Polesworth History

Shakespeare — Educated at Polesworth?:
Part 4

Other evidence for the theory about Shakespeare and Polesworth

Gray makes points about Shakespeare knowing much about Warwickshire but never mentioning Stratford. [10]

Outside London there is no part of England with which Shakespeare's contemporaries in drama show any familiarity... The only place in South Warwickshire of which Shakespeare makes direct and certain mention is Barton-on-Heath. [11]

At Polesworth there was a likely patron, the availability of education, and Shakespeare's knowledge of places "to London" seems to be of those places along the Watling Street. Also, there is some further evidence that some places known to Shakespeare and used in his plays are nearby to Polesworth. Polesworth was at the centre of the forest of Arden. The forest and parks and deer could have been familiar to him from Polesworth. More striking, as has been said, is that the road to London in his plays goes through the places he would travel through from Polesworth, not from Stratford. Also, though Stratford is not mentioned in his plays, "Wincote Ale" is. Wincote might easily be Wincott near Stratford, but equally there is a Wincott (now Wilnecote) near Polesworth.

Finally, Gray writes:

Nobody seriously disputes that Shakespeare was born at Stratford, and I am not at all disposed to deny that he was familiar with the neighbourhood during some part of his boyhood and early married life... Shall we say that the man [...],/span> who talked of Coventry, Sutton Coldfield and less likely places in the shire, to the neglect of the town of his nativity and abode, was anyone rather than Stratford William? [12]

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References:

1. A Chapter in the early life of Shakespeare, Arthur Gray (1926), page 61.
2. Gray — page 88.
3. Gray — page 61f.
4. Gray — page 89.
5. Gray — page 89.
6. Gray — page 89f.
7. Gray — page 93.
8. Gray — page 54f. Here, Gray draws attention to the necessity for education and patronage for any author in the late sixteenth and seventeenth century. Most authors of the period were from university towns or Inns of Court, though both Kyd and Jonson apparently did not proceed to a University. They were taught at London schools. Certainly, he would have required both an education and a patron not available to him at Stratford, Gray suggests.
9. Gray — page 56f.
10. Gray — page 11.
11. Gray — page 44.
12. Gray — page 12.

These notes are reproduced with the kind permission of Father Wells. © Fr. P. A. Wells, 1998.

© 1998-2012 A. Craig and The Polesworth Society.