| Simon Forman's Diary | |
Renaissance records of Shakespeare's plays in performance are exceedingly scarce. However, those few contemporary accounts that have survived provide brief yet invaluable information about a handful of Shakespeare's dramas. They give us a sense of what the play-going experience was like while Shakespeare was alive and involved in his own productions, and, in some cases, they help us determine the composition dates of the plays. Of all the records of performance handed down to us, none is more significant than the exhaustive diary of a doctor named Simon Forman, from which we obtain lengthy descriptions of early productions of four of Shakespeare's plays: Macbeth, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, and Richard II.
Dr. Simon Forman
Simon Forman was born on December 30, 1552, in the town of Quidhampton, near Salisbury. He attended the Salisbury grammar school, and his experiences would have been very similar to those of young William Shakespeare who attended school in nearby Stratford. The following is an autobiographical account of Simon's school years:
When Simon was almost eight years of age, in those days before the soldiers came from Newhaven, which was about the year of our Lord 1563 that the plague began in Salisbury, there was a certain minister named William Rydot alias Rydar, that by his trade and occupation was a cobbler. But after Queen Mary's days when the law did turn, he was made a minister and so withal became a schoolmaster and teacher of children. He was a man of some fifty years, mean of stature, and a blackgrom Sir [a poor parson]. He could read English well, but he could [know] no more Latin than the single accidence, and that he learned of his two sons that went daily to a free school.
This parson, when the plague began, fled from Salisbury for fear thereof, and came to dwell at the priory of St. Giles, near unto the father of this Simon: to whom this Simon was put to school at Michaelmas. Where he learned his letters. When he came to learn 'In the name of the Father' etc., because his capacity could not understand the mystery of spelling, he prayed his master he might not go to school no more, because he should never learn it. But his said master beat him for it, which made him the more diligent to his book. After some days, when he had pondered thereon well and had the reason thereof, he learned it. After that his master never beat him for his book again. He profited so well that in one year or little more he had learned his single accidence and his rules clean out...After this he was put to the free school in the Close of Salisbury with one Doctor Bowles, which was a very furious man, with whom he went to school some two years.
On New Year's Eve of 1563, Simon's father died suddenly. His pitiless mother, who, by Simon's own account beat him repeatedly, forced him to leave school and take a job with Matthew Commin, a local merchant of cloth, rosin, salt, and herbal medicine. From Commin Simon learned "the knowledge of all wares and drugs, and how to buy and sell; and grew so apt and had such good fortune that in short time his master committed all to his charge".
After ten years of working with Matthew Commin, Simon left for Oxford to live with his cousins and resume his education. But Simon was unhappy at Oxford and quickly returned to Salisbury to accept a teaching position. For over six years Simon taught school in and around Salisbury, and, while his occupation paid his bills, it left him deeply unfulfilled. However, in 1579, Simon found his true vocation. He writes, "this year I did prophesy the truth of many things which afterwards came to pass...the very spirits were subject unto me". Thus Simon devoted himself to the study and practice of "physic and magic". Unable to find the resources needed to facilitate his new occupation in the little towns around Salisbury, Simon moved to London. "Forman's move to London was the decisive step in his career: he could not have become the well-known figure he did if he had remained in Salisbury. In spite of the hardships he endured in the first years and the disadvantage of having no connections, the opportunities that opened out were immensely greater. And on both fronts, in magic as well as physic and surgery. The opportunities of practising the former were restricted in a provincial town; in Elizabethan London they were unlimited" (Rowse 39).
Now a fully competent doctor by the standards of the day, Simon, unlike most of the other doctors in the capital, decided to stay in London during the plagues of 1592 and 1594 to help the devastated masses. He saved many lives and acquired a reputation as a courageous man and excellent physician. His experiences treating plague victims led to his publication, Discourses on the Plague, in 1595. Simon's success, however, caught the attention of the Royal College of Physicians in London. They were outraged at Simon's alternative healing practices (as he used his "magical potions" to help patients) and his lack of proper medical training. Upon a rigorous examination, the College found Simon's knowledge of anatomy and medicine sorely inadequate. His answers prompted "great mirth and sport among the auditors". Simon was fined and was banned from practicing medicine in London. When Simon disobeyed the College nine months later by prescribing a potion to a man that died soon after, Simon was committed to prison. His disputes with the College of Physicians dragged on for almost seven years, until he was finally granted a proper license by Cambridge University in 1603.
On July 22, 1599, Simon wed seventeen year-old Jane Baker, a girl renting a room in Simon's house. Simon had never been content with just one woman, and, sadly, marriage "did not make much difference to Forman's way of life, except that he had an inexperienced girl now as mistress of the house; he continued to be master" (Rowse 93).
Although Simon continued to write scores of books and papers on the subjects of medicine and astrology until his death, after 1601 we have very few detailed records of his personal activities. We know that he continued to see patients until the very end, treating them with his unique combination of "physic and magic". The events surrounding Simon's death are very well documented by another astrologer, William Lilly. Lilly's report tells us that, one warm Sunday afternoon in September of 1611, Simon, with what would be his last prophesy, told his wife that he would die the following Thursday night. And, sure enough, "[M]onday came, all was well. Tuesday came, he was not sick. Wednesday came, and still he was well: with which his impertinent wife did much twit him in the teeth. Thursday came, and dinner was ended, he very well. He went down to the waterside, and took a pair of oars to go to some buildings he was in hand with in Puddle-dock. Being in the middle of the Thames, he presently fell down, only saying, 'Am impost, an impost', and so died."
Simon Forman was dead, but his name remained foremost in the minds of the citizens of London due to a posthumous scandal involving Simon and his former client, Lady Essex. Lady Essex was on trial in 1613, accused of attempting to poison her lover, Sir Thomas Overbury. During the testimony, lawyers hurled accusations at Simon, claiming that he had given Lady Essex the potion with which she plotted to kill Overbury. Simon's reputation was severely tarnished.
While Simon Forman's life is intriguing, it is his diary entries that are of ultimate importance to Shakespearean scholars because they contain information on theatrical performances at the Globe in 1610 and 1611.
