Shakespeare in Warwickshire

Covering a bit more territory than Edgar I. Fripp's 1922 Shakespeare's Stratford, Eccles’s 1961 book covers the entire shire of the bard’s family starting with his ancestors the Shakespeares and Ardens in the area and continues on for a few generations after William, the actor, playwright and

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theater producer’s death. Relying on the existing court and property records, Professor Eccles’s work consists of many accounts of who sued whom for what, and the legal difficulties that the Shakespeare family, relations, and their neighbors were involved with for several decades in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, as well as their purchase and sale of real estate and other goods.

This makes this a somewhat drier read than Fripp, since Eccles sticks strictly to the record, reading very little into it, and only speculating when he is unsure of the facts. Part of the difficulty and uncertainty after several centuries have passed is non-standardized spelling and how common many of the first names and surnames were used and reused in the shire during this period.

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