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Shakespeare and the Crown Inn, Oxford

• Message 1.Β 

  Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Friday, 9th September 2011

  Saw this in the local newspaper and thought it might be of interest,
  
  

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• Message 2

  , in reply to message 1.

  Posted by Temperance (U14455940) on Saturday, 10th September 2011

  
  Hi hereisabee (I still think your name is a Darwinian best!),
  
  Jonathan Bate, Stephen Greenblatt and Peter Ackroyd - all the really big boys in Shakespearean biographical studies - mention the Davenant/Shakespeare Oxford connection. Ackroyd confirms the story related in your Oxford Mail link - we know WS "habitually stopped at Oxford on his journeys between London and Stratford" - and there are *two* other sources besides the Aubrey reference.
  
  There is the diary of Thomas Hearne, an Oxford antiquary which states that Shakespeare "always spent some time at the Crown Tavern in Oxford kept by one Davenant". And then thirty years later Alexander Pope (who, as Ackroyd says, "could not have known of Hearne's diary") has the same story. Pope writes:
  
  "Shakespeare often baited at the Crown Inn or Tavern in Oxford, in his journey to and fro London. The landlady was a woman of great beauty and sprightly wit; and her husband, Mr John Davenant (afterwards Mayor of that city) a grave melancholy man, who as well as his wife used much to delight in Shakespeare's pleasant company."
  
  John and Jennet (Jane) Davenant were a London couple - Davenant was a wine-importer living in Maiden Lane - who had become good friends with WS. One contemporary states that Davenant was "an admirer and lover of plays and play-makers, especially Shakespeare." Mrs. D. was a lover of play-makers too. I've read somewhere (can't remember where) that Jane Davenant - a remarkable woman - was the inspiration ( with Elizabeth I) for Shakespeare's Cleopatra! The couple moved to Oxford in 1601 - they had lost six of their children and they hoped the cleaner air of Oxford would prove beneficial.
  
  William Davenant himself claimed to be WS's son, not just his godson - Hearne notes (in a bracket!!): "In all probability he (Shakespeare) got him."
  
  

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  , in reply to message 2.

  Posted by hereisabee (U2342191) on Saturday, 10th September 2011

  Thanks Temperance a very detailed reply, as always.

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