In his later years Shakespeare began to collaborate-probably with George Wilkins in about 1608 on Pericles and with John Fletcher on The Two Noble Kinsmen, Henry VIII (or All Is True), and the lost play The History of Cardenio, all first performed around 1613. Wilkins was, on the face of it, an exceedingly unappealing character. He ran an inn and brothel and was constantly in trouble with the law-once for kicking a pregnant woman in the belly and on another occasion for beating and stamping upon a woman named Judith Walton. But he was also an author of distinction, writing plays successfully on his own-his Miseries of Enforced Marriage was performed by the King’s Men in 1607-and in collaboration. All that is known of his relationship with Shakespeare is that they were fellow lodgers for a time at the Mountjoy residence.
Fletcher was of a more refined background altogether. Fifteen years younger than Shakespeare, he was the son of a bishop of London (who had, among other distinctions, been the presiding cleric at the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots). Fletcher’s father was for a time a favorite of Queen Elizabeth’s, but after his first wife died he earned the queen’s displeasure with a hasty remarriage and was banished from court. He died in some financial distress.
Young Fletcher was educated at Cambridge. As a playwright-and indeed as a person-he was most intimately associated with Francis Beaumont, with whom he enjoyed a strikingly singular relationship. From 1607 to 1613 they were virtually inseparable. They slept in the same bed, shared a mistress, and even dressed identically, according to John Aubrey. During this period they cowrote ten or so plays, including The Maid’s Tragedy and the very successful A King and No King. But then Beaumont abruptly married, and the partnership just as abruptly ceased. Fletcher went on to collaborate with many others, notably Philip Massinger and William Rowley.
Nothing is known of the relationship between Shakespeare and Fletcher. It may well be that they worked separately, or it may be that Fletcher was given unfinished manuscripts to complete after Shakespeare’s retirement. Wells, however, thinks that the careful flow of the plays suggests they worked together closely.
The Two Noble Kinsmen, though almost certainly performed while Shakespeare was still alive, is unknown before 1634, when it was published with a title page attributing it jointly to Fletcher and Shakespeare. Henry VIII and Cardenio are also ascribed to Fletcher and Shakespeare jointly. Cardenio was based on a character in Don Quixote and was never published, it seems, though it was registered for publication in 1653 as being by “Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare.” A manuscript copy of the play is thought to have been held by a museum in Covent Garden, London, but unfortunately the museum went up in flames in 1808 and took the manuscript with it. Fletcher died in 1625 of the plague and was buried with-literally with-his fellow playwright and sometime collaborator Massinger. Today they lie in the chancel of Southwark Cathedral beside the grave of Shakespeare’s young brother Edmund.
Shakespeare may also have collaborated much earlier on Edward III, published anonymously in 1596. Some authorities think at least some of the play is Shakespeare’s, though the matter is much in dispute. Timon of Athens was probably written with Thomas Middleton. Stanley Wells suggests a date of 1605, while stressing that it is very uncertain. George Peele is also mentioned often as a probable collaborator on Titus Andronicus.
“Shakespeare became a different kind of writer as he got older-still brilliant, but more challenging,” Stanley Wells told me in an interview. “His language became more dense and elliptical. He became less inclined to consider the needs and interests of the traditional audience. The plays became less theatrical, more introverted. He was perhaps a bit out of fashion in his last years. Even now his later plays-Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus-are less popular than those of his middle period.”
His output was clearly declining in pace. He seems to have written nothing at all after 1613, the year the Globe burned down. But he did still evidently make trips to London. In 1613, he bought a house in Blackfriars for the very substantial sum of £140, evidently as an investment. Interestingly he made the purchase more complicated than necessary by taking out a mortgage that involved the oversight of three trustees-his colleague John Heminges, his friend Thomas Pope, and William Johnson, landlord of the famous Mermaid Tavern. (This is, incidentally, the only known connection Shakespeare had to that famous tavern, legend notwithstanding.) One consequence of making the purchase in this way was that it kept the property from passing to Shakespeare’s widow, Anne, upon his death. Instead it went to the trustees. Why Shakespeare would wish this, as so much else, can only be a matter for conjecture.
Chapter Eight. Death
IN LATE MARCH 1616, William Shakespeare made some changes to his will. It is tempting to suppose that he was unwell and probably dying. Certainly he appears not to have been himself. His signatures are shaky and the will bears certain signs of confusion: He could not evidently recall the names of his brother-in-law Thomas Hart or of one of Hart’s sons-though it is equally odd that none of the five witnesses supplied these details either. Why, come to that, Shakespeare required that many witnesses is a puzzle. Two was the usual number.
It was an unhappily eventful time in Shakespeare’s life. A month earlier his daughter Judith had married a local vintner of dubious character named Thomas Quiney. Judith was thirty-one years old and her matrimonial prospects were in all likelihood fading swiftly. In any case she appears to have chosen poorly, for just over a month after their marriage Quiney was fined 5 shillings for unlawful fornication with one Margaret Wheeler-a very considerable humiliation for his new bride and her family. Worse, Miss Wheeler died giving birth to Quiney’s child, adding tragedy to scandal.
As if this weren’t enough, on April 17 Will’s brother-in-law Hart, a hatter, died, leaving his sister Joan a widow. Six days later William Shakespeare himself died from causes unknown. Months don’t get much worse than that.
Shakespeare’s will resides today in a box in a special locked room at Britain ’s National Archives at Kew in London. The will is written on three sheets of parchment, each of a different size, and bears three of Shakespeare’s six known signatures, one on each page. It is a strikingly dry piece of work, “absolutely void of the least particle of that Spirit which Animated Our great Poet,” wrote the Reverend Joseph Greene of Stratford, the antiquary who rediscovered the will in 1747 and was frankly disappointed in its lack of affection.
Shakespeare left £ 350 in cash plus four houses and their contents and a good deal of land-worth a little under £1,000 all together, it has been estimated-a handsome and respectable estate, though by no means a great one. His bequests were mostly straightforward: To his sister he left £ 20 in cash and the use of the family home on Henley Street for the rest of her life; to each of her three children (including the one whose name he could not recall) he left £5. He also left Joan his clothes. Though clothing had value, it was extremely unusual, according to David Thomas, for it to be left to someone of the opposite sex. Presumably Shakespeare could think of no one else who might welcome it.
The most famous line in the document appears on the third page, where to the original text is added an interlineation, which says, a touch tersely: “I give unto my wife my second-best bed with the furniture” (that is, the bedclothes). The will does not otherwise mention Shakespeare’s widow. Scholars have long argued over what can be concluded about their relationship from this.