Mary Shakespeare Mary Shakespeare Mary Shakespeare, née Arden, (c. 1537–1608) was the mother of William Shakespeare. She was the daughter of Wilmcote gentleman farmer Robert Arden, a cadet of the Arden family prominent in Warwickshire since before the Norman Conquest. She was the youngest of eight daughters, and when her father died in 1556 she inherited land at Snitterfield and Wilmcote from her father as a dowry. The house was left to her stepmother Agnes Hill. Richard Shakespeare, the father of John Shakespeare, was a tenant farmer on land owned by her father in Snitterfield. As the daughter of Richard's landlord, she
Jane Arden (director) Jane Arden (director) Jane Arden (29 October 192720 December 1982) was a Welsh film director, actress, screenwriter, playwright, songwriter, and poet. Arden was born Norah Patricia Morris at 47 Twmpath Road, Pontypool, Monmouthshire. She studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, England, and began her career in the late 1940s on television and in the cinema. She appeared in a television production of "Romeo and Juliet" in the late 1940s, and then starred in two British crime films: "Black Memory" (1947) directed by Oswald Mitchell which provided South African-born actor Sid James with his first screen