A Review of Peter Ackroyd's Shakespeare: The Biography
Shakespeare:
The Biography
by Peter Ackroyd, 2005.
On a trip to the outer solar system this is not the Shakespeare biography I would choose to take along, but parlor games aside, it is a thoroughgoing, unsentimental life, fluent with the known facts about the man and the age, and settling on the most likely chronology without unnecessarily complicated alternate histories. The construction of the work is linear and chronological, eschewing analysis of the works in favor of Shakespeare's social and professional alignments. Its best part is its unromantic attitude to Shakespeare's professionalism: "Nothing in his life and career gives any reason to suggest that he chose a them or story with any specific intention other than to entertain" (p. 416); or, in correcting anachronistic interpretations of his work, "He did not have an aesthetic view of the drama at all, but a practical and empirical one" (458); or, in noting the great empathy he (we think) displays, "...his imagination was not violated by sentiment of any kind. He could even see himself without fellow feeling" (469); or, finally, discussing his "faith," "...he was a man without beliefs. He subdued his nature to whatever in the drama confronted him" (474). There are many similar statements. Ackroyd concludes that the famous "cloak of invisibility" so often complained about by biographers was, in fact, a conscious, professional assumption of his private being. All efforts to pin down the man Shakespeare's beliefs, philosophy, prejudices, secret opinions will fail because there were none. He was "above" them privately and professionally, applying his enormous talent to the given requirements of the drama, as he found and developed it, and his personal life as well, living as he might in London, but never forgetting his Stratford roots and persistently being concerned about his status in Stratford.
Ackroyd, the biographer of the city of London, often plays the sociologist in this biography of Shakespeare: "in the decade of Shakespeare's own birth there were in Stratford 62.8 average annual baptisms and 42.8 annual child burials" (4); "They [gentlemen] comprised some 2 per cent of the population" (48); "A population of approximately fifty thousand in 1520 had reached two hundred thousand by 1600 [London]" (113); "In 1593 more than 14 per cent of the population died of plague..." (119); "at a conservative estimate some seven years of Shakespeare's career were affected by 'the death'"(419); "The most popular books had an approximate print-run of 1,250 copies" (421); and so on. This is especially prominent early in the book, and near the end. The facts are appreciated, but often stand outside relevance to Shakespeare the man.
You could describe this biography as Schoenbaum's Shakespeare: A Documentary Life, fleshed out with the fluid and engaging style of a first rate novelist. Commendably Ackroyd does not waste much space on the myths of Shakespeare's childhood and youth, especially the pointless Lucy episode, butcher boy stories or the horse holding engagements that muddy so many biographies. Of Shakespeare's childhood Ackroyd controverts the often made assertion that John Shakespeare had for reasons unknown declined from affluence to poverty with convincing evidence, based on land suits and other historical trends, that his was a recusant's strategy to protect his property from seizure (see p. 70 and p. 395). He makes a plausible case for a Houghton connection, a la Honigmann, and with a diversion into some legal clerkship, has him associated early on with Lord Stange's Men. It could well have been the Queen's Men (as many a biographer has assumed before), whose 1587 visit to Stratford may have been the vehicle that finally brought Shakespeare to London (102).
A constant throughout is the notice Ackroyd takes of Catholic or potential Catholic connections. Shakespeare, he points out, never declares his faith: "Despite the myriad allusions to the old faith, Shakespeare in no sense declares himself,", but he does demonstrate more than passing familiarity with Catholic ritual and practice. "It must be said that there are a large number of friars and nuns, handled with gentle circumspection, within his drama; his contemporaries, in contrast, tended to treat them as an object of scorn or obloquy" (473). Ackroyd places prominence on John Shakespeare Catholic testament, the Houghton/Lancashire connection, sympathies and undeniable associations with the great Catholic families, the Stanleys and his patron Southampton, connections to his "cousin" Robert Southwell, the "firm and prominent" Catholicism of Shakespeare's daughter Susannah "all her life," it is assumed that the Shakespeare family, if not the man, had deep recusant roots. On the other hand, Susannah married a man of puritan beliefs (Shakespeare does not treat puritans so leniently as he does Catholics in his drama). The age required circumspection on those embracing any part of the old faith, and as time went on, reconciliation of a pragmatic tolerance grew up which make all this speculation probably pointless. The main lesson to be drawn is that Shakespeare himself may have had Catholic associations, he never expresses them in his poetry or dramatic art.
Ackroyd is to be commended for not interpreting the life in the "light" of the works. In many biographies the scantiness of the historical record is supplemented by "he must have felt, he must have believed, he must have..." A particularly egregious habit has grown among biographers to posit some sort of mental collapse resulting in Timon of Athens (whenever that may be--usually, it is supposed, after the energy expended in creating the great tragedies). Ackroyd sees Timon, however, as a failed attempt, probably in collaboration with Middleton. Admirably Ackroyd restrains this sort of unfounded rhetoric and sticks with the pragmatic Shakespeare. Consequently this biography is not taken up with long interpretations of the works. They are interpreted only so far as they shed real light on historical or biographical points supported by factual information.
On the other hand, Ackroyd goes a bit too far, one feels, in asserting Shakespeare's uniqueness without really laying a foundation for it: He introduces such views with the formula "No other writer...," "No other writer..." etc. For example, "No other Elizabethan dramatist employs so many domestic allusions" (33); "More than any other dramatist of his period Shakespeare is concerned with the family..." (47); "...no other Elizabethan dramatist is so acquainted with the hunt" (74); "There are so many references to schoolmasters and school curricula in his plays, far more than in those of any contemporary..." (77); "...more than any other contemporary dramatist he is concerned with familial conflict" (449). One wonders, but suspects not, whether Ackroyd has examined the entire corpus of Elizabethan and Jacobean plays when making these statements. They make for a fluid style, but may not be true. Ackroyd is also not above embracing the commonplace cliche, but it is all in the interest of getting on with the story.
Ackroyd makes several generalizations based on the works, however, that must surely be merited, chief among which relate to Shakespeare's constant use of sexual suggestion and wordplay. "He is the most salacious of all the Elizabethan dramatists, in an area where there was already stiff competition. [One assumes no pun is intended.] There are more than thirteen hundred sexual allusions in the plays, as well as the repeated use of sexual slang. There are sixty-six terms for the female vagina..." and so on. Referring to Twelfth Night, Ackroyd states, "The layers of strange multisexual loving delighted Shakespeare." One cannot escape the conclusion that Shakespeare had a powerful sexual nature. Ackroyd does not excuse all this usage as a pragmatic part of the dramatic art--though an Elizabethan play without sexual suggestion would surely be unique. It was a preoccupation of the age, and Shakespeare, as always, mirrored and magnified his age.
I would certainly recommend this biography, though a passing familiarity
with the facts from Schoenbaum's Documentary Life would be helpful,
if only to be aware of how they are being used. The smooth chronological
progression is more art than history. Ackroyd, like so many before, is
chiefly taken with two Shakespearean prominences: his use of language, and
his unprecedented psychological insight. His linguistic facility surpasses
perhaps all other men who have written public works. "Words and cadences,
when they pass through the medium of Shakespeare, are charged with
superabundant life" (256). His insight and deep understanding of men, is
also unsurpassed: "You can never overestimate his powers of assimilation and
empathy" (72). And so it is. Properly, this is where the emphasis in
Shakespeare studies ought to be, on their characteristics that can be
publicly discussed and compared. There is no reason to suppose that they
had independent existence in Shakespeare's life apart from his pragmatic use
of them in his art, which was, after all, his means to a living. The
mystery is, how comes it that his art is so much more?
