Richard Shakespeare Richard Shakespeare Richard Shakespeare (1490 – before 10 February 1561) was a husbandman of Snitterfield, Warwickshire, north-northeast of Stratford-upon-Avon, the father of John Shakespeare and the grandfather of William Shakespeare. He was most likely born around the Rowington/Wroxall area, about to the north in Warwickshire. He was the son of John Shakespeare (1460–1521), and the grandson of Thomas Shakespeare (1430–1511), his mother was Joan Shakespeare. Sometime before 1529, he removed to Snitterfield, where he was a tenant farmer until his death on land owned by Robert Arden, the father of Mary Arden, who married John, the poet's father. Richard Shakespeare
Reputation of William Shakespeare by William Henry Ireland. Ireland claimed to have found in a trunk a goldmine of lost documents of Shakespeare's including two plays, "Vortigern and Rowena" and "Henry II". These documents appeared to demonstrate a number of unknown facts about Shakespeare that shaped opinion of his works, including a Profession of Faith demonstrating Shakespeare was a Protestant and that he had an illegitimate child. Although there were many believers in the provenance of the Papers they soon came under fierce attack from scholars who pointed out numerous inaccuracies. "Vortigern" had only one performance at the Drury Lane Theatre before Ireland admitted