The Shakspaires of Trinity Lane: A Possible Shakespeare Life-Record

Abstract

Hereford Cathedral Library holds a fragmentary seventeenth-century letter addressed to a ‘Mrs Shakspaire’, concerning her husband’s dealings with a fatherless apprentice named John Butte or Butts. It also mentions that in the past the Shakspaires lived in ‘Trinity Lane’. This document has had very little attention since 1978. This essay transcribes the text and attempts to date it. It proposes that Trinity Lane is in London, and that this John Butt(s) is recorded, as a fatherless apprentice, in London in 1599 and 1607. Of the Shakespeares recorded in London, William Shakespeare is the only viable candidate to fit with the letter’s details, and moreover, the letter was bound within a book printed by the Shakespeares’ associate Richard Field. The essay also traces an adult John Butts (fl. 1614–1616) linked to Richard Burbage and George Wilkins. A final section re-examines the letter’s verso, apparently a reply written by or on behalf of Mrs Shakspaire. All this paints a picture of William and Anne Shakespeare together in London, and living, perhaps around 1599–1603, in Trinity Lane. It further suggests an Anne Shakespeare who is not absent from her husband’s London life, but present and engaged in his financial and social networks.