Free The Late Mr Shakespeare by Robert Nye

in William’s youth. I am sure John Shakespeare cast a long shadow over his son’s life. Yes, and a fat shadow too, I’m convinced of that.
    But don’t take my word for it. Look at the names on this black list. It’s a list that I turned up in Stratford – of men not attending Trinity Church in the year of 1592:

    I have underlined the three names that prove there must be something to my case. Here we see John Shakespeare linked in disrepute with two of Falstaff’s cronies: Bardolph and Fluellen. Of the real-life Fluellen I know nothing, save that his widow died in the Stratford almhouse. But George Bardolfe was much like the rogue in the plays – in Henry IV, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor . He started as a mercer and a grocer, and ended up as a drunk. Writs of arrest were issued against him for debt. He was imprisoned for it in the year he appeared on the list. They say he had friends in high places, and that the under-sheriff of Warwickshire, Basil Trymnell, let this Bardolfe out to drink in a tavern in Warwick but when warned that he might escape kept him ‘in a much straighter manner’ and secured him by ‘a lock with a long iron chain and a great clog’.
    The character and nature of John Shakespeare and his associates seems to me as near a match as you will find for the character and nature of John Falstaff and his associates. Who says the people in the plays are not real people? I think they had flesh and blood in our poet’s mind.
    Besides which, Thomas Plume, the Archdeacon of Rochester,told me that Sir John Mennis once saw Mr John Shakespeare in his shop in Henley Street. This would have been at the end of the last century. He was a merry-cheeked old man, he said. He said also that the father said that Will was ‘a good honest fellow’, but he ‘durst have cracked a jest with him at any time’. Who else can this remind you of but Falstaff and Prince Hal? Do thou stand for my Father , as the poet has the prince say true to Falstaff.
    I should not be surprised one day to learn that John Shakespeare died crying out ‘God, God, God’, as Mistress Quickly says John Falstaff did. Some say he died a Papist, like his son. But more of that later.
    That hubbub’s an Irish war-cry: Ub! Ub! Ubub!
    As for Doctor Timothy Bright, he was a very fine physician in his day, and the odious Bretchgirdle’s invoking him should in no wise be permitted to detract from his excellent fame. In addition to his treatise on preserving health, called Hygieina , he wrote a good one on restoring the same commodity, Therapeutica . He also invented a shorthand system that was used by Robert Cecil and his spies. His Treatise of Melancholy , published in 1586, distinguishes between the mental and the physical roots of that affliction. The late Mr Shakespeare was fond of this little book. I often saw him reading in it, and he may even have derived from thence the phrase ‘discourse of reason’ which comes in Hamlet’s first soliloquy.
    I doubt myself that Dr Bright ever poured bile on any carpet. Nor would Grindal have blessed a bottle. He leant towards Geneva in such matters.
    I met John Shakespeare myself, but just the once. I’ll be telling you all about that when we come to it.
    * Falstaff in Henry IV, Part One goes out of his way to say that when younger he ‘could have crept into any Alderman’s thumb-ring’. This is followed by a passage in which he says to Hal: ‘Thou art my son.’

Chapter Fourteen
How Shakespeare’s mother played with him
    Some say that the first word spoken by William Shakespeare was neither ‘Cheese!’ nor ‘ Roses! ’ but that as soon as he came forth from his mother’s womb he cried out with a great voice and what he cried was this: ‘Drink! Drink! I want drink! Bring me ale to drink!’
    No doubt you do not believe the truth of this first saying of Shakespeare’s after his nativity. No more do I. But tell me, if it had been the will of God that the