The Late Mr Shakespeare

Chapter Ten What if Bretchgirdle was Shakespeare's father?

But what if the Reverend John Bretchgirdle really was our poet's father? Could that be possible? Let us consider the facts.

Bretchgirdle became vicar at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, in January 1561, three years and three months before the poet's birth. He was a portly man, and a comfortable one, and a man of parts, made B.A. at Oxford in 1545 and M.A. some two years after. Before he came to Stratford this shrewd prelate was curate at Witton in Cheshire, serving also as master of the school there. Bretchgirdle never taught in the Grammar School at Stratford, but one of his brightest pupils at Witton, John Brownsword, loved him so well that he followed him like a little dog to Stratford to schoolmaster there. More of that in a minute.

Visitations by Bretchgirdle to the house in Henley Street followed regularly upon each other after the occasion already chronicled - when he ate his dinner twice, and condemned both Pope and Puritans. Truth to tell, hospitality was offered him more in duty than through any liking, and neither John nor Mary Shakespeare warmed to their vicar until one Sunday post-Communion afternoon when the butcher and whittawer, in the act of handing a cup of sherris sack to his guest, regretted that his latest apprentice had run away.

'Then I will help you,' the Reverend Bretchgirdle said, with every assumption of impulsiveness. 'I know nothing of butchery, but cobbling comes naturally to me,' he added, 'and at the least I can do as well as one of your adolescent labourers.'

John Shakespeare thought that the fat ecclesiastic might be joking. So he did not reply. But later when he witnessed his guest trotting out to the shed and attaching insoles to the bottom of a pair of wooden lasts and fastening the whitleather down with lasting tacks, he had no choice in the matter - speech proved beyond him.

John stood watching goggle-eyed as Rev. Bretchgirdle pierced round the insoles with a bent awl, and it was only when he realised that this was not play-acting and that the priest was hard at it, that he ran to him, and begged him to desist.

'It's not right that your reverence should so demean himself,' he protested, forgetting in his admiration the correct churchly mode of address.

'There's nothing demeaning about it, Mr Chackosper,' purred Bretchgirdle, placing the uppers on the lasts and drawing their edges tightly round the edges of the insoles. 'Cobbling is the only secular work in which a parish priest may profitably interest himself,' he lied. He fastened the uppers in position with lasting tacks. 'Without prejudice to his immortal soul,' he added.

Lasting is a crucial operation, as John Shakespeare knew too well, for unless the upper is drawn neat and tight upon the last, without a crease, without a frown or wrinkle, the shape of the shoe will be spoilt.

The Reverend Bretchgirdle did not falter. He inseamed as if he had been born with an awl in his fist. Then he pared off the rough edges and levelled the bottoms with a piece of tarred felt.

'It was the hobby of many of the patriarchs,' he explained. 'And of Cranmer himself, in his spare moments.'

That night their rector shared the supper of the Shakespeares yet again, and for many a night thereafter, so that soon it was common knowledge in Stratford-upon-Avon that the ecclesiastical eccentric was in some sort of partnership with John Shakespeare, the butcher and whittawer who cobbled as well when he could. It was not so commonly known, however, that the priest had also taken the education of the Shakespeares in hand - slipping frogs, toads, and mice into the marital bed, teaching John and Mary to play with slow-worms and grass-snakes, measures to ensure that they developed an attitude of honest indifference to those things which might otherwise engender wasteful impulses of fastidiousness or fear.

But did the Reverend Bretchgirdle share in John Shakespeare's bed? Had that great whited sepulchre known Mary?

There is a Latin poem by John Brownsword which is a key document here. Brownsword was reckoned a good Latinist. He was schoolmaster in Stratford from 1565 to 1567, having taught in Macclesfield School before that. When Bretchgirdle died (some say of exhaustion) a few years after christening William Shakespeare, Brownsword returned to Macclesfield, and taught there for many years until his own death in 1589. He wrote three poems addressed to Bretchgirdle, which are of no interest whatsoever to our purpose, save that we might register their tone of sycophantic amatory tenderness. A fourth, which is probably also addressed to Bretchgirdle, or which is at the least about matters which concerned him, may be only a fragment. A cryptic and broken-backed acrostic, it runs as follows:

MARE, ignis, et mulier sunt tria mala!

ARDua molimur: sed nulla, nisi ardua, virtus.

arENas mandas semina.*

I have put capitals to the concealed acrostic name so that you may see the more readily that it is MARE (or Mary) ARDEN. In the margin of the page Brownsword has written in his crabbed schoolmaster's hand, Dux femina facti ... (Which is to say, 'There's a woman at the bottom of it.') And beside this, scribbled in a macaronic mixture of English and Latin, 'No!' (dixit) 'no!' 'No!'

What is the significance of this? Let Pickleherring elucidate the mystery. In themselves the lines might be nothing but the complaint of a splenetic spirit thwarted in its love for an inappropriate object, but taken in conjunction with a tale still current in both Stratford and Macclesfield they are at least peculiar, and peculiarly haunting. That tale goes thus:

John Shakespeare having one day to journey to London on business, he says to his wife, 'Listen, while I am gone you're to say No to that Rev. Bretchgirdle.'

'Say no?' says Mary. 'What do you mean say no?'

'I mean say No to him,' John Shakespeare says.

'Nothing but no?' says Mary.

'No, no, no, no, no, all the time No,' John Shakespeare says. 'Say No in thunder, woman. Always answer No, whatever he says to you, however he comes pleading and wheedling, that lecherous old goat. And never add another word to No. Do you understand?'

Mary Shakespeare said she understood.

Her husband went on his way. He trusted his simple stratagem would prevent any harm befalling his wife.

The Reverend Bretchgirdle's in through the back door of the butcher shop in about five minutes.

'Good morning, Mrs Shagshaft,' says the scoundrel, bowing low, and then wringing his plump white hands and studying the palms of them as one might refer to an index of human vanity. 'You'll be missing your husband already, I expect?'

'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.

'Oho,' thinks vile Bretchgirdle, 'what can this signify?'

That Mrs S is not missing her husband sounds mighty promising to the lusty vicar.

Then before long he discovers that the young wife answers No to all the things he says to her.

Bretchgirdle sees his chance. He's as clever as a bag of weasels. And persistence is his strong suit. 'Well,' says he, 'if I put my hand on your knee, Mrs Sexspire, you won't mind then?'

'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.

'And if I lift up your gown, Mrs Shakespay,' says the happy priest, his round cheeks dimpling, 'you won't be complaining and telling your husband when he gets back?'

'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.

So the Reverend wretched Bretchgirdle puts his hand on Mrs Mary Shakespeare's white-stockinged knee, and he lifts up her grass-green gown of linen taffety, and he takes down her mockado drawers. His mind is smelling like a rich man's funeral. His bulging eyes roll.

'Pray tell me, Mrs Sackstuft,' he says politely, 'would you object if your rector was to futter you?'

'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.

So the false friar futters her, and when he has finished he says, 'There, Mrs Sexbear, you'll be satisfied now.'

'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.

'Hallelujah!' cries the Reverend Bretchgirdle.

He futters the docile lady all over again, concentrating the while in order to delay the moment of ejaculation upon certain collects of Cranmer's.

'Will that do, Mrs Shagspeer?' the priest enquires solicitously when he comes to his amen.

'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.

Bretchgirdle falls out of bed. He wolfs a dozen oysters and a loaf of cockelty bread. Then he's back at it again.

This time he just pumps away and keeps himself going with fantasies that he is loose in a harem of virgin Turkish girls. Some of the girls are choirboys. Some of the choirboys are angels. He has to inspect, resolve, and satisfy them all. Then they must satisfy him - first the girls, and then the choirboys, and then the angels. Then angels, choirboys, and girls all come together and Bretchgirdle's the Pope and they all have to do what he says. He doesn't say much but they do it all anyway. Meanwhile the lady beneath him claws at his back and watches a fly over his shoulder that squats upon the ceiling rubbing its hands together.

'Mrs S,' pants the priest, 'isn't that,' (he collapses), 'enough?'

'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.

Confused, exhausted, and contrite, a sadder and a wiser man in all ways, his balls drained, his heart pounding, his imagination in tatters, his eyes starting out of his head, his knees knocking together and his breath coming in great shuddering gasps, the unworthy Reverend Bretchgirdle withdraws, defeated, and creeps speechless away to his church by the swan-ridden river.

Nine months, nine days, and nine hours later, William Shakespeare made his entrance into this world.

* Englished: The sea, fire, and women are three evils! We essay a difficult task: but there's no merit save in difficult tasks. You are sowing the sand, i.e. you waste your seed.