The Herbal Bed - Historical Context

Historical Context

The play derives from a real court case. In June 1613, a man named John Lane (1590-1640), aged 23, accused Susanna of adultery with a Rafe Smith at the house of John Palmer. He claimed she had caught "the running of the raynes ", a term used for gonorrhea, from Smith. Smith was a 35-year-old haberdasher, and the nephew of Shakespeare's close friend Hamnet Sadler. On 15 July the Halls brought suit for slander against Lane in the Consistory Court at Worcester. Robert Whatcott, who three years later witnessed Shakespeare's will, testified for the Halls, but Lane failed to appear. Lane was found guilty and excommunicated.

Lane may have had a grudge against Hall. His later activities indicate that he may have been an opponent of the Puritan cause in Stratford. Hall was a notable Puritan and supporter of the local vicar, Thomas Wilson, against whom Lane would later provoke a riot. It is thus possible that Lane had political motives in defaming Susanna. However, he was regularly in trouble with the law. In 1619 he was tried for the rioting and for libelling the vicar and local aldermen. He was also accused in Stratford Church court of being an alcoholic.

In the play the principal witness Robert Whatcott does not appear in the court scene, but is named as the author of the letter to Hall outlining Lane's slanders. Lane was a member of a local gentry family, but was not studying medicine with Hall. The suggestion in the play that Shakespeare himself may be suffering from a venereal disease in his last years has been made by some biographers. Katherine Duncan-Jones argues that he suffered from syphilis. However, there is no evidence that he was seriously ill in 1613. Indeed in November 1614 Shakespeare was in London on business for several weeks with Hall.