I live in Canterbury. It’s not the only English city
overflowing with history but it is a compact little circle, with plenty of
Norman, medieval and Tudor features sitting atop its Roman streets. Until
fairly recently, I used to teach English in a grammar school set in fields
overlooking the cathedral. I often used my location to inject a bit of colour
into my lessons, encouraging small boys to picture Chaucer’s pilgrims walking
up the present day high street to the Checker of the Hope Inn, which is now a
sweet shop, or Christopher Marlowe being born on the site of the new shopping
centre. For a few years, I taught Hamlet for AS-level coursework, spending
whole days acting and analysing imagery, context and the conventions of
tragedy. Imagine my surprise then, when I was researching the history of my
street in the sixteenth century and found that it had a direct influence on
Shakespeare’s portrayal of the death of Ophelia.
I live off a long, wide road called Wincheap, or
Wine chepe, as it was in the medieval period when merchants gathered there to
sell their imported wines. It begins opposite the Norman Castle and passes out
of the old city walls for about a mile before it reaches the Thanington area.
The manor there was owned by the prominent local Hales family, whose patterns
of fertility and childbirth I was studying, when I uncovered an interesting
anecdote about Sir James Hales.
Born around 1500, the son of John Hales, MP for the
city, James had prospered under the regime of Henry VIII and Edward VI,
becoming a judge and Baron of the Exchequer. However, as a devout Protestant,
he had refused to convert to Catholicism under Mary and fell foul of Bishop
Gardiner, who had him imprisoned. James appears to have been a volatile and
melancholy character; his misfortune led him to try and commit suicide with a
knife whilst in the Tower. By August 1554, he had been released and was staying
with his nephew at the Thanington Manor when he succeeded in killed himself by
lying face-down in the river. This branch of the Stour now runs alongside a
path popular with walkers and cyclists, along which I had walked on the very day
that I later discovered James’ fate.
....and more Stour
Hales’ death prompted a famous court case. His
widow, Margaret, attempted to regain some of his property, which according to
sixteenth century legal practice, would have been forfeit in the case of James
taking his own life. Bizarrely, the argument turned on whether the “felony” had
occurred before Hales’ death or afterwards. In 1554, the coroner had ruled that
his death was a criminal act but the case dragged on until 1562, when the
ruling finally went against Margaret. The lawyer Sir Edmund Plowden published a
full report of the case in 1571, so it is likely that Shakespeare saw his
version of this infamous struggle. It appears to have crept into the
conversation of two incidental characters in one of his best known plays.
At the start of act five, two “clowns” debate the
legal question of suicide. This is prompted by the death of Hamlet’s beloved
Ophelia, whom, we understand, was “clambering to hang” the “fantastic garlands”
she had made on a willow tree growing over a brook. When the branch broke and
she fell, her heavy garments weighed her down and, driven to madness by
Hamlet’s murder of her father, was “incapable of her own distress.” One clown
tells us she is to have a Christian burial but the other argues that this is
contrary to the contemporary notion that to take one’s own life was
“self-murder,” thus excluding the culprit from burial in consecrated ground or
receiving funeral rites. Then follows an odd little speech explaining that it
is one thing if a man goes to water to drown himself and quite another if the
water comes to him. This is almost word for word what the inquest ruled in the
case of Canterbury’s James Hales.
When teaching Hamlet, I always found this scene
strange. I can accept the juxtaposition of the jaunty little humour with the
morbidity of Ophelia’s funeral; it’s a necessary outlet from all the intense
passion. But this little section of dialogue seemed to relate to something so
specific and sit oddly with the rest of the scene, that I concluded that there
was simply something I was missing. Now I know what it was.
.... and the final piece of Stourage!
As we walked home from town beside the river Stour
this Saturday, the “glassy stream” was peaceful. There were indeed trees, if
not willows, growing aslant the brook, reflecting their “hoar leaves” in its
clear waters and nettles and daisies growing alongside. There were also
teenagers on bikes, high speed trains rattling alongside and toddlers playing
pooh sticks. Strange to think that almost five hundred and fifty years before, one
man’s act of despair here could have inspired one of the greatest tragic scenes
in early modern drama.
This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post on May 13, 2013
This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post on May 13, 2013
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