Shakespeare — Educated at Polesworth?:
Part 3
More about the literary connections of Henry Goodere
Gray offers a view of the extent of Henry Goodere's literary connections. First, he mentions that at Bramcote Hall, which is in the parish of Polesworth, the chronicler Raphael Holinshed was steward. He died there in 1578. Gray says: "Possibly he was known to the two pages, Drayton and hakespeare." [4]
More likely his two stout volumes lay on some window seat in Polesworth Hall, and from them Drayton drew matter for his Heroical Epistles (1596) and Shakespeare for his early historical play: but it was the second edition of the Chronicles, published in 1586, that supplied Shakespeare with materials for his later Histories. [5]
It is likely that Thomas Lodge, whose story of Rosalynde supplied the plot of As You Like It, was a visitor at Polesworth Hall at a time when Drayton, but not Shakespeare, was there... Robert Burton was born in 1577 at Lidley, a small place in Leicestershire, just outside the Warwickshire border... Speaking of sites suitable for gentleman's mansions he mentions Polesworth "among the places best to me known, upon the river Anker in Warwickshire." [6]
Pooley Hall, also in Polesworth, in Shakespeare's day was home of Sir Thomas Cockaine. He died in 1592, having published books, and his grandson, another Thomas, came to live there. Thomas' wife, Anne, corresponded with John Donne. Whilst Sir Henry Goodere wrote nothing himself, Dugdale [Dungdale's Antiquities of Warwickshire] says that he was "a Gentleman much accomplisht and of eminent note in the Countie while he lived." [7] It seemed that Donne visited Polesworth about Easter, 1613.
Goodere was also a friend of Ben Jonson and also of Henry Holland. If John Shakespeare was looking for a place for his talented son to be educated, it may be that he was put into the care of Henry Goodere. Certainly, William Shakespeare did not have the advantage of education in University towns, or high connections at Court. [8] It seems likely, therefore, that he would need to be introduced in London as the protege of an influential and respected patron. Henry Goodere could easily have been such a patron, introducing William Shakespeare in London possibly in the summer of 1586. Gray writes:
Some introduction to London and some support when he got there I not doubtfully conclude that Shakespeare had. It could only come from a Warwickshire patron, and the patron must have had sufficient knowledge of the abilities and promise of his protege to encourage the venture and to open his purse-strings. [9]