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
Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship "Alias Shakespeare," argued that in 1607 William Barksted, a minor poet and playwright, implies in his poem "Mirrha the Mother of Adonis" that Shakespeare was already deceased. Shakespeare scholars explain that Sobran has simply misread Barksted’s poem, the last stanza of which is a comparison of Barksted’s poem to Shakespeare’s "Venus and Adonis", and has mistaken the grammar also, which makes it clear that Barksted is referring to Shakespeare’s "song" in the past tense, not Shakespeare himself. This context is obvious when the rest of the stanza is included. Against the Oxford theory are several references to Shakespeare, later than