Shakespeare's Library

Where did Shakespeare get his books?

Shakespeare's education has often been explained by Stratford Grammar School, but he has apparently read books in French, Spanish, and Italian, subjects not taught there. Moreover, books were relatively rare and sometimes expensive. How did he afford some of the books he read?

David Kathman explains his knowledge of modern languages by saying that he read books provided him by Richard Field. But neither Richard Field's publications nor those of the Vautrolliers, for whom Field originally worked, map very well with the specific books that Shakespeare quoted.

There were no public libraries in Elizabethan England, and the libraries of the major monasteries had been dispersed. By far the largest number of books were in the hands of the nobility, collectors such as Sir William Cecil, the colleges and universities, the Inns of Court, and Queen Elizabeth herself.

A large library in Elizabethan times was 1000 books. The largest known library in the period, Lord Lumley's, contained 7000 books. Sir William Cecil is known to have owned about 1800 books and manuscripts. Edward de Vere himself owned 600 books by the time he was 16. Books were expensive (the largest part of Sir Walter Raleigh's estate consisted of his 600 books). Books published abroad were even more of a luxury, since they were not usually imported in bulk, but were bought abroad.

The largest known library in or near Stratford contained 186 books, principally sermons and joke books. William Shakespeare of Stratford did not have access to the colleges or the Inns of Court--as a married man, he was not eligible to attend university. His best chance of reading extensively would have been in a nobleman's library.

• The library can be identified more closely if, as some critics suggest, Shakespeare owes a debt to Anglo-Saxon poetry, and specifically to Beowulf. At this period Beowulf existed only in a single manuscript copy, in the possession of Sir William Cecil. Lawrence Nowell was studying this unique "Nowell Codex" in the early 1560s, while he was tutoring Edward de Vere.
• Cecil's library also contained many of the sources that Shakespeare quotes.

Ovid's Metamorphoses, in both Latin and the English translation of Arthur Golding, is widely agreed to be the single largest influence on Shakespeare. Arthur Golding was Edward de Vere's uncle, and Golding was in the household and tutoring de Vere while he was translating the Metamorphoses.

Some of Shakespeare's sources were not translated before he read them. One of the most interesting of these is a Spanish text, Diana enamorada (Diana in Love), the continuation by Gil de Polo of Jorge de Montemayor's Diana. Unlike Montemayor's popular romance, Diana enamorada was not a bestseller. Only two copies from the 1500s currently exist in England, both originally published in Spain (Valencia, 1564; Saragossa, 1577). Spain and England were at war, so Spanish books were not regularly imported to England; the copy that Shakespeare read must have been bought abroad or specially imported.

It is possible that a member of the household staff, eager to learn, would be given access to a nobleman's library. It is less likely that he would be given access to a specially imported book, and far less likely that he would be allowed to read the Nowell Codex.

Finally, Shakespeare is known to have used the Geneva Bible. This translation of the Bible was by no means difficult to get, though it was unlikely to have been used in the recusant Shakespeare family of Stratford. By very good luck, however, Edward de Vere's own copy of the Geneva Bible has survived in the Folger Library. Many of the phrases that Shakespeare uses are marked.

• (See Roger Stritmatter's dissertation about this Bible, and David Kathman's comments.)

Biographical Stratford • Jonson's eulogy • Oxford's death • Biographical Oxford
Shakespeare's library • Shakespeare's travels • Shakespeare's experience
Dating the plays • Authorship timeline • "Theory of casual references"