2 - Shakespeare’s Life, Times, and Stage

Summary

It is ironic that the Bard voted ‘Man of the Millennium’ in Britain has simultaneously been increasingly associated with a subversive Catholic minority in early modern England. This year has seen a growing tide of interest in Shakespeare’s connection with the culture of the Counter-Reformation. Biographical studies by Honan and Holden note that the theory that Shakespeare spent time in Lancashire in the service of the Catholic de Hoghton family is the most likely explanation for the so-called ‘lost years’. Manchester University Press has reprinted Honigmann’s Shakespeare: The ‘Lost Years’, the pioneering book that revived the theory in the mid-1980s. The new edition is very welcome, as this remains the best book-length collection and analysis of the evidence; it was frequently cited at Lancastrian Shakespeare: Region, Religion, Patronage and Performance, an international conference held at Hoghton Tower and Lancaster University (21–4 July 1999). Honigmann’s new edition contains a second preface, citing Richard Wilson’s recent research on the Lancashire theory. In ‘Shakespeare and the Jesuits: New Connections Supporting the Theory of the lost Catholic years in Lancashire’, Wilson draws striking links between John Cottom, schoolmaster at Stratford Grammar School, the de Hoghtons, and the Sodality of young Jesuit priests who were recruited by Edmund Campion.