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Early Modern England Encyclopedia
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About 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
One momentous event occured after Shakespeare left London: The Globe burned down during a performance of
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(Wolfe)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 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
Records 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.
In 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.
After 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
During 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.
Departing 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.
The 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.