We explore Fripp's Master Richard Quyny Bailiff of Stratford-upon-Avon and Friend of William Shakespeare, here. In particular, his “evidence” of the children of the Stratford man in the works.
§ 24. Shakespeare and his Children , 1590–5
EVIDENCE of Shakespeare's presence at home in the years 1583-95 is the extraordinary prominence of Child Life in his early plays and poems. There is nothing like it in contemporary drama or literature. It is one of the distinguishing marks of early Shakespearean authorship, hardly less persistent or striking than the familiarity with the Bible, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and a Town Clerk's office. Shakespeare's references to babes and twins, small boys and girls , and their moods and ways and games, are so numerous and vivid in his work of 1590-5 that we should naturally infer (if we did not already know it) that he had children and twins of his own, and conclude moreover that he was greatly taken with them. He speaks of a gasping new-delivered mother' [Richard II, 11. ii. 65.], 'the mother's teat and milk [Titus Andronicus, 11. iii. 144 f.] and children sucking [1 Henry VI, 1. i. 49]; the midwife and nurse (a long - tongued babbling gossip [T. A. IV . ii . 141 , 150], probably the Nurse of Romeo and Juliet in 1596); two children at one birth' [2 Henry VI, Iv. ii . 147.], a joyful 'mother of two goodly sons' not meanly proud of two such boys' and 'more careful for the latter-born' [Errors, 1. i. 51 , 59, 79.] (was Hamlet born after Judith?); a child's bearing-cloth [1 Henry VI, 1. iii . 42 .] for christening, and 'a baby's cap' [Shrew, Iv. iii . 67.]; the 'piteous plainings of the pretty babes' [Errors, 1. i. 73.] (twins); the mother caressing her child on her bosom —
in this hollow cradle take thy rest,
My throbbing heart shall rock thee day and night; [Venus and Adonis, 1185 f.]
a nurse's song of lullaby to bring her babe 'asleep' [Titus Andronicus, 11. iii . 28 f.], a nurse's song which pleased well her babe [Venus and Adonis, 974.]; a tender nurse who kept chary her babe [Sonnets, 22.]; the 'mild and gentle cradle-babe' [2 Henry VI, 1. ii . 392 .], the sweet breath of a child asleep in the cradle [Richard II, 1. iii . 132 f.]; kisses on the lips of a 'sweet babe' [3 Henry VI, v. vii . 29]; infants' prattle [1 Henry VI, III . i . 16.];...1
It turns out that we may even have
learned that Judith was the eldest of the twins, popping out of her
mother's womb before Hamnet (which, of course, being a Strat scholar
Fripp dutifully spells H-a-m-l-e-t).
These and other allusions are suggestive of 1583 to 1587, when Shakespeare's daughter, Susanna, grew to be four years old, and his twins, Judith and Hamlet, to be two years old. The following are more appropriate to 1587-95, when the Poet's visits were by necessity infrequent, and all too short and memorable: a 'father' who finds (as Shakespeare did every time he returned to Stratford) his children nursed to take a new acquaintance of 'his mind' [Sonnets, 77.], and 'feeds on his children's looks [Richard II, 11. i. 79 f.]; ('children toward' [Shrew, v. ii . 182 .], children singing their rhymes [Lucrece, 524 f.], frightened at a scarecrow [1 Henry VI, 1. iv. 43 .], 'unruly', riding on their father's overladen back [Richard II, III. iv. 30 f.]; a child stilled by a tragic tale [Lucrece, 813 f.]; a child pausing in his story to sob and weep [Richard III, 1. ii . 160 ff.]; a child skipping [Love's Labour 's Lost, v. ii . 771]; a little changeling boy, crowned with flowers [Midsummer Night's Dream, 11. i . 23, 25 f.]; 'a pretty peat' with her finger in her eye [Shrew, 1. i. 78 f.]; two little girls working on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, warbling of one song [Midsummer Night's Dream, III . ii . 202 ff.]; a schoolgirl vixen [Ibid. 324.]; a 'young budding virgin, fair and fresh and sweet' [Shrew, IV . v. 36.]; a father who lives again in his child's life [Sonnets, 17.]...
Shakespeare's plays, we learn, are a virtual photo album of the Stratford grain-dealer's family. The list runs 6 pages, all-in-all. The dates of the plays are suggested based upon the Stratford man having a child around the age described in the play.
Should one think that Fripp is alone in his method or conclusions, perish the thought. The “technique” is a commonplace of Strat Shakespeare scholarship. The following is quoted from the august scholar turned writer of historical fiction James Shapiro.
Throughout 1599, Shakespeare also seems to have gone out of his way to showcase a pair of leading boys actors in his company (whose names are unfortunately unknown). One of them seems to have specialized in playing romantic leads, the other both younger and older women. Consider the extraordinary pairs of roles Shakespeare wrote for them in a little over a year, beginning with Beatrice and Hero in Much Ado and Catherine of France and Alice in Henry the Fifth. In Julius Caesar Shakespeare created for them another pair of sterling roles, Portia and Calpurnia.2 113
Shapiro senses boy actors by which he supports traditional dates for three Shakespeare plays to meet his needs. Nameless though they be, they can only have been the same boys, only in 1599, and the parts can only have been written for them. Presumably, his formal training in Shakespeare scholarship gives him the ability to detect such things: a kind of X-ray vision.
But, if an Oxfordian points out that those Procreation Sonnets Shakespeare wrote to the Earl of Southampton were precisely to encourage him to marry Edward de Vere's daughter it is foolish to think that the correlation is anything more than a coincidence. Or that a tenant of Edward de Vere receives mention in Romeo and Juliet3. Or that Parole's letter in All's Well that Ends Well actually exists in an august English archive and was sent to warn Anne Vavasour from Edward de Vere4. Or that the quarto texts of Henry the Fifth show that the original version of Shakespeare's play was published circa 15895.
1 Fripp, Edgar I. Master Richard Quyny Bailiff of Stratford - upon – Avon and Friend of William Shakespeare (1924). 95-100.
2 Shapiro, James. A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (2005). 113.
3 See my Capulet, Capulet and Paroles (2020). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08LLDM91P
4 Ibid.
5 See my Edward de Vere's Retainer Thomas Churchyard: the Man Who Was Falstaff (2017). https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077LVLXY2/
Also at Virtual Grub Street:
- Rocco Bonetti's Blackfriars Fencing School and Lord Hunsdon's Water Pipe. August 12, 2023. “... the tenement late in the tenure of John Lyllie gentleman & nowe in the tenure of the said Rocho Bonetti...”
On Shakespeare's lameness and historical-fiction biography, etc. August 5, 2023. “Those who support Sogliardo of Stratford and other authorship candidates generally stop by from time to time to remark...”
- Shakespeare CSI: Sir Thomas More, Hand-D. April 22, 2023. “What a glory to have an actual hand-written manuscript from the greatest English writer of all time!”
- Robert Greene and the Construction Shakespeare Never Used. August 9, 2022. 'Our first foray “staring intently into” the texts of Robert Greene has noted that his work utilized far fewer feminine endings than Shakespeare’s.'
A 1572 Oxford Letter and the Player’s Speech in Hamlet. August 11, 2020. “The player’s speech has been a source of consternation among Shakespeare scholars for above 200 years. Why was Aeneas’ tale chosen as the subject?”
- Check out the Shakespeare Authorship Article Index for many more articles and reviews about this fascinating time and about the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
- Check out the Letters Index: Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford for many letters from this fascinating time, some related to the Shakespeare Authorship Question.
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