The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Fifty-Five In which John Shakespeare plays Shylock

Here is John Shakespeare busy taking his ease in a tavern. Except he is not. He is drunk, but he's busy at work. See that orange tawny bonnet on his head? It's a sign, a badge of office, a wink to the wise. The men who drink with him know by this what they're dealing with. His eyes are shrewd above that Cain-coloured beard. His greedy grin.

Say John Shakespeare's bonnet was not orange tawny, what colour would it be?

Your straw colour. Your purple in grain. Your french crown colour. Or your perfect yellow.

Those be the colours the clients of John Shakespeare would recognise. Consult Bacon's Of Usurie, if you doubt me. That chicken-stuffing essayist knew his groats when it came down to the low trade of lending at high interest.

I don't want to make too much of this, believe me, dear reader. I met John Shakespeare once and did not dislike him, despite the way he stood next to me pissing in the jakes and kept clucking his tongue. But the fact remains that the man did rank, bad business as a usurer. No doubt butchery is too much like hard work when you're well-oiled, and the glover's scissors and compasses require too steady a hand. Hence the orange tawny bonnet, and the big bag of gold coins under the perfect yellow cloak. If you sit in the tavern all day, then why not let your money work for you?

It was somewhat of an open secret in Stratford, but I found no one who was prepared even many years later to talk much about it. At the time when Shakespeare's father practised his money-lending, all forms of such activity were illegal.

So severe a view of the crime was taken by the government that informers were rewarded by a grant of a half-share of the penalties imposed upon offenders. Thus, John Shakespeare faced at least two prosecutions before the Exchequer which I have turned up.

In the first, one Anthony Harrison of Evesham, Worcestershire, accuses John Shakespeare of having lent out the sum of PS100 to John Mussum of Wulton in Warwick, over a one-year period, at a rate of 20% interest. The transaction is reported to have taken place at Westminster. (JS travelled and traded more widely than you might think who think he was just a country yokel, sir.)

The second case arose at the instigation of one James Langrake of Whittlebury, Northamptonshire. He accused 'Shagpere alias Shakespeare', 'glover' of 'Stratford upon Haven', of lending out PS80 over a term of one month, to be repaid with 20% interest - an extortionate annual rate of interest of some 242%!

(Usury at 10% was the highest rate ever permitted in the last century, and then only at exceptional times or in exceptional circumstances. No usury at all was lawful when jolly Jack Shakespeare was caught.)

A writ was issued to bring 'Shagpere' (alias Shylock?) to court. He complied of his own volition, and was heavily fined.

Shakespeare's father was also found guilty of illegal wool-dealing. He had purchased 200 tods of wool (5600 pounds) in conspiracy with another illegal dealer, and 100 tods on his own account. He had no licences for any of this.

In fact, all his long life, John Shakespeare was embroiled in legal disputes. I refuse to tell the tale of the boring Lamberts. Suffice it to say that it involves his relentless pursuit of certain of his wife's relatives for sums of money owing to him, or allegedly owing to him. William himself was dragged into this by his dad.

Enough to say that by my calculations (after researches which by no means exhaust the matter) John Shakespeare was involved in no less than twenty-five legal suits or disputes over a forty-year period. Some of these were no more than cases of tradesmen collecting their debts. But some, as I've just shown, were a deal more shady.

Where does this leave young William?

Well, gentles, it is possible that he had employment for a while drafting bonds for his father's trading transactions. And it is certain that following his marriage to Anne Hathaway, the couple had to lodge in the Henley Street house. Susanna was born there, and the twins Hamlet and Judith two years later.

This, then, readers, was the world in which William Shakespeare was living - with a wife and three small children to keep, a mother perhaps unnaturally jealous of her daughter-in-law, and a father who was creeping about playing Shylock when not busy cavorting as Falstaff.

It is no wonder that our Shakespeare now turned briefly to a life of crime himself, as you shall quickly hear.