The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl Page B
Authors: Charles Nicholl
Tags: Drama, Literary, General, Social Science, Historical, Biography & Autobiography, Literary Criticism, Shakespeare, Customs & Traditions, Cripplegate (London; England), Dramatists; English
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Suffolk, Hengrave Hall, but they were frequently in London. Their town-house was on Coleman Street, just round the corner from Marie’s lover and business partner Henry Wood. We see them in twin portraits by George Gower, commissioned in 1573 - he black bearded and high ruffed, she haughty and handsome with a tall plumed hat and a fur-collared gown. They were noted patrons of music, and had the madrigalist John Wilbye as their resident musician in Suffolk and London. 66
Was Elizabeth herself the ‘Madam Kitson’ of Forman’s note? As the wife of a knight she was correctly addressed as Lady Kitson, so Forman’s ‘Madam’ (= ‘My Lady’) would be appropriate. It would also have been the form naturally used by a Frenchwoman: ‘Madame’. But what about the ‘yellow’ hair? If Gower’s portrait of her is accurate, Lady Kitson’s hair was ginger or auburn, and by early 1598, when she was in her early fifties, she was most likely grey.
But Forman’s jotting does not necessarily mean that Madam Kitson had yellow hair. This was my immediate interpretation, together with a suspicion of lechery in Forman’s noting of the fact. It may rather mean that she wanted some yellow hair - in other words, a blond wig or hairpiece. The use of ‘hair’ or ‘hairs’ to mean a wig was common, as in ‘a yellow hair and another like black’ which the Queen received as New Year’s gifts from the Countess of Essex. 67 Or as in this bit of London repartee from Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600) -
MARGERY: Can’st thou tell where I may buy a good hair?
HODGE: Yes, forsooth at the poulterers in Gracious street.
MARGERY: Thou art an ungracious wag, perdy. I mean a false hair for my periwig. (3.4.47-50)
This would explain Forman’s apposition of Kitson’s name with Marie Mountjoy’s. Head-tires of the kind made by the Mountjoys often incorporated human hair, and the tiremaker’s skills included wigmaking. In Randall Cotgrave’s French dictionary of 1611, the skills are synonymous: he defines perruquière as ‘a woman who makes perriwigs or attires’. And it is also clear that blond hair was particularly prized in this respect. Shakespeare’s own references to female wigs envisage them as ‘golden’. In Sonnet 68 he writes of ‘golden tresses’ which ‘live a second life on second head’, and again, in The Merchant of Venice , ‘crisped snaky golden locks’ become ‘the dowry of a second head’ (3.2.92-5). Thomas Middleton refers to blond ‘periwigs’ worn by old courtiers, who ‘take it for a pride in their bald days to wear yellow curls on their foreheads’. Also apposite, though somewhat later, is an advertisement of 1663, in which a ‘perriwigge-maker’ announces that ‘anyone having long flaxen hayr to sell’ should ‘repayr unto him’. 68
This is an odd but I believe plausible interpretation of Forman’s puzzling little memorandum. Its nature is entrepreneurial. It names a supplier and a customer; it summarizes a potential little deal that will do a favour to both, and thus to Forman. The commodity in question is a quantity of blond hair - not quite the elixir of youth sought in his alchemical activities, but more immediately obtainable.
13
The me’nage
T he marvellous Forman material allows us a glimpse into the lives of the Mountjoys, and particularly of Marie Mountjoy, in the later 1590s. We hear something of the people with whom her life is entwined - the adulterous mercer, the pregnant maid, the sonneteer’s mistress, the runaway apprentice, the charismatic magicotherapist. We hear also those names floating out from the starry realm of wealth and courtly elegance to which anyone in Marie’s trade and position must aspire - Lady Hunsdon, whose servant Alice Floyd she knows; Lady Kitson, a potential customer in search of rejuvenating golden locks.
We note too a certain flurry that Marie brings with her. In that first consultation about the missing valuables she mentions three
Was Elizabeth herself the ‘Madam Kitson’ of Forman’s note? As the wife of a knight she was correctly addressed as Lady Kitson, so Forman’s ‘Madam’ (= ‘My Lady’) would be appropriate. It would also have been the form naturally used by a Frenchwoman: ‘Madame’. But what about the ‘yellow’ hair? If Gower’s portrait of her is accurate, Lady Kitson’s hair was ginger or auburn, and by early 1598, when she was in her early fifties, she was most likely grey.
But Forman’s jotting does not necessarily mean that Madam Kitson had yellow hair. This was my immediate interpretation, together with a suspicion of lechery in Forman’s noting of the fact. It may rather mean that she wanted some yellow hair - in other words, a blond wig or hairpiece. The use of ‘hair’ or ‘hairs’ to mean a wig was common, as in ‘a yellow hair and another like black’ which the Queen received as New Year’s gifts from the Countess of Essex. 67 Or as in this bit of London repartee from Dekker’s Shoemaker’s Holiday (1600) -
MARGERY: Can’st thou tell where I may buy a good hair?
HODGE: Yes, forsooth at the poulterers in Gracious street.
MARGERY: Thou art an ungracious wag, perdy. I mean a false hair for my periwig. (3.4.47-50)
This would explain Forman’s apposition of Kitson’s name with Marie Mountjoy’s. Head-tires of the kind made by the Mountjoys often incorporated human hair, and the tiremaker’s skills included wigmaking. In Randall Cotgrave’s French dictionary of 1611, the skills are synonymous: he defines perruquière as ‘a woman who makes perriwigs or attires’. And it is also clear that blond hair was particularly prized in this respect. Shakespeare’s own references to female wigs envisage them as ‘golden’. In Sonnet 68 he writes of ‘golden tresses’ which ‘live a second life on second head’, and again, in The Merchant of Venice , ‘crisped snaky golden locks’ become ‘the dowry of a second head’ (3.2.92-5). Thomas Middleton refers to blond ‘periwigs’ worn by old courtiers, who ‘take it for a pride in their bald days to wear yellow curls on their foreheads’. Also apposite, though somewhat later, is an advertisement of 1663, in which a ‘perriwigge-maker’ announces that ‘anyone having long flaxen hayr to sell’ should ‘repayr unto him’. 68
This is an odd but I believe plausible interpretation of Forman’s puzzling little memorandum. Its nature is entrepreneurial. It names a supplier and a customer; it summarizes a potential little deal that will do a favour to both, and thus to Forman. The commodity in question is a quantity of blond hair - not quite the elixir of youth sought in his alchemical activities, but more immediately obtainable.
13
The me’nage
T he marvellous Forman material allows us a glimpse into the lives of the Mountjoys, and particularly of Marie Mountjoy, in the later 1590s. We hear something of the people with whom her life is entwined - the adulterous mercer, the pregnant maid, the sonneteer’s mistress, the runaway apprentice, the charismatic magicotherapist. We hear also those names floating out from the starry realm of wealth and courtly elegance to which anyone in Marie’s trade and position must aspire - Lady Hunsdon, whose servant Alice Floyd she knows; Lady Kitson, a potential customer in search of rejuvenating golden locks.
We note too a certain flurry that Marie brings with her. In that first consultation about the missing valuables she mentions three
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