Case of a Vexatious Man

At first glance, Book Dealer Alan Keen of Clifford's Inn, London, saw nothing particularly exciting about the old volume. It was simply one item from a new lot--a far-from-perfect 1550 copy of Edward Halle's Chronicle of England from Henry IV to Henry VIII. But when Alan Keen began to examine the book more closely that day in 1940, he found that some early reader had covered its margins with a most intriguing set of notations.

Last week Keen had scholars all over Britain arguing about those notations. After 14 years of work, he and Publisher Roger Lubbock of the London firm of Putnam had finally written a book called The Annotator, which might well be one of the most important literary detective stories in years. Not only does the book present strong evidence that the Annotator was Shakespeare, it also offers some tempting clues to an age-old mystery: Just what was Shakespeare up to during the obscure and later "hidden years" (1585-92) of his youth?

Notes & Echoes. From the experts at the British Museum, Keen first established that the notations could indeed have been written during Shakespeare's lifetime. Furthermore, they bore some resemblances to the few existing samples of Shakespeare's handwriting. But more important still was their content. It was obvious that the Annotator was collecting material for a project of his own.

He remarked on everything from the character of Richard II ("nota for flat-erye & wanton & voluptuose pleasure") to the "names of sondry pieces of armour." He was, like Shakespeare, intensely nationalistic ("note the kowardyce of the frenche men"), sympathetic to Catholicism ("here," he wrote alongside one of Halle's anti-Catholic outbursts, "he begynneth to rayle"), and above all else, interested in the turn of phrase. Time and time again, Keen found his echo in Shakespeare's historical plays. Samples:

P: The Annotator: "He that wyll fraunce wynne with Scotland he must begynne." Henry V: "If that you will France win/ Then with Scotland first begin."

P: Halle's statement, marked by the Annotator: "Henry borne at Monmouth shall small tyme reigne and muche get, & Henry born at Wyndsore shall long reigne and all lese . .." Henry VI: "Henry born at Monmouth shall win all/ And Henry born at Windsor lose all."

P: The Annotator: "Prydde had a fall." Richard II: "Since pride must have a fall."

P: Halle's Latin phrase, underlined by the Annotator: "In terram salicam mulieres ne succedant . . ." This is repeated in Henry V, as is the Chronicle's misprint "Elue" for Elbe.

Shaft & Spear. With that much evidence in hand. Book Dealer Keen started off on another quest: How might Shakespeare have come into possession of the Chronicle? The volume did bear one owner's name, Richard Newport, and a date, April 6, 1565. But when Keen investigated the signature, he found that it belonged to a Sir Richard Newport who had lived in Shropshire, some distance from Stratford. Nevertheless, Newport's family tree revealed some promising leads. He was related to a family named Fitton (Mary Fitton was the "Dark Lady" of the Sonnets), which in turn was related to the Houghtons of Lancashire. Sir Alexander Houghton, it seemed, kept a group of "playeres," and among these was a young man called William Shakeshafte. Keen's next question: Was

Shakeshafte by any chance Shakespeare? According to Stratford records, Shakespeare's grandfather was sometimes listed with a "shafte" rather than a "speare." As for young William himself, he was known only to have been a member of the Earl of Derby's players later in life. But some of those players had apparently come from the household of one Sir Thomas Hesketh of Rufford, who was not only related to Thomas Savage, one of Shakespeare's Globe Theater partners, but also to Sir Alexander Houghton, Shakeshafte's patron. In his will, Keen found, Houghton had recommended his players to Hesketh, and from there, the link to the Earl of Derby was clear.

"Obstinate Papist." Keen, however, soon discovered other leads. One was that Shakespeare's father got into trouble in Stratford, presumably for remaining a Roman Catholic. At that time, says Keen, he might well have wanted to send his son away from Stratford, and it was quite possible that he let him flee with his Catholic schoolmaster Simon Hunt, who apparently found his way to an English Catholic college in Rheims, France. In any case, Shakespeare was later to refer to that college in The Taming of the Shrew ("I . . . freely give unto you this young scholar that hath been long studying at Rheims"), and it would have been there that he would have met the exile Thomas Houghton, one of the college's benefactors and the Catholic brother of Shakeshafte's patron, Sir Alexander Houghton. The step from Rheims to Lancashire, says Keen, would then have been logical, for Houghton was known to have "an obstinate Papist" in his house.

Concludes Keen: "William Shakespeare has given us many a picture of many a life, but unhappily not a word about his own--a most vexatious man . . . Yet it is not difficult to see a pattern from which one might plot a new biography for him."

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