As Shakespeare’s reputation increased in the early 1600s, he became the subject of gossip. One of the most famous tales involving Shakespeare circulated among law students, recorded on 13 March 1602 in the diary of John Manningham:
Upon a time when Burbidge played Richard III there was a citizen grew so far in liking with him that, before she went from the play, she appointed him to come that night unto her by the name of Richard the Third. Shakespeare, overhearing their conclusion, went before, was entertained and at his game ere Burbidge came. Then, message being brought that Richard the Third was at the door, Shakespeare caused return to be made that William the Conqueror was before Richard the Third.
This is merely gossip, however, so it cannot be taken as fact. It does demonstrate that Shakespeare was famous enough in his own time for people to be writing down scandalous stories about him, however.
Another legend reports that Shakespeare became lovers with the wife of the proprietor of the Crown Tavern in Oxford. The legend claims that on one of his frequent stops between Stratford and London (sometime in June or July 1605), he fathered her fourth son, William. William Davenant was born in 1606 and went on to be a famous theater entrepreneur who collaborated with Ben Jonson in the mid-17th century. He publicly claimed to be Shakespeare’s illegitimate son, but there is no substantive evidence to demonstrate his claim.
Biographer John Aubrey (1626–1697), who personally knew the Davenant family, records that William Davenant when he was pleasant over a glass of wine with his most intimate friends
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It is perhaps worth noting that William Shakespeare does not mention William Davenant in his will, where he does make bequests to all his legitimate children.
Historian and conspiracy theorist Simon Stirling supports the view that Davenant was Shakespeare’s son, drawing on various pieces of circumstantial evidence. He reports that the 17th century poet Thomas Carew referred to them both as we of the adulterate mixture (So, oft the bastard nobler fortune meets, / Than the dull Issue of the lawfull sheets).
Stirling also notes a 1655 poem that puns on Davenant in relation to Avon, the river that flows through Shakespeare’s hometown. These bits of poetry are far from conclusive indicators.
The rumor about Davenant’s parentage persisted into the 19th century, when novelist Sir Walter Scott included the incident in
Why we are said to have one ofShakespeare’s descendants among us—Sir William D’AvenantIt seems that his mother was a good-looking, laughing, buxom mistress of an inn between Stratford and London, at which Will Shakespeare often quartered as he went down to his native town; and that out of friendship and gossipred relationship between two persons , as we say in Scotland, Will Shakespeare became godfather to Will D’Avenant; and not contented with this spiritual affinity, the younger Will is for establishing some claim to a natural one, alleging that his mother was a great admirer of wit, and there were no bounds to her complaisance for men of genius.
Rumors aside, William Davenant was responsible for re-introducing Shakespeare onto the English stage after theaters were reopened following the defeat of the Puritans and the restoration of Charles II in 1660. Davenant’s adaptation of
(1.5.283-92)Come, and fill my Breasts With Gall instead of Milk: make haste dark Night And hide me in a smoke as black as Hell, That my keen steel see not the wound it makes, Nor heave’n peep through the curtains of the dark To cry Hold, hold!