Shakespeare in Retirement
Shakespeare in Semi-Retirement
Para1About 1610 or 1611, Shakespeare stopped living in London for much of the year and
semi-retired to Stratford-upon-Avon, perhaps because of failing health, or simply
because he was ready to lead the life of a comfortable country gentleman. Shakespeare
wrote or contributed to numerous plays during this period, including The Tempest, The Winter’s Tale, Henry VIII, and The Two Noble Kinsmen after moving back to his hometown. He was about 49 or 50 when he returned to his
hometown to live in the large home, New Place, he had purchased there about a dozen
years before.
Para2One momentous event occured after Shakespeare left London: The Globe burned down during
a performance of Henry VIII. Thomas Lorkin’s letter reporting the fire has survived. According to Heather Wolfe’s
entry on this topic on Shakespeare Documented:
The Globe went up in flames on June 29, 1613, a newsworthy event mentioned in numerous contemporary accounts. In his weekly letter to his former student Sir Thomas Puckering, Thomas Lorkin notes that it burned down during a performance of Shakespeare’s Henry VIII. His description is tucked between other gossip: the Earl of Southampton’s trip to a spa town in Germany, the publication of a controversial book by an English Catholic, and the rumors that Puckering himself had converted to Catholicism. (Wolfe)
Para3 Wolfe also notes some of Lorkin’s comments about the event itself,
No longer since than yesterday, while Burbage his company were acting at the Globe the play of Henry 8, and there shooting of certain chambers theatrical cannons in way of triumph, the fire catched and fastened upon the thatch of the house and there burned so furiously, as it consumed the whole house and all in less than two hours (the people having enough to do to save themselves). (Wolfe)
An Active Retirement
Para4Records also indicate that Shakespeare went to London periodically for business matters
and was present at Court on several occasions, as when he and Richard Burbage designed
an impresa (an emblem accompanied by a motto) for the Earl of Rutland. In 1611, he
was one of several citizens who contributed to the maintenance of highways in the
Stratford area. In 1612, he was in London, giving evidence in a civil suit brought
by a London tire-maker (a craftsman who created the elaborate headdresses worn by
noblewomen), Christopher Mountjoy, against a former apprentice.
Para5In the winter of 1614, he traveled to London in the company of his son-in-law, the
physician John Hall. They may have gone to inspect the theaters (perhaps even the
rebuilt Globe) or other London properties in which Shakespeare was still an investor,
or it may have been for medical reasons. Thomas Greene notes that during that visit,
“At my cousin Shakespeare coming yesterday to town I went to see him how he did.”
Perhaps Greene merely meant to visit his old landlord (hence the term of endearment,
cousin, which was used to describe close friends as well as relations in this time),
or perhaps Shakespeare was in declining health.
Shakespeare’s Works?
Para6After his return to Stratford, many fewer of Shakespeare’s works were published in
quarto, the small volumes produced by printers in which some of his previous plays
had been printed since the 1590s. Of the 45 quarto versions of 18 different plays
published before his death, only five were published after Shakespeare’s retirement.
This may mean that the King’s Men were holding back those playscripts so that Shakespeare
could work on them prior to publication. Some scholars speculate that he may have
been preparing his plays for publication, as Ben Jonson was. Jonson published his
Workes of Benjamin Jonson, a sort of collected works edition, in 1616, treating them as serious literature
rather than merely entertainment. Certainly, Shakespeare’s colleagues treated his
collected works as literature when they published them in folio form in 1623, seven
years after his death.
A Wedding and Some Scandal
Para7During the last year of his life, Shakespeare may also have been finalizing the arrangements
for the marriage of his younger daughter, Judith. In February 1616, just a few months
before her father’s death, Judith married Thomas Quiney, the son of a prominent Stratford
family. The bride was 31, while the groom was 27. In the period, the average age of
first marriage for women was 24, while it was 26 for men, so Judith had delayed marriage
well past the typical age for reasons unknown.
Para8Departing from normal practice, Judith and Thomas were married during Lent, a time
of religious observance before Easter, so that a special dispensation from a bishop
had to be obtained before a parish priest would perform a marriage. Lent was a season
of somber religious repentance and fasting, so it was not viewed by the Church of
England as suitable for weddings.
Para9The couple did not receive the necessary special permission, which someone reported
to the local religious authorities. Scholars presume the couple was in some haste
to marry because the groom had fathered a child with a local woman, Margaret Wheeler,
out of wedlock. Margaret and her child died during labor about a month after Judith
and Thomas’s wedding. Thomas Quiney was excommunicated from the Church of England
for this offense and he did public penance by paying a fine just days after his new
father-in-law died in 1616.
Key Print Sources
Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. W.W. Norton, 2004.
Greer, Germaine. Shakespeare’s Wife. Bloomsbury Press, 2007.
Potter, Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Key Online Sources
Bearman, Robert.
Parish Register Entry Recording Judith Shakespeare and Thomas Quiney’s Marriage.Shakespeare Documented. The Folger Shakespeare Library, https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/node/515..
Best, Michael.
A Country Gentleman.Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/retirement/countrygent.html.. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Thomas Quiney and Judith Shakespeare Summoned to Appear at the Bishop’s Court on their Citation for Having Married in Lent Without Securing a License.Shakespeare Documented. The Folger Shakespeare Library, https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/thomas-quiney-and-judith-shakespeare-summoned-appear-bishop-s-court-their-citation.
Wolfe, Heather
Letter Describing the Burning of the Globe During a Performance of Henry VIII..Shakespeare Documented. The Folger Shakespeare Library, https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/resource/document/letter-describing-burning-globe-during-performance-henry-viii..
Prosopography
Kate McPherson
Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley
University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity
in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities
Institute,
Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom,at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.
Leah Hamby
Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed
several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from
Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her
other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.
Michael Best
Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the
Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the
ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery,
a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on
Electronic Shakespeares,and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.
Navarra Houldin
Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual
remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major
in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary
research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They
are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice
Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.
Orgography
LEMDO Team (LEMD1)
The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project
director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators,
encoders, and remediating editors.
University of Victoria (UVIC1)
https://www.uvic.ca/Metadata
| Authority title | Shakespeare in Retirement |
| Type of text | Critical |
| Publisher | University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform |
| Series | Early Modern England Encyclopedia |
| Source |
By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
|
| Editorial declaration | This document uses Canadian English spelling |
| Edition | Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a |
| Sponsor(s) |
Early Modern England EncyclopediaAnthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
|
| Encoding description | Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines |
| Document status | published, peer-reviewed |
| Funder(s) |
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University |
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