'Shakespeare's Bawdy Court'
Ben Langston · Notes and Queries · 2010
ONE of the major Shakespeare discoveries of the last half-century was some church court records which reveal that the poet’s elder daughter, Susanna, failed to receive Easter communion on 20 April 1606. These had been missed previously because a precious document found its way to Knole in 1674 when a Sackville acquired the manor of Stratford. It is now held at the Centre for Kentish Studies in Maidstone, courtesy of Lord Sackville. A chance discovery was announced by Hugh A. Hanley in an article published in the TLS on 21 May 1964. E. R. C. Brinkworth’s Shakespeare and the Bawdy Court of Stratford (1972) provided a ‘calendar’, effectively an inaccurate transcript with bits of dog Latin translated. Most of the twenty-odd cases of ‘recusancy’ in 1606 were dismissed without further action being taken against those cited, including Susanna Shakespeare, who went on to marry Protestant ‘Doctor’ John Hall. Dismissal was indicated by adding ‘dismissa’ to an entry, which Brinkworth gives as ‘dismissed’. Some cited were ‘similarly dealt with’ in Brinkworth’s phrase or ‘similiter similiter’ in the original. The reason for supposing that Susanna was a Catholic is that the phrase refers back to the case of old neighbours, Hamnet and Judith Sadler, who had been in trouble before. Because they did not answer their summons in May 1606, matters were to be dealt with at the next court. Thanks to Hanley and Brinkworth, it is generally assumed that this ought to have happened in Susanna’s case too, although no fresh entry was made when the court met in December. To account for the anomaly, Richard Wilson in Secret Shakespeare (2004) suggests the poet himself bribed the vicar to let her off, adding, ‘As in so much else of this kind we simply do not know.’ Though these are wise words, mysteries can be of our own making.