"Nearl J Icarus" <nj_toothenbecker@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:Wr7yd.57804$Jk5.11456@lakeread01...
In article <svFxd.5265$ef5.3741@fe1.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
salesEXTRACT@anasoft.co.uk says...
I find this page really interesting:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htmGoing back 2k years, you won't find direct evidence of anybody. Most of
the
information we have about Billy Shakespeare is from his will.
Verification,
none.
Are you joking?
There are Baptism records for William, his sister Judith, his brother
Gilbert (d. 1612), his brother Edmund (1580 - 1607), his brother Richard
(died 1613), and his sister Joan. Also for his father John Shakespeare.
William's Baptism was performed Wednesday, April the 26th, 1564. Since it
was common practice, although not always true, to Baptize on the third day
after birth, William's birthday was most likely Sunday, April the 23rd,
1564. According to the Baptism, and other church Records, William's mother
was Mary Arden, who married John Shakespeare in 1557.
A bond certificate dated November the 28th, 1582, reveals that an eighteen
year old William married the twenty-six and pregnant Anne Hathaway. Barely
seven months later, they had his first daughter, Susanna. Anne never left
Stratford, living there her entire life.
Baptism records show that William’s first child, Susanna was baptized in
Stratford sometime in May, 1583. Baptism records again reveal that twins
Hamnet and Judith were born in February 1592. Hamnet, William's only son
died in 1596, just eleven years old. Hamnet and Judith were named after
William’s close friends, Judith and Hamnet Sadler. William's family was
unusually small in a time when families had many children to ensure parents
were cared for in later years despite the very high mortality rates of
children and also their life expectancy in the 1500s.
Evidence that the great Bard was also a poet comes from his entering his
first poem Venus and Adonis in the Stationers’ Registrar on the 18th of
April, 1593. The playwright registered his second poem The Rape of Lucrece
by name on the 9th of May, 1594.
Records with the College of Heralds, reveal William applied for a coat of
arms. Despite a lack of proof, he was granted his request. Later in 1599 he
applied for his mother’s coat of arms to be added to his own.
Court records of a dispute between William's landlord Christopher Mountjoy
and his son-in-law Stephen Belott confirm that William was living in London
around 1601. The playwright's name is recorded in the court records when he
gave testimony in 1612 concerning Mountjoy and Belott’s dispute.
Interestingly, in 1601, he bought roughly 107 acres of arable land with
twenty acres of pasturage for 20 pounds in Old Stratford.
1605 when he purchased leases of real estate near Stratford. This investment
of some four hundred and forty pounds doubled in value and earned him 60
pounds income each year. Some academics speculate that this investment gave
the Bard the time he needed to write plays uninterrupted and we know that he
was indeed thought of as a businessman in the Stratford area... This
purchase was recorded for tax purposes, and to register for the deed.
Yet another record confirming the Bard's existence was John Comb’s will
which bequeathed to the Bard the princely sum of just five pounds.
And, of course, the evidence of his will as you've mentioned.