Mainly about answers to some of these 'Catholic' questions
Before I
embark on answers, I feel obliged to say that the answers only came slowly and
after much further reading and discussion during the last year or so with
authors who have grappled with the same problems. In brief, my current interim
answers are that all the questions on the page above were valid, that John
Cottam, Edmund Campion, the school in Douai and all other individuals and
places associated previously with Shakespeare will play a role in the 'final
biography' of the Bard. This will, however, require many more years of
research. I can only hope that I survive long enough to see some of the fruits
of this research by others. I already have a month by month biography of John,
Mary and William Shakespeare in my head and on my computer, but realise that
these would be far too controversial until I have published all the evidence
and proof (from recent discoveries by others). Be patient, Duxbury 'cousins',
but it will come. The main published background details came from the recent
explosion of 'Shakespeare Catholic ' literature.
Yes. Not
that I have been influenced by this in using any 'new' details to support my
conclusions, which had been reached long before I started reading in this area,
but as the only background story that made sense of what I had discovered
purely from re-examining the primary biographical and genealogical sources.
First was
the arrival of a book in my postbox called Shakespeare
and the Catholic Religion by Carol Curt Enos
just a year ago, via the kind intermediary of Sir Bernard de Hoghton. When I
read this I came to the same conclusion as when I first embarked on
'Shakespeare in Lancashire' literature. Here was someone approaching from a
completely different direction, but our findings fitted together like the
proverbial glove (one made by John Shakespeare?). Her work answered many of my
questions and puzzles and vice versa. She had started from Catholic
biographical and internal evidence and come to the conclusions that the
Lancashire episode was the main link between Shakespeare and the theatre, and
that research among the Cheshire Ardernes might provide interesting results. I
had started with the Lancashire episode and purely biographical and
genealogical evidence, which proved the Cheshire Arderne connection, and come
to the inevitable conclusion that the Shakespeare family must have been
Catholic. Yet again, two people's totally independent research had met in the
same places. We have spent many hours over the last year discussing where we
agree or agree to disagree and these points are now incorporated in my
Shakespeare book (to be).
Largely
head down and reading and writing away in any free time away from many family,
social and professional commitments, but also some very interesting contacts
with authors who came to similar Catholic conclusions long ago or recently. See
Conlan, Milward
and Hammerschmidt-Hummel, for starters.
Return to Helen Moorwood’s Shakespeare
Index
