Shakespeare: A Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

Shakespeare had paid a small fine for
keeping an unauthorized muck-heap (or sterquinarium ) on Henley
Street. At the town's northern end, this was an old, built-up street,
traversed by horsemen riding through on the way up to Henley-inArden.
Wagons drawn by oxen bumped over a cross-gutter in front of Gilbert
Bradley's house, a few doors to the cast of his fellow glover John
Shakespeare. Once, in 1560, nearly every tenant had to pay for pavings
broken by the damaging wagons. 'All the tenauntes in Henley street from
y e cros gutter befor bradleys doore', it was stated, were
to blame, as many of 'the pavementes are broken befor ther doores &
for not mendynge of them they stand amerced'. 1 A street also had to be kept clear, and Robert Rogers and others paid for leaving carts at their doors.
    Wagons and pack-horses were less likely to use the parallel way known
as the Gild Pits, or royal highway, since it was rutty. Crossing
Clopton's bridge, a traveller would be led by a walled causeway into
Bridge Street, and on past two inns showing the Bear and the Swan.
This was a major market area, divided in the centre by a row of houses
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called Middle Row into Fore Bridge and Back Bridge streets. Riding up
opposite the Crown inn and past the Angel inn, one turned into Henley
Street, where orchards and gardens lay behind the façades. Here doors
abutted pavings, and on the north side, leading east to west, stood a
row of half-timbered tenements, some of which served as shops. A
tradesman let down a wooden board or shelf before a ground-floor
window to display his wares, and a glover would show an array of
purses, belts, gloves of various quality, and other soft-leather
goods.
    In the street's north row,
John Shakespeare's two houses were separate but adjoining. In later
times the eastern one became known as the Woolshop, and the western as
the Birthplace. He held these libere of the lord of Stratford manor
on a burgage tenure (nearly the equivalent of a freehold) and paid a
small annual chief-rent, or ground-rent, of 6 d. for the Woolshop and 13 d. for the Birthplace; with these rents, we find both houses linked to
his name in 1590 in a list of manorial tenants of the late Ambrose, Earl
of Warwick:
Vicus Vocatus
Henley Strete
[The Street Called
Henley Street]
    Johannes Shakespere tenet libere unum tenementurn cum pertinentiis per redditurn per annum Vj d secta curie vj d
    [ John Shakespere freely holds one tenement wi th appurtenances for a rent per year of 6 d. by suit of court 6 d. ]
    Idem Johannes tenet libere unum tenementum cum pertinentiis per redditum per annum Xiij d secta curie xiij d
    [The same John freely holds one tenement with appurtenances for a rent per year of 13 d. by suit of court 13 d. ] 2
    He had bought the Woolshop from Edward West, in October 1556, when its small chief-rent of 6 d. is mentioned. We do not know when he began to inhabit the western
house, or Birthplace, but the tradition that he lived in it early
enough for his son William to be born there is respectable. After his
son's time, workmen broke through a wall to
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join the two tenements, so that on Henley Street today there is a
much-restored house of three gables as a shrine for Stratford's
visitors.
    John had a barn in the Gild
Pits well behind the frontages, and he needed ample work-space. As a
whittawer, he would have had to boil and scrape some of his animal
skins -- a job often given to a boy apprentice since it involved
steam, human sweat, and stinking refuse. In 1556 he had bought an
estate with garden and croft in Greenhill Street ( 'unum tenementum cum gardino et crofto' ),
and our improving knowledge of the town in his time suggests that he
may either have transferred some of his work there, or leased that
property to his helpers. Greenhill Street was then an area with open
lots and storage buildings, and it was easily accessible to the
Woolshop by way of Meer Lane.
    In
any case, he had