Tight bard!
SHAKESPEARE WAS "NOT a nice chap," claims an Oxford Professor in her new book.
Katherine Duncan-Jones, of Somerville, concludes in Ungentle Shakespeare - out next month - that the famous playwright was a bit of a scrooge when it came to money matters. She produces evidence that the Bard was a tax-dodger who chased debtors through the courts, seeking extortionate interest for the privilege. Records suggest that he neglected - for whatever reasons - to pay a tax for the benefit of abandoned babies, the old and the infirm.
But this tight-fistedness was not simply ruthless commercial activity, for Will's reluctance to part with his cash extended to his own family. A preserved will shows that wife Anne had run up debts borrowing from a local farm worker, suggesting that Shakespeare kept her short.
Further, there is evidence that he was guilty of unapologetic snobbery.
But Duncan-Jones' work has not been received well by all. Chairman of the Shakespeare Birthday Trust, Professor Stanley Wells, accused the Somerville Fellow of being "provocative". He said: "We don't know what the man was really like - we can only guess," adding: "He was a man of his day. We can't make a moral judgment."
3rd May 2001