EARLY LONDON DAYS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 73, 30 March 1929, Page 16

EARLY LONDON DAYS

SHAKESPEARE'S START

Interest ill the claim that it was at Slioroditch Shakespeare laid the foundations of his fortune' will' be stimulated by a recent discovery, states the London "Daily -Telegraph." While looking over some ancient documents in his offlco at Wigan, Mr. J. G. Ueald, a solicitor, came across a seventeenth" century parchment deed relating to the conveyance of "the site of the late monastery or priory of Holhwell. near tho City of London, in the County or Middlesex." The parchment, which bears the date 1692, proceeds to refer also to ' the Ladye Garderie lying on the back side of the dormitory of the said monastery and all that garden called tho Dove House Gardene lying within the prescinds of thri said monastery and the Orchard call.ll the Corent Orchard, etc., "situate and being in tho Parish of St. Leonard, Shoreditch. Mr. Meakl has presented the deed to the borough of Shoreditch, and it is now in the custody of Mr. Thomas Green, the borough librarian. Shakespeare had been dead more than seventy years when this'legal con-

vcyanco was drawn up, but the link with tho dramatist rests in the fact that in ono corner of the site of tho Priory there stood,, from 15.77 to. 1598, tho theatre,'-' '■'tho -first London building specially devoted to the performance of plays." The' Curtain Theatre, close by, was built a little later. Shoreditch believes' that it was in these theatres.that Shakespeare made his first appearance as a player. "Southwark takes all the credit for Shakespeare," Mr. Green said, "but there is ono important point that'is always overlooked when so much is claimed for the Globe Theatre, at Bankside. Before the days of the Globe Shakespeare was in negotiation for the purchase of New Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, the largest house in Stratford. Shakespeare must have had substantial means at the time, and there is sound reason to believe that he had already laid the foundations of his fortune in Shoreditch." Mr. Green thinks it most likely that after the poaching incident in 1584, Shakespeare sought refuge in London, and took up his quarters in Shoreditch in order to be near the theatre, which was the property of James Burbage, the father of Kiehard Burbage, Shakespeare's actor friend.

In 1599 Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, who had come into possession of the theatre two years earlier on the .death of their father, were so harrassed by the lessor of the ground on which the building stood that they demolished it. With the aid of the players themselves they removed the wood and. timber to Southward, where they utilised the material in thi erection of the Globe, at Bauksidc. In this way Shoreditch claims priority over Southwark in . the possession of Shakes-peare-as a local celebrity. The site of |the theatre is commemorated by a tablet placed on a shop wall in Curtain road by tho London County Council. .