[MUSIC] This is Stratford-upon-Avon, where William Shakspere was born, raised a family, bought the second largest house in town, and died. The author William Shakespeare grew sufficiently famous in the 23 years from his first publication to Shakspere's death to merit numerous mentions by other writers, impersonal though they may be. Though we know Shakspere had temporary lodgings in London, his permanent home was in Stratford, and we can sometimes trace his presence through small-scale court cases. A writer may be secretive, but famous writers are rarely entirely unnoticed by their communities. It seems reasonable, therefore, to consider what people in Stratford-upon-Avon or connected to it knew. Let's look first at William Camden. Camden was the era's most famous historian. You've heard his name mentioned before as Ben Jonson's former tutor and as King of Arms, in which position he was partially responsible for granting the coat of arms to John Shakspere in 1599. Camden was acquainted with Stratford-upon-Avon. In 1600 he attended the funeral of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecote, bearing Lucy's coat of arms in the funeral procession. Charlecote is less than five miles from Stratford-upon-Avon. Camden was good friends with Sir George Carew, Earl of Totnes, who from 1580 lived at Clopton, only a mile from Stratford center. They had been at the same Oxford college together, and it is likely he stayed with Carew when he attended Sir Thomas Lucy's funeral. Camden, knowing Stratford-upon-Avon personally, had good reason to remember his granting of arms to the Shakspere family because, as we've seen, his longstanding critic Ralph Brook, the York Herald, in 1602 accused Camden and Garter King of Arms Sir William Dethick of 23 cases of "elevating base persons and assigning devices already in use" including "Shakespeare ye player", whom we've determined can only mean William. Camden was forced to defend his decision. Three years later, in his book Remains Concerning Britain, Camden listed 11 writers of his time whom he thought would be admired by future generations. Six of them were playwrights: Ben Johnson, George Chapman, John Marston, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, and William Shakespeare. So Camden was aware of the brilliance of the author William Shakespeare, and having friends in Stratford and having personally granted arms to their family, he was aware of the Stratford Shaksperes. Yet when the sixth edition of his book Britannia was published two years after that, and in all subsequent editions, even long after Shakespeare's death, the entry for Stratford-upon-Avon stated that the town owed "all the beauty that it hath to two men there bred and brought up. Namely, John of Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, who built the Church, and Sir Hugh Clopton, Mayor of London, who over Avon made a stone bridge."" These are people who created the beauty of Stratford-upon-Avon for its architecture. Still Camden had room to follow this by noting a famous writer of the area, had he so wished. Elsewhere in Britannia, he noted that Sir Philip Sidney had a home in Kent. But of notable current residents of the Stratford area, he mentioned only his friend Sir George Carew, whom he was keen to name, "for that he is a most affectionate lover of venerable antiquity." After describing him, he says there is nothing (and no one) else of memorable note in the area, and moves on to Worcestershire. It seems likely therefore that William Camden made no connection between William Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon and the famous author he admired. Since he noted in his diary the deaths of Samuel Daniel and Richard Burbage, but not William Shakespeare, it seems possible that his friend Carew was equally unaware of the connection. Carew would surely have informed him had he been aware that the famous author praised in Camden's Remains Concerning Britain was a near neighbor, owner of the next largest house in Stratford after his own. This does not mean Shakspare of Stratford was not the author of the works. The grant of arms had been in the name of his father John. William Shakespeare was not an uncommon name; we know of two other William Shakespeares in that era who lived in the local area, including one who drowned in the river Avon, and there were many more across the country. Shakespeare presumably spent a good proportion of his time in London rather than Stratford, and perhaps he was a especially secretive about his activities. Nevertheless, Camden's omissions count towards the sizable tally of missing personal testimony. This might be considered particularly interesting given Camden's relationship with Ben Jonson. Jonson, the author of the Poet-Ape epigram, was a pupil of Camden's at Westminster School, and the two became lifelong friends. Another friend of Camden's was the Warwickshire poet and playwright Michael Drayton. We'll look at what Drayton had to say about Shakespeare in the next lecture. [MUSIC]
