The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Thirty-Eight More about Jenkins

Pompey Bum was just at the door, demanding his rent. Being dunned makes me feel quite the author. I told him I would pay him some, and, as most debtors do, promise him infinitely. But I fear the man is no playgoer, and this reference to the Epilogue to the second part of King Henry IV was misspent on him.

It is true that I am a shiftless little person, roving and maggoty-headed, and sometimes not much better than crazed. But it is not true what Mr Anthony Wood told Mr Aubrey - that I was ever exceedingly credulous, stuffed with fooleries and misinformations. That insufferable recluse of Postmaster's Hall does not comprehend my method. He is no amateur of country history. He does not understand me.

I pride myself somewhat on not wasting time over things which everyone knows - which you know, sir, and you know also, madam - but that I prefer rather to select the small, the forgotten, detail.

Singularities: that's what I'm after.

And I work through metaphorics, not metaphysics.

Of course, no one knows what Shakespeare's life was, even one who knew him as well as I did. It occurs to me today, with just half the rent paid, that every attempt to find out the truth of another man's life, and to write his Life, throws light on the person who makes the attempt, as much as on the man biographied. There, I have even invented a new verb. In the main, though, I protest I am not an inventor.

Inventories, however, are quite a different matter, and much to my liking, and here in this box I have one such which I trust will interest the reader. It was compiled by Emma Careless, wife of that Reverend Henry Heicroft already mentioned, vicar of Stratford from 1569 to 1584.

I have this feeling, do you see, that there is more to say about Jenkins - that Jenkins is peculiarly important to Mr Shakespeare's story. Where else might the poet have picked up certain tricks of his diction than from the verbal habits of a Welshman? I mean such characteristic locutions as his way of balancing two contrasting adjectives on the sea-saw of an 'and', and having both of them qualify a third word, always a noun. For example:

A beauty-waning and distressed widow.

That's from Richard III. And then, from The Tempest, some twenty years later:

To act her earthy and abhorred commands.

I contend that what we hear on these sea-saws of sense is a development of what Shakespeare heard from the lips of Thomas Jenkins in his Stratford schoolroom. He makes fun of Jenkins and his mispronunciations in The Merry Wives of Windsor. 'What is the focative case, William?' But if Jenkins, like Evans in that play, made fritters of English, still Shakespeare fed on those fritters, for a purpose all his own.

Pickleherring suspects that Jenkins brought a touch of Welsh wizardry to Stratford too, perhaps telling his pupils tales drawn out of a book called The Mabinogion which collects such myths and legends. How else explain the way that notion of the cauldron of inspiration and science survives in local gossip as representing something that bubbled in the corner of Mary Shakespeare's kitchen? Such a cauldron figures in Welsh stories about the poet Taliesin, so I have heard. Other elements from those tales seem remembered in The Tempest.

Alas, having promised you 'more about Jenkins', I have to confess that the 'more' which we really require - if my thesis has truth in it - is to hear how he spoke, and what young Will heard. That's where Emma Careless comes in. For some reason (probably for amusement), the vicar's wife drew up an inventory of the goods and chattels of the Welsh schoolmaster, writing it down in a manner which makes a burlesque of the sound of Jenkins' voice. It is the nearest we'll ever get to hearing what Shakespeare heard. You may judge for yourself if the poet learnt anything from it.

Han Infentory of the Couds

of Thomas Jenkins ap Hughes

(B.A. 1566), Schoolmaster

Imprimis, in the Wardrope - One Irish rugg, 1 buff frize shirkin, 1 sheepskin tublet, 2 Irish stocking, 2 shooe, 6 leather point (two proken).

Item, in the Tary - One toasting shees, 3 oaten-cake, 3 pints of cow-milk, 1 pound of cow-putter, eggs.

Item, in the Kitchen - One cridiron, 1 fripan, 2 white pot, 3 red herring, 9 sprat (for hur own eating).

Item, in the Cellar - One firkin of wiggan, 2 gallon sweet sower sider, one pint of perry, 1 little pottle of Carmarden sack, alias Metheglin, wort, and malmsey.

Item, in the Study (hur was almost forgot hur!) - One Welch Pible, 2 almanac, 1 Seven Champions, for St Taffy sake, 12 pallat, one pedigree, one most capricious Ovid.

Item, in the Closet - 2 sorrow-struck and mortal hat, one pouse, 4 napkin (one for hursulf, one for hur wife Shone, two for cusen ap Powell when was cum to hur house).

Item, in the Yard, under the wall - One fickle wheel, two pucket, 1 ladder, 2 frantic and forsaken rope, one mouse-trap.

Item, in the Carden - One ped of carlike (for to mend hur kissing), 9 honourable onion (hur eyes smell hem), 12 leek (for heating upon St Davy's Day), 12 viperous and surprising worm, 6 frog.

NB: A Note of some Legacy of a creat deal of Coods bequeathed to hur Wife and hur two Shild, and all hur Cusens, and Friends, and Kindred, in manner as followeth:

Imprimis - Was to give to hur teer wife, Shone Jenkins, all the coods in the ped-room.

Item - Was to give hur eldest and digressing sun, Plack Shack, 40 and 12 card to play at Whipper-shinny, to sheat hur cusen.

Item - Was to give to hur second sun, little Jenkins ap

Jenkins, hur short ladder under the wall in the yard, and 2 rope.

Item - Was to give to hur Cusen Lewellin Morgan ap William, whom was made hur executor, full power and puissance to pay awl hur tets, when hur can get sum money now at usance.

This Infentory taken Note (ferbatim) in the Presence of Emma Careless of Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1579, upon the Ten and Thirtieth of Shun. The above-named Thomas Jenkins then quit the parish.

I say that Jenkins served William Shakespeare in the same capacity as Holofernes served the young Gargantua. He taught him his ABC backwards.