Shakespeare's Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman


Shakespeare's Mother: The Secret Life of a Tudor Woman

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"Everything hath a time," as the Tudors liked to say...

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..good Bible reading Christians as they were.

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"There is a time to be born. And a time to die.

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"A time to win. And a time to lose.

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"To everything is due time.

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This is the extraordinary tale of a peasant's daughter

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who rose to wealth and status.

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But lost it all.

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She survived the plague,

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and lived through four changes of the state religion.

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She buried three of her children,

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but she gave birth to the world's most famous poet.

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This is a story of family and love in a time of revolution.

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The Tudor age was a time of radical transformation

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in English history and society.

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It was a time of violence and war, of class conflict and social unrest.

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The Protestant Reformation turned upside down 1,000 years

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of English Christianity in a mere 20 years.

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We see that tale more than anything else through the lives

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of the great rulers - Henry VIII, Mary Tudor, Elizabeth I.

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But what was it like to live through those times at the grass roots?

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For ordinary people?

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And especially, for a woman?

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Mary Arden was one of eight daughters born to

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an old farming family here in the heart of Warwickshire.

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But Mary would leave life on the land for the new world

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of the Tudor middle class.

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Her children would become haberdashers and glovers.

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Two of them made it in the entertainment industry in London.

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So her family story is a mirror of the Tudors' changing times.

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Tudor England was a small country,

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only 2.5 million people.

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An agricultural society

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where 90% of the population worked on the land.

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Life expectancy then was 38.

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A third of all children died before they were ten.

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Mary's father farmed in Wilmcote in the parish of Aston Cantlow,

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just outside Stratford-upon-Avon.

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You can see Stratford down there, in the Avon Valley,

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the spire of Holy Trinity peeping above the trees,

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and the Avon divides the West Midlands landscape here.

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To the south was the land of open field farming and sheep grazing -

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what they called the feldom.

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And to the north, stretching towards Birmingham,

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a more wild, uncultivated, wooded landscape -

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the Arden.

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And that's where Mary's story begins.

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The Forest of Arden is still a name on the map today,

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and it gave Mary her name.

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She had well to do Arden relatives

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who could trace their family tree back before the Norman Conquest,

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to local heroes like the legendary Sir Guy of Warwick.

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But Mary's father Robert Arden was just a husbandman,

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a well-to-do peasant.

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Born around 1480 at the end of the Wars Of The Roses,

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among his first childhood memories would have been news

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of the death of Richard III at the Battle Of Bosworth.

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So Mary's father Robert was a man from the old world

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whose daughters would move into the new.

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Robert built his house here in Wilmcote in 1515.

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It was identified recently,

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astonishingly intact behind its skin of Victorian brick.

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I feel like a Tudor estate agent here.

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This is the barn area and the yard,

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just the same dimensions that it would have been in the 16th century.

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The barns, the brewery, the dairy for making cheese

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and all that around here. Much larger space than

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would actually have been the living space of the house.

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Now come in here.

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Here's a later extension to the kitchen,

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but the really interesting space is upstairs.

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It was a traditional peasant house, open to the ceiling,

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the bedroom floor was put in later.

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Just come and have a look through here.

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Robert and his wife raised eight daughters here.

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Mary was the youngest.

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Forget the floor, as I said before, there's nothing there.

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This is open to the roof, a fire on the ground floor level,

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going out through a vent in the roof

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and nicely seasoning the bacon, which is about there.

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It's a typical, open, communal medieval house,

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a single open hall with the kitchen at one end

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and the chamber at another.

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At the chamber end

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the mum and dad would have slept downstairs and all the sisters,

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and all the servants, the maidservants,

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would have slept on a platform above mum and dad's chamber

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that you got to by a ladder.

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Pretty...pretty close and intimate,

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not much privacy, but this is the world in which Mary grew up.

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She was born in around 1535. We can't be sure exactly when

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as parish registers don't start this early,

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but she was baptised here in the church of Aston Cantlow.

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This would have been her parish church.

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Wilmcote, where she was born, didn't have a church,

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didn't have it until 19th century - it was only a little hamlet.

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So she'd have been born, she was born and then baptised

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probably about three or four days later

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in this church, in the font which is still there.

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England was still a Catholic country then

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and Mary was named after the Virgin Mary,

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the patron saint of the village guild, whose chapel was in

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the side aisle of the church.

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So this is where Mary was baptised,

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the medieval font here in Aston Cantlow.

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And she's born into the world of old-fashioned English country Catholicism -

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the world of the saints and the old stories.

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A distant kinsman of hers, John Arden, in his will in 1526

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leaves, "my best damask gown to be made into a cope for the priest,

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"my suit of armour to dress an image of St George

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"to be hung above the pew where I was accustomed to sit,

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"and two heifers for the maintenance of the church bells."

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That's young Mary's world,

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an intensely local community,

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with that sense of the "dear, familiar place," as they put it.

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On the very eve of King Henry VIII's great Reformation.

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Mary was born at a crucial time in our history.

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In 1531, King Henry VIII had split with the Pope,

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and declared himself Head of the Church of England.

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It was the beginning of a vast change, the Protestant Reformation,

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but they don't know that yet.

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It's a world in flux, religiously speaking.

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Henry discouraged some aspects of Catholic cult.

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He got twitchy in the late 1530s

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about people lighting candles in front of saints' images,

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but not a lot else changed.

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The Mass went on exactly as before.

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In the West Midlands, it's a deeply conservative area,

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so what youth culture there was would have been Catholic.

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It would have been focused around the ritual calendar

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which was broadly religious but also festive.

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So at first at the grass roots not much changed,

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but in Mary's early childhood, events began to gather speed.

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Between 1536 and 1540, King Henry ordered the dissolution of the monasteries.

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Centres of enormous wealth and privilege,

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they held a third of all the land in England.

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In Mary's village, Aston Cantlow,

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the local guild was stripped of its land and silver plate.

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When the monasteries were dissolved,

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those religious institutions disappeared as well.

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Property sold off... Their property was sold, their land was sold,

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some of their artefacts, obviously.

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Everything was sold to raise money for the crown.

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A Victorian teacher here in the village

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recorded details of the plunder.

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Two towels, altar cloths,

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a pix, a cope, a worsted cope.

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And vestments, one of them in silk.

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These would have been the things the priests wore... For the mass.

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And here, one chalice.

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But your chalice was saved.

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It may be that Henry VIII's commissioners sold it

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back to the parish, just a little bit of gain.

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A piece of extortion! Absolutely, yes.

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'That precious chalice was saved by the villagers...'

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Oh, goodness! That is absolutely beautiful, isn't it?

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'..and incredibly they've still got it."

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It would be used in a nuptial Mass.

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For her wedding.

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She would have held it? Yes.

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It's absolutely wonderful, isn't it?

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So when Mary was a girl, England was still a Catholic country.

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But her world was poised between old and new.

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In society, too, change was in the air.

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The dissolution of the monasteries flooded the market with land and money

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which would give rise to a new middle class.

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But the Ardens and their neighbours were working people

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and they got on with life.

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By a huge stroke of luck,

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a list of contents has survived for Mary's house in Wilmcote,

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which gives us a picture of her life at home.

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What comes across is that this is a mixed farm.

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They're keeping animals, they're growing crops,

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and the two are fairly balanced.

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He's got eight oxen, that's not an accident.

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You need eight oxen to pull a plough.

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He's not going in for beef very much, he's only got two bullocks.

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But he is dairying.

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I mean, seven cows is above average.

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The end of the inventory we have a total valuation of... 77...

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?77 11s 10d, That's right. Was that a lot of money then?

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Well, it's quite a lot for a husbandman.

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Most women then were a working class -

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in the fields, in the house and in the kitchen -

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so Mary grew up multi-skilling.

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Mary would have been taught from a very early age

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how to do all the things that were essential.

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It wasn't just the household and the children,

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it was the swine, the dairy cattle,

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the fowl, brewing, baking, making cheese.

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And she had to be a wonderful planner as well.

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She wasn't just planning next week's meals,

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she was planning a year in advance.

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If she hadn't got her rennet made,

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she wouldn't be making cheese next year.

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From Mary's time, self-help manuals gave women tips on how to be a good housewife.

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"The knowledge of dairies, malting,

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"oats and their excellent uses in families."

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What about hard agricultural labour?

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I mean, Robert doesn't have any sons. what does he do when it comes

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to ploughing time and harrowing and all those sort of heavier jobs?

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The women would be expected to muck in,

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so if the sheep were being sheared, they might be rolling the fleeces

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and taking them off to be prepared.

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The men would cut the corn, and it would be the women

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gathering them up and making them into stooks

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and picking up any bits that had been left.

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So they were expected not only to run the household and look after

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the children and everything directly around the farm house.

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But they also were there at the busy times as well, helping out.

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Women were very strong. You wouldn't survive very long

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if you were a bit weak, shall we say?

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But even in Mary's house in Wilmcote, there are hints

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of the new middle class taste creeping into the countryside,

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the world to which, as a grown-up, Mary would aspire.

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At meals, Mary and her sisters would sit on benches, on forms,

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as a chair was a mark of status.

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Many households only had one chair. Robert Arden actually has three.

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So, one for him, one for his wife,

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another for a guest, you know. A guest chair. That's right.

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Feather beds and mattresses? Yes, yes, yes.

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Bolsters and things - you don't quite imagine that.

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Is this new taste coming in, Chris? Middle class taste?

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Well, the feather beds aren't that new, but it's certainly...

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there's a certain emphasis on comfort.

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You know, there are feather beds, there's references to cushions.

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You know, it's not a bare, austere house.

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To have 11 painted cloths is quite unusual.

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Most of the walls internally have a painted cloth on them.

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You could think of it as being like a sort of wallpaper, really.

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You know, it's decorative.

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And what we would love to know is what's painted on these cloths.

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I mean, it could be scenes from the Bible,

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it could be scenes from literature and mythology.

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Bright colours and, you know, interesting scenes.

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So she grew up with stories? Exactly. In one form or other. Exactly.

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And for Mary as a devout Catholic,

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the most important stories were religious.

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You can still get a sense of her world

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here in Stratford's guild chapel.

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It's very hard to imagine it now, because it's a pale shadow of what it would have been.

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But every surface covered in images and stories

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and warnings. With the Christian souls being reborn

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and the dead... Going down into the mouth of hell.

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Yeah, yeah. A bit like a graphic strip cartoon of how to behave in life, or else.

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These were painted in her father's lifetime,

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and whitewashed when Mary was in her 20s.

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Uncovered in 1804, they were copied

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while their colours were still bright.

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The blessings of heaven and the terrors of hell.

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Such images must have filled her young imagination

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along with the great tales -

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the murder of St Thomas Becket,

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and a favourite story in Stratford...

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Wow! Look at that!

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George And The Dragon. I love St George And The Dragon.

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Yeah, yeah. But everybody knew that story,

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and the guild's pageant was the pageant of St George.

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So Robert might have brought his girls over,

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to stand in the crowd and see the great dragon with its tail

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like a Chinese New Year festival.

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Well, it clearly was like a Chinese dragon

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because there were payments in the accounts for bearing the dragon.

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So I imagine lots of little men on sticks underneath this thing

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leading it through the street.

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There were guilds like this in every town - social and religious clubs.

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The Stratford Guild Book shows that Mary's father joined in 1517.

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There he is, right at the top, third entry.

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Robertus Ardren in Wilmcote.

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And this is going to take us from the chapel, the religious side,

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out into the social and administrative area, which is through here.

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So the guilds were centres of social life

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for men and women before the reformation.

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They helped shape the ethos of Mary's childhood world.

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The Guildhall. Yeah, great.

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Ladies and gentlemen, may I ask you to charge your glasses?

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The main thing that happened here would be the annual feast.

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The feast was the classic networking opportunity,

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because this is when everybody would be here.

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You forget about the admin,

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you forget about the routine,

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you just enjoy yourselves and relax and chat.

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Because you are all officially equal brothers and sisters, there is

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the opportunity to meet a brother of a different social status.

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And even a sister!

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And even a sister or potentially a spouse! Perhaps a wife to be.

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But now the revolutions of the time begin to turn faster.

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In January 1547, when Mary was 12, King Henry VIII died.

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He was succeeded by his nine-year-old son, Edward.

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Precocious, pious, cold-hearted,

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Edward was surrounded by Protestant fundamentalists

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and they began the real religious revolution.

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Mary's childhood world was about to change forever.

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So the real religious trauma for Mary Arden

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would have occurred in her early teens, when

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the Mass was abolished, the churches were stripped bare, whitewashed.

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I suppose people moved from a world in which

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everything religiously could be taken for granted

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to a world in which everything religiously was contested.

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In 1549, the government ordered the Catholic Mass to be abolished,

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and then the old rites for birth and death,

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the old festivals, even dancing round the maypole was forbidden.

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Every parish was told to smash its images in wood and stone

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and stained glass.

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They were to whitewash the painted walls, the Bible of the poor,

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and, "Do it properly," the government said,

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"not slobbered over with lime that could be washed off tomorrow.

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"So that no memory remain."

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It was the beginning of what they called "the commotion time".

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But out in Warwickshire,

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families like the Ardens remained loyal to the old faith.

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It would take 40 years for things to change in the countryside.

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When Mary was about 12, her mother died.

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Mary's father was now in his late 60s,

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but a year or two later he remarried -

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Agnes Hill, a younger widow who brought her own four children

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to live in Wilmcote, along with Mary and her sisters Joyce and Alice.

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The living space was cramped,

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and relations with their new stepmother would become strained.

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So Robert drew up leases to protect his own daughters,

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to make sure that if he died they would still inherit.

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Tudor people were hard-headed when it came to property,

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and for Robert, family came first.

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Then in 1553, when Mary was 18, King Edward suddenly died,

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and Henry VIII's daughter Mary Tudor came to the throne.

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A convinced Catholic, she set out to turn the clock back.

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But in winter 1556, Mary's father fell ill.

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Well, I'm afraid you've got to imagine Robert in bed.

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He has probably caught a bad attack of the flu,

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because there's an influenza epidemic going on at this time

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and it's fatal flu, he knows it's fatal, he knows he's going to die,

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and so he assembles his will.

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The first thing he thinks about is the salvation of his soul,

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and so he expresses his religious views by invoking

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the Virgin Mary.

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"Our blessed lady, St Mary, and the holy company of heaven."

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These are the phrases which a Catholic layman

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would use in these circumstances.

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Having looked after his soul, he then disposes of his worldly goods.

0:24:070:24:13

But singles out his youngest daughter?

0:24:130:24:16

Yes, that's the extraordinary thing, that he obviously

0:24:160:24:18

thinks very well of Mary, I think.

0:24:180:24:21

You know, because the first thing he thinks of is providing her

0:24:210:24:25

with land and with money,

0:24:250:24:28

and it's a very substantial sum of money that he's giving her.

0:24:280:24:32

?6 13s 4d.

0:24:320:24:34

That's a bit more than a skilled carpenter would earn in a year.

0:24:340:24:39

So he's leaving her, say, ?30,000.

0:24:390:24:43

Wow. Which is not bad. Not bad.

0:24:430:24:46

And, rather surprisingly, as she is the youngest daughter,

0:24:460:24:51

she is named as one of his executors.

0:24:510:24:54

"Alice and Mary my daughters."

0:24:540:24:58

He obviously perhaps has some affection for her,

0:24:580:25:02

or he certainly has some respect for her as well.

0:25:020:25:05

He obviously trusts her, he thinks she's a responsible person

0:25:050:25:09

who will look after his, the affairs following on from his will.

0:25:090:25:15

Does that mean she's got to ride over to Worcester

0:25:150:25:18

to see the will approved, then? I mean, how did it work in those days?

0:25:180:25:21

Yeah, I think she did.

0:25:210:25:23

And she would also have to negotiate with various other people

0:25:230:25:27

who received sums of money and so on.

0:25:270:25:30

After all, right at the end he leaves fourpence

0:25:300:25:34

to everybody in the parish of Aston Cantlow

0:25:340:25:38

who doesn't have a team.

0:25:380:25:40

That means someone who doesn't have a team of oxen.

0:25:400:25:44

So he's saying those sort of labourers

0:25:440:25:46

and small holders of the parish are going to get fourpence each, so

0:25:460:25:49

presumably Mary has to go around the houses saying, "Do you have a team?"

0:25:490:25:54

And then pressing fourpences into their hands.

0:25:540:25:57

As her father's legal executor, Mary surely had basic reading skills,

0:26:060:26:12

like many Tudor women of her class, but could she write?

0:26:120:26:16

On later legal documents, she makes her mark with her initial.

0:26:160:26:21

And the wax seal has her personal emblem from her seal ring -

0:26:220:26:27

the horse.

0:26:270:26:28

The mark of Mary is a beautifully penned M.

0:26:290:26:34

That's how you were taught to do your capital letters

0:26:340:26:37

in what was called "secretary hand".

0:26:370:26:40

And that possibility becomes a likelihood

0:26:410:26:44

when you look at this document, drawn up on the same day in 1579.

0:26:440:26:49

And there on the little tag of parchment to the side,

0:26:490:26:54

messed up because it's over the crinkle of the parchment,

0:26:540:26:57

and what looks like an abbreviated signature.

0:26:570:27:01

You put those two together and it looks very much

0:27:020:27:06

as if she knew not only how to read, but how to write.

0:27:060:27:10

She's quite a catch then - multi-skilled, literate maybe,

0:27:130:27:18

set up by her dad with money and land,

0:27:180:27:21

and maybe she had a match already in mind -

0:27:210:27:24

with the son of one of her father's tenants - John Shakespeare.

0:27:240:27:29

John Shakespeare of Snitterfield had moved to Stratford

0:27:320:27:36

from the countryside in the early '50s.

0:27:360:27:38

The son of a husbandman, he'd done a seven year apprenticeship

0:27:380:27:42

to the master glover, Tom Dixon.

0:27:420:27:45

So John was a young man with prospects.

0:27:470:27:50

In October 1556, John buys two freehold properties

0:27:530:27:57

here in the town - one down the road in Greenhill Street,

0:27:570:28:01

and one here in Henley Street.

0:28:010:28:03

This is a young man with fantastic drive and determination.

0:28:030:28:09

And as for the date when he bought this house,

0:28:100:28:13

it makes you wonder whether in fact he already had marriage in mind,

0:28:130:28:17

because within weeks of purchasing it, he marries Mary Arden.

0:28:170:28:22

They marry in 1557.

0:28:280:28:30

He's in his late twenties, she's maybe 22.

0:28:300:28:34

I pray you, all that are gathered here,

0:28:340:28:37

on behalf of these souls, John and Mary

0:28:370:28:40

to hear and witness that which they intend.

0:28:400:28:43

First there'd be a troth plighting in front of family and friends,

0:28:460:28:49

and later a church service.

0:28:490:28:52

And with Mary Tudor on the throne,

0:28:520:28:54

it's a Catholic wedding with a Latin Mass.

0:28:540:28:58

Then a feast, with music, dancing and lots of drink.

0:28:590:29:04

No puritan reserve yet here in Aston Cantlow!

0:29:060:29:10

And then the newlyweds rode off to begin a new life in Stratford.

0:29:190:29:24

Stratford then was a small market town with maybe 1,200 people

0:29:270:29:32

and a growing middle class, serviced by

0:29:320:29:35

tailors, drapers and glovers.

0:29:350:29:38

THEY CHATTER

0:29:390:29:41

It was a place where you could rise in the world.

0:29:410:29:44

Ah, lovely! The world of Elizabethan interiors. Indeed.

0:29:460:29:49

I think that the time that Mary marries in the 1560s

0:29:520:29:55

is an interesting time, because everything's shifting,

0:29:550:29:58

everything's changing - the effects of the religious Reformation,

0:29:580:30:02

and then this massive social change as well.

0:30:020:30:05

And there's a shift towards ornamenting interiors,

0:30:060:30:09

investment in the home in the form of wall decoration,

0:30:090:30:13

in material furnishings and fabrics and textile items.

0:30:130:30:17

Let me ask you about this. Yes. I can hand it over to you.

0:30:170:30:22

So this is sort of late Elizabethan, something like that.

0:30:220:30:25

Yeah. Mary may have worn something like this.

0:30:250:30:27

It's difficult to know, I mean certainly Mary would have wanted

0:30:270:30:30

to wear something like this, because it's got very fine decoration.

0:30:300:30:34

It's called blackwork. And, interestingly, even though it's got all of this decoration,

0:30:340:30:38

it's a garment to be worn informally, in the house.

0:30:380:30:42

And again I think that really gets to the heart of the significance of the household.

0:30:420:30:47

If you're worried about wearing something as beautiful as this in your home,

0:30:470:30:52

then it indicates just how important a space for social display, and

0:30:520:30:57

perhaps some social competition, that the household was in this period.

0:30:570:31:01

Are we allowed to talk about middle class taste

0:31:030:31:07

and sort of rising up in the world and, you know, competitiveness

0:31:070:31:10

with your neighbours or I mean... Yeah, I think so.

0:31:100:31:13

I think definitely. I think, you know, you've got a little bit of extra money

0:31:130:31:16

and you use that money to embellish your immediate environment,

0:31:160:31:20

your clothing and, of course, your house.

0:31:200:31:24

So, and, yeah, in an urban setting you are going to be thinking about

0:31:240:31:28

keeping up with the Joneses. There's going to be that sense of wanting to

0:31:280:31:31

have a house that fits with your status.

0:31:310:31:33

Like most young couples, they wanted to start a family,

0:31:370:31:41

but in Tudor England having children was fraught with danger.

0:31:410:31:45

A third of all babies died in the first year.

0:31:470:31:49

And Mary's first two children both died.

0:31:510:31:54

Joan, in 1558, aged two months,

0:31:550:31:59

and then Margaret, who died in 1563, aged one.

0:31:590:32:04

1563, Margaret, daughter of John Shakespeare.

0:32:060:32:10

Unfortunately, it wouldn't have been that unusual.

0:32:150:32:19

There's an expectation now that children will outlive their parents

0:32:190:32:22

and that, unfortunately, wasn't the case in the past.

0:32:220:32:25

The first reliable statistics on the causes of death come from London

0:32:260:32:30

in the early 1600s.

0:32:300:32:32

The biggest cause of death is actually this category called

0:32:330:32:36

"Chrisoms and Infants", which is, you know, is babies,

0:32:360:32:39

it's children that are within a couple of months of birth.

0:32:390:32:42

And it's almost 2,400 deaths in one year. Wow.

0:32:430:32:48

So a quarter of all the deaths in London are

0:32:480:32:51

children in their first few months. That's Mary's first two kids.

0:32:510:32:54

People sometimes tell you that,

0:32:540:32:56

"Oh, they can't have felt as much as we do,"

0:32:560:32:59

because they had lots of children and lots of children died,

0:32:590:33:02

but is that the case? I think that a lot of historians

0:33:020:33:04

have altered their thinking on this, because we have found,

0:33:040:33:10

there are some really striking accounts of people grieving

0:33:100:33:13

for their children, trying to deal with the pain of that.

0:33:130:33:16

There are manuals from the period that help you, help you

0:33:160:33:20

work to be the healthiest kind of person you can be

0:33:200:33:23

and that includes the emotions.

0:33:230:33:24

So interestingly, it gives guidelines about how you should

0:33:240:33:27

try to manage your emotions and a lot of the manuals say that

0:33:270:33:30

grief is the emotion that is most devastating,

0:33:300:33:33

not just to the mind and soul but to the body.

0:33:330:33:36

And, in fact, if we look in this bill,

0:33:360:33:38

compared to, you know, infant deaths it's a very small category,

0:33:380:33:43

but there is a category for "Griefe" here -

0:33:430:33:45

20 people who died of "Griefe" in London, in this year.

0:33:450:33:48

But nevertheless, we've also found documents that suggest that,

0:33:480:33:52

while people were aware of the fact that they were supposed to

0:33:520:33:55

ideally moderate their emotions, that they also felt very deeply.

0:33:550:33:59

And there are people who say things like,

0:33:590:34:02

"I know that I shouldn't be grieving this extremely,

0:34:020:34:05

"I know that, you know, my child was never really mine, because

0:34:050:34:08

"my child belongs to God and God has decided to take him or her back.

0:34:080:34:12

"But nevertheless, I can't, I can't stop feeling the way I do."

0:34:120:34:16

So the first years of marriage were hard for Mary,

0:34:190:34:22

but at least her husband was doing well.

0:34:220:34:24

BELL RINGS

0:34:240:34:26

His freehold in Henley Street

0:34:290:34:32

entitled him to join the town elite.

0:34:320:34:35

The corporation had replaced the guild,

0:34:350:34:38

which was shut down under Edward in 1547, and they ran the town.

0:34:380:34:43

The council books show that John's civic duties range from

0:34:430:34:46

ale taster to constable, and charity doles to the poor.

0:34:460:34:51

Meeting of the Stratford-upon-Avon corporation,

0:34:510:34:54

at the hall held in our garden, the 30th day of August, anno 1564.

0:34:540:35:00

Money paid by us towards the relief of the poor -

0:35:000:35:04

from the mayor, Mr Wakeley, two shillings and fourpence...

0:35:040:35:07

..from John Shakespeare, twelve pence.

0:35:090:35:12

He was a man they could trust,

0:35:130:35:16

a man of credit.

0:35:160:35:18

God bless Queen Elizabeth! Wassail!

0:35:240:35:29

But in winter 1558, Mary Tudor suddenly died

0:35:290:35:34

and Henry VIII's daughter Elizabeth came to the throne.

0:35:340:35:38

In Warwickshire, they greeted her accession with bonfires

0:35:390:35:43

and doles of cakes and ale to the poor.

0:35:430:35:46

They sang Latin Masses for the new Queen,

0:35:460:35:49

but Elizabeth was a Protestant,

0:35:490:35:51

and within the year she reversed Mary's return to Catholicism.

0:35:510:35:55

We tend to think of the Elizabethan settlement

0:35:570:36:02

as a period in which the Reformation finds itself,

0:36:020:36:04

it beds down.

0:36:040:36:07

It didn't look like that to people in the 1560s.

0:36:070:36:11

Everything was up for grabs.

0:36:110:36:13

There was a great sense of anxiety on the part of

0:36:170:36:21

those responsible for enforcing what is, quite certainly,

0:36:210:36:25

in 1558 a minority religion.

0:36:250:36:28

The Queen's Protestantism is a minority religion.

0:36:280:36:32

It was the fourth change of religion in 20 years,

0:36:340:36:38

and at this moment no-one knew how long Elizabeth would live,

0:36:380:36:42

or what would happen next.

0:36:420:36:45

Soon there were risings against her religious policies,

0:36:480:36:52

and in response the government demanded the removal of

0:36:520:36:55

all outward trappings of the old faith.

0:36:550:36:58

There's a pogrom to get rid of this stuff

0:36:590:37:01

because during the rebellion in the north,

0:37:010:37:04

the alter stones had reappeared, the mass books had come out,

0:37:040:37:08

the holy water pots had come out,

0:37:080:37:10

women had started queueing to be churched.

0:37:100:37:12

So there is a tremendous determination to remove

0:37:140:37:18

these physical anchors for backward-looking sentiment.

0:37:180:37:23

In winter 1563, the Stratford council had to do the government's bidding.

0:37:250:37:31

Final act in the story is entered into the council minutes

0:37:330:37:37

for the winter of 1563.

0:37:370:37:40

Among various expenditures is this,

0:37:400:37:44

"Item paid for defacing the images in the chapel - two shillings."

0:37:440:37:51

That's for the whitewashing of all the paintings

0:37:530:37:57

in this chapel, so that "no memory remains", as the government said.

0:37:570:38:02

And the person who signed off on it is the chamberlain,

0:38:030:38:07

Mary's husband, John Shakespeare.

0:38:070:38:10

What Mary thought, we don't know,

0:38:150:38:17

but in April 1564 her third child was born, a boy.

0:38:170:38:22

They called him William.

0:38:220:38:24

And after losing her first two children,

0:38:240:38:27

you'd imagine he was the apple of her eye.

0:38:270:38:30

Mary would have stayed at home for the first month

0:38:330:38:35

to regain her strength before the traditional purification ceremony

0:38:350:38:40

at church on the 28th May.

0:38:400:38:43

But when Mary's baby was three months old,

0:38:460:38:49

the plague came to Stratford.

0:38:490:38:51

1564, "Here began the plague".

0:38:520:38:55

London was already reeling with thousands of deaths,

0:38:570:39:01

when on 11th July the apprentice Oliver Gunn died of the pestilence.

0:39:010:39:07

Soon the town was living in fear.

0:39:090:39:11

At the end of August,

0:39:130:39:14

the town corporation held their meeting out here in the open air

0:39:140:39:19

in the garden behind the Guildhall,

0:39:190:39:21

to try to lessen the risk of contagion,

0:39:210:39:24

because they believed that plague was passed by infected airs.

0:39:240:39:29

But by then, seven weeks since the first case,

0:39:290:39:32

the situation for the town was becoming desperate.

0:39:320:39:35

Over 200 people died in Stratford, a sixth of the town.

0:39:360:39:41

Richard Simmons, the town clerk, lost two sons and a daughter.

0:39:410:39:45

The Greens, three doors down from Mary in Henley Street,

0:39:450:39:49

four children.

0:39:490:39:50

With a young baby, it was best to get out if you could,

0:39:540:39:57

and Mary you'd guess rode out to her sister in Wilmcote.

0:39:570:40:02

Only five miles away,

0:40:020:40:05

but here in the country air there wasn't a single death.

0:40:050:40:09

So luckily for Mary, and for the rest of us, William survived.

0:40:140:40:18

And the next few years were good times for Mary and her husband.

0:40:180:40:22

She had more children - Joan, Anne, Gilbert and Richard.

0:40:220:40:27

K, L...

0:40:270:40:29

She would have had an important role in their pre-school education,

0:40:290:40:33

teaching them the alphabet and basic reading at home.

0:40:330:40:37

W. P. P. Q... Q...

0:40:370:40:41

But of course, like all mothers, she also told stories.

0:40:430:40:48

Merrier than a nightingale, that I shall sing.

0:40:480:40:51

There's no television, there's no radio, there are no DVDs.

0:40:510:40:56

What you do, and especially in the long winter evenings,

0:40:560:40:59

is tell stories.

0:40:590:41:01

His name, it was Sir Guy of Warwick. Brave and wise.

0:41:010:41:07

And years later her son William would remember the tales

0:41:070:41:11

of their legendary ancestor, Guy of Warwick.

0:41:110:41:14

He came to England, where Athelstan the King he found.

0:41:140:41:20

There were a lot of printed texts around of what you might call

0:41:200:41:24

the pulp fiction of the Tudor age,

0:41:240:41:27

which, indeed, tended to be prints of these old medieval romances,

0:41:270:41:31

many of them already well over 200 years old.

0:41:310:41:35

And for his love, I understand, he slew the dragon in Northumberland,

0:41:350:41:41

full far in the north country.

0:41:410:41:45

Coventry kept its mystery cycle going until 1579,

0:41:450:41:50

and so plenty of opportunities for both Mary and her children

0:41:500:41:55

to have seen them. And I think we can be 90% certain,

0:41:550:41:59

95% certain, that Shakespeare had.

0:41:590:42:02

And therefore at this ending day, he went to joy that lasteth, eh?

0:42:020:42:08

It's speculation, but with evidence,

0:42:080:42:11

about where Shakespeare's imagination really got laid down...

0:42:110:42:15

Amen, and charity.

0:42:150:42:18

Again!

0:42:180:42:20

..and it wasn't in Stratford grammar school, reading

0:42:200:42:23

Ovid and Virgil, however much influence those had on him,

0:42:230:42:26

it was something much earlier and much deeper.

0:42:260:42:29

His mum. His mum. His mum.

0:42:300:42:33

Yes. I think she was a good storyteller.

0:42:330:42:35

John, meanwhile, continued his rise in the council.

0:42:400:42:44

All those in favour...

0:42:440:42:45

Ale taster, constable, chamberlain,

0:42:450:42:48

and in 1568, he's elected Mayor.

0:42:480:42:51

Anybody against?

0:42:530:42:55

So Mary was now the wife of alderman and high bailiff, Mr Shakespeare.

0:42:550:42:59

And now they set out to use John's position to make real money.

0:43:040:43:08

And in Tudor England,

0:43:090:43:11

that didn't mean hedge funds or commodity futures,

0:43:110:43:13

it meant wool.

0:43:130:43:15

In those days it was a very valuable commodity.

0:43:170:43:20

Everybody wore wool.

0:43:200:43:22

And on Sundays if you didn't have a woollen hat on

0:43:230:43:25

then you would be in trouble.

0:43:250:43:27

And even when you died you had to be buried in a woollen shroud.

0:43:270:43:31

Wool was the mainstay of the economy,

0:43:320:43:35

so the government controlled it to prevent illegal dealers

0:43:350:43:39

undercutting the market -

0:43:390:43:41

and that's what John was doing.

0:43:410:43:43

There's no big profit in sewing gloves all day.

0:43:450:43:49

But buy a sack of wool for ?8 and sell it for ten,

0:43:490:43:54

you know, that's ?2 without any work at all.

0:43:540:43:57

The sellers won't come to him he'll go to the sellers,

0:44:030:44:06

so he'll be travelling around the countryside

0:44:060:44:08

John's web of contacts spread out into the Cotswolds,

0:44:110:44:15

up to Nottingham and down into Wiltshire.

0:44:150:44:18

And would Mary have been keeping his books while he was away travelling?

0:44:200:44:23

Well... Did woman do that? Did they have a hand in the business?

0:44:230:44:27

Well, it seems to be perfectly normal for wives

0:44:270:44:31

and other members of the families to deal with business contacts.

0:44:310:44:36

If someone knocked on the door to pay money, for example, the wife

0:44:360:44:40

would take it, and perhaps even joining in the bargaining process.

0:44:400:44:43

But a risky business from what you're saying,

0:44:430:44:46

when it's shady side of the law,

0:44:460:44:48

and you're not quite sure that the quality of the wool's going to be

0:44:480:44:51

what you thought it would be. Yes.

0:44:510:44:53

But it's all very, as you say, it's all very informal,

0:44:530:44:57

but what makes it work is that level of trust that people have.

0:44:570:45:02

But trust was a big issue in Elizabeth's surveillance society,

0:45:050:45:11

where a network of informers - bounty hunters -

0:45:110:45:14

snooped on everything from your business and your religion

0:45:140:45:17

to your sex life.

0:45:170:45:19

And, astonishingly, the details of John's shady wheeler dealings

0:45:200:45:26

were discovered not long ago in the National Archives.

0:45:260:45:30

Here's the case - early 1571

0:45:310:45:36

and a government informer,

0:45:360:45:38

James Langrake of Whittlebury in Northamptonshire,

0:45:380:45:43

has done John for illegal wool dealing, he's reported him to the Exchequer.

0:45:430:45:48

These informers, working for the government,

0:45:480:45:51

and they get a cut of the fines which were imposed on the victims.

0:45:510:45:54

And Langrake's got something against John.

0:45:540:45:57

He reported him the previous year for illegal money lending

0:45:570:46:01

and now he gets him twice for illegal wool dealing.

0:46:010:46:05

And here's the key to the document,

0:46:050:46:07

it's the amounts involved.

0:46:070:46:10

300 tods of wool in these two cases.

0:46:100:46:13

That's about 8,000 or 9,000 pounds in weight,

0:46:130:46:17

but in monetary terms, ?210 in Tudor money,

0:46:170:46:22

when a good house could be bought for 30

0:46:220:46:25

and a wage labourer would earn ?10 a year.

0:46:250:46:29

These are enormous sums of money,

0:46:290:46:31

which just shows you how deep John was in all this business,

0:46:310:46:37

and how dangerous the business was.

0:46:370:46:40

This time John was able to pay off the informer

0:46:440:46:47

and he got away with it.

0:46:470:46:49

Meanwhile, back in Stratford, as an alderman, John was entitled to

0:46:490:46:54

send William to grammar school.

0:46:540:46:56

The gateway to university and a career in the law or local office.

0:46:560:47:00

What a proud mother Mary must have been.

0:47:020:47:05

But her husband was now on the government's watch list.

0:47:070:47:11

In the late 1570s,

0:47:150:47:17

fate suddenly closed in on the family.

0:47:170:47:20

The government turned on the illegal wool dealers with the full force of the law...

0:47:210:47:25

..and John's whole informal network collapsed.

0:47:270:47:30

Suddenly you realise he's got a network of debt everywhere. Yes.

0:47:320:47:36

This is a catastrophe for him really.

0:47:360:47:38

Well, he's always got a network of debt,

0:47:380:47:41

but he's usually got a flow of income,

0:47:410:47:43

which can keep on servicing that debt.

0:47:430:47:45

When we use the phrase "losing credit",

0:47:490:47:54

in the 16th century losing credit meant that you could

0:47:540:47:56

no longer function in business, because losing credit would mean

0:47:560:48:00

that people had stopped trusting you.

0:48:000:48:02

They didn't trust you to pay up, and so they would no longer

0:48:020:48:05

deal with you, so your business was ruined.

0:48:050:48:08

Then, as their money troubles piled up,

0:48:140:48:16

in 1579, Mary's seven-year-old daughter Anne died.

0:48:160:48:21

There's a note in the corporation book which gives you another insight

0:48:290:48:33

into that moment of tragedy for the family.

0:48:330:48:35

"Item for the bell and pall for Mr Shakespeare's daughter."

0:48:370:48:43

For her funeral. Eight pence.

0:48:430:48:46

As Mary's eldest son would later write,

0:48:480:48:50

"When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions."

0:48:500:48:54

Desperate now to save money,

0:48:570:48:59

they take William out of school to help John at work.

0:48:590:49:03

So he loses his chance of university.

0:49:040:49:06

And soon they are trying to raise money any way they can.

0:49:070:49:10

You can imagine John and Mary sitting at their table

0:49:140:49:17

here in the parlour, doing the sums as the debts mounted up.

0:49:170:49:22

They borrowed money from friends and neighbours, from in-laws and family.

0:49:230:49:28

Then they start selling off pieces of their inheritance.

0:49:300:49:34

Mary gets rid of her portion of the land at Snitterfield

0:49:340:49:38

that had come down to her through the family.

0:49:380:49:39

John even divides the house up

0:49:410:49:43

and leases out that side to neighbours down Henley Street.

0:49:430:49:47

The Burbages, who turned it into a pub.

0:49:470:49:49

And, worst of all, Mary has to finally give up the land

0:49:510:49:55

that she'd inherited from her father.

0:49:550:49:58

The 30 or 40 acres, with the little cottage

0:49:580:50:01

that she and John had built on it for their tenant in Wilmcote.

0:50:010:50:05

Using the house, called Aspies, as security,

0:50:070:50:11

she raises ?40 from her brother-in-law,

0:50:110:50:14

but it all went badly wrong.

0:50:140:50:16

When Shakespeare's father got into difficulties

0:50:160:50:19

and he took out a mortgage on the property with his brother-in-law,

0:50:190:50:22

obviously they fell out

0:50:220:50:24

or there was some difficulty that

0:50:240:50:26

he wanted his money back and Shakespeare's father couldn't

0:50:260:50:29

come up with the goods and so

0:50:290:50:31

he actually forfeited the property.

0:50:310:50:35

They never got it back? No, they never lived here. Ooh!

0:50:350:50:39

I wonder what Mary thought about the collapse of John's finances,

0:50:390:50:44

depriving her of her inheritance?

0:50:440:50:48

Not very pleased, I shouldn't think. No.

0:50:480:50:51

But just four months after Anne's death,

0:50:550:50:58

Mary got pregnant again, after a gap of more than six years.

0:50:580:51:03

She was in her mid-40s.

0:51:030:51:06

Her eighth child, Edmund, was christened on May 3rd, 1580.

0:51:060:51:11

And a couple of years later

0:51:130:51:15

her teenage son, William, got a 26-year-old local girl pregnant

0:51:150:51:19

first with a daughter, and then twins.

0:51:190:51:22

So the family was now squeezed into a third of the old house,

0:51:230:51:26

with William's new wife Anne, and four new mouths to feed...

0:51:260:51:31

..and a depressed husband, living in fear of being writs for debt.

0:51:320:51:36

Mary, you'd guess, was the one who held it all together.

0:51:360:51:41

But worse was to follow.

0:51:470:51:48

In the winter of 1583,

0:51:500:51:52

the government discovered a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.

0:51:520:51:56

The would-be assassin was the son-in-law of a Warwickshire

0:51:560:51:58

gentleman called Edward Arden,

0:51:580:52:01

one of Mary's distant relatives.

0:52:010:52:04

The whole story may have been a sting,

0:52:040:52:07

but to the Elizabethan state no charge was more grave than treason.

0:52:070:52:12

Edward was head of the most important Catholic family in Warwickshire.

0:52:150:52:19

He was immediately put into the chamber known as the Little Ease,

0:52:190:52:22

where you could neither lie down, nor stand up.

0:52:220:52:26

And then all the men were tortured on the rack.

0:52:280:52:32

Agonisingly stretched in order to extract a confession.

0:52:330:52:37

And eventually the Ardens were shopped by their priest

0:52:370:52:41

and condemned to death.

0:52:410:52:43

The night before the execution day,

0:52:490:52:52

John Somerville, Arden's son-in-law,

0:52:520:52:55

who was clearly insane,

0:52:550:52:57

was taken to Newgate, where the government announced that

0:52:570:53:00

during the night he'd strangled himself.

0:53:000:53:03

The next day Edward Arden was hanged,

0:53:040:53:07

taken down whilst still alive,

0:53:070:53:09

disembowelled, beheaded, quartered -

0:53:090:53:13

five days before Christmas.

0:53:130:53:16

Around Stratford the secret police interrogated known Catholics,

0:53:220:53:27

searching their houses for incriminating books and writings.

0:53:270:53:32

And as Mary was an Arden, and married to an ex-Mayor,

0:53:330:53:37

her house was surely one of them.

0:53:370:53:40

Finally in 1586,

0:53:460:53:49

having been protected by his fellow councillors for ten years,

0:53:490:53:53

John was struck off the town council for long-term non-attendance.

0:53:530:53:58

"At this hall it was decided that William Smith

0:53:590:54:02

"and Richard Court should be chosen to be aldermen

0:54:020:54:05

"in the place of John Wheeler and John Shakespeare...

0:54:050:54:08

"..for that Mr Wheeler doth desire to be put out of the company,

0:54:090:54:13

"and Mr Shakespeare doth not come to the halls

0:54:130:54:17

"when they be warned or hath not done for long time."

0:54:170:54:21

So, nearly 20 years after her husband had been mayor of Stratford,

0:54:240:54:28

Mary's family was ruined.

0:54:280:54:31

But, like all the best stories, there's one more twist in the plot.

0:54:400:54:45

William now goes to London to try to make it in the theatre.

0:54:450:54:49

How exactly he did it we still don't know...

0:54:500:54:53

..but in autumn 1592, a famous metropolitan critic,

0:54:540:54:59

Robert Greene, pours scorn on a provincial newcomer

0:54:590:55:03

taking the stage by storm.

0:55:030:55:04

An "upstart crow",

0:55:070:55:08

who thought himself "the only shake scene" in the country!'

0:55:080:55:12

Greene's attack on William was a howl of anger and envy,

0:55:140:55:19

but there's no such thing as bad publicity.

0:55:190:55:22

The very moment that the family had reached rock bottom

0:55:220:55:25

in Stratford, here in London Mary's eldest son had made it!

0:55:250:55:32

APPLAUSE

0:55:320:55:34

And William's box office earnings restored the family fortunes.

0:55:380:55:42

In autumn 1596 he went to the College Of Arms in London

0:55:430:55:47

to buy a coat of arms for his father

0:55:470:55:50

to make him a gentleman...

0:55:500:55:52

..with a few rewrites of the family history on the application.

0:55:530:55:56

John, his father, he says,

0:55:580:55:59

some 25 years back had been a man of standing in society.

0:55:590:56:03

A JP, a Mayor of the town,

0:56:030:56:06

and an Officer Of The Queen, which technically he had been as coroner.

0:56:060:56:10

And of his mother, William said this,

0:56:110:56:13

that Mary had been the daughter and heiress of Robert Arden

0:56:130:56:18

of Wilmcote in the county of Warwickshire, esquire and gentleman.

0:56:180:56:24

So the family could hold their heads high again

0:56:320:56:35

in the streets of Stratford.

0:56:350:56:37

William bought the big house by the chapel.

0:56:370:56:40

Mary and John lived out their days in Henley Street,

0:56:400:56:43

with their daughter Joan and her children.

0:56:430:56:45

Mary had lived from Henry VIII's time,

0:56:510:56:54

through the reigns of Edward, Mary and Elizabeth

0:56:540:56:57

and on into James.

0:56:570:56:58

She'd had eight children in this house,

0:57:010:57:03

three girls had died young,

0:57:030:57:05

so had William's only boy,

0:57:050:57:07

so she'd known grief and disappointment.

0:57:070:57:10

But she'd steered the family through the "commotion time".

0:57:100:57:15

After 44 years of marriage John died in 1601.

0:57:230:57:27

Mary followed him in 1608 in her early 70s.

0:57:270:57:32

She was buried here in the churchyard in Stratford.

0:57:320:57:35

There's one last clue to Mary's life, if it is a clue.

0:57:370:57:41

Only a few months after she died, William finally published

0:57:410:57:45

a collection of poems that he'd worked on for most of his life.

0:57:450:57:49

The earliest of them going back to his teens here in Stratford,

0:57:490:57:53

and they'll become the most famous poems about love in the language.

0:57:530:57:57

In fact, in the whole world.

0:57:570:57:59

And the poems are shot through with a sense of

0:58:000:58:04

the destructive power of time

0:58:040:58:08

and the redeeming power of love.

0:58:080:58:10

Now he learned how to say those things at school...

0:58:130:58:17

..but perhaps it was his mother who taught him how to feel them.

0:58:180:58:23

When you look at yourselves,

0:59:010:59:02

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