The Life and Times of William Shakespeare, 1564-1616 (review)

It would be reasonable to propose that the writing of history and historical biography should depend on the scholarly interpretation of surviving evidence. In the field of Shakespeare biography, this is an important issue, as so little archival information survives linking Shakespeare by name to the day-to-day events of his life. At a distance of four or five hundred years, there are inevitable difficulties in establishing certainties from this meager resource; the use of circumstantial evidence is, by its very nature, even less conclusive. This is not to deny the effectiveness of recent work by James Shapiro, Charles Nicholl, and Germaine Greer, who seek to broaden our understanding of Shakespeare's life by exploring aspects of his environment in new and exciting ways. Circumstantial evidence may be cited and some speculations made, but critics are immediately disarmed by the authors' frank acknowledgment of uncertainties. Some biographies of Shakespeare, however, make no such concessions, with the author apparently convinced of the correctness of his or her view and the evidence manipulated or misinterpreted in order to substantiate it. Into such a category must fall Hildegard Hammerschmidt-Hummel's Life and Times of William Shakespeare, sumptuously produced but seriously lacking in a balanced approach to the sources. For she is convinced that Shakespeare was not only a Catholic but also an active member of the Catholic underground, deeply involved in giving practical help to persecuted Catholics and doing his best, through his literary output, to indicate his sympathies. However, one does not get far into the book before becoming aware of a somewhat cavalier attitude towards the facts. On page 4, within the confines of two brief paragraphs, we find four errors: that Stratford's Clopton Bridge was demolished in the Civil War, that Hugh Clopton was knighted, that Clopton rebuilt the Guildhall, and that the Guild ran the Stratford College. On page 5, Hammerschmidt-Hummel claims that Robert Arden was a "wealthy landowner and gentleman," when in fact he never claimed a higher status than that of husbandman. Nor will she accept the recent discovery by N. W. Alcock that Robert Arden lived not in the impressive house in Wilmcote traditionally known as Mary Arden's House ("the only authentic Elizabethan manor house in the area"), but in the humbler one next door.¹

All this, however, is but a prelude to the difficulties that arise when we are presented, for instance, with evidence for Shakespeare's alleged pilgrimages to Rome. The names of English visitors were recorded in the "Pilgrim Book" maintained by the English Hospital of the Holy Trinity in Rome, an edition of which was published in 1880. Shakespeare is not listed among these pilgrims, but Hammerschmidt Hummel's explanation for this is that he was traveling under an alias. She identifies him first as one Arthur Stratford of Worcester who visited Rome in 1585. This, however, is a rather unfortunate proposition, as we know from the Douai Diaries and the diary of the English College at Rome that Arthur Stratford was, in fact, a real person, who was ordained as a Catholic priest and then sent to England.²

She also proposes, as another William Shakespeare in disguise, one William Clerk of Stratford, who visited in 1589. He may sound a more promising candidate until Hammerschmidt-Hummel explains that this William was previously thought to have been from Staffordshire; she has discovered, from an examination of the original register, that the transcribers and editors of the Pilgrim Book had misread his place of residence. Although the volume includes several hundred pictures, no illustration is provided to substantiate this claim. Nor does Hammerschmidt Hummel mention the possibly inconvenient fact that a William Clerk of Staffordshire is again recorded as a pilgrim in 1617.³

Her third choice, from 1587, is a man whose name was sufficiently badly written to lead the editors of the Pilgrim Book to offer "Dom. Sliford or...