare contracted the fever that led to his death.

Also there is this music: Shake-spear/Poles-worth.

All the same, when it comes down to it, my friend had not a jot of hard evidence for his theory. It rests entirely on the fact of Drayton's career as a page at Polesworth, and the way it won him patronage, and a wish that Mr S might also have enjoyed some similar start in life.

I repeat the story now because I liked the player who first propounded it. His name was David Weston, a fine steely Hal when young who then took over as Falstaff after John Heminges got the stutters. He played the old boy with fire and love, making the part his own for ever after. I shall never forget the way he used to cry Banish plump Jack, and banish all the world! It sent a shiver down my spine, and the thought of it does so still.