Shakespeare’s New Home in Stratford Shakespeare’s New Home in Stratford Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Crime Inheritance Law Published file. Updated metadata proofed Review of article finished. added two figures and citations updated author respStmt. Created File Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
A sketch of Shakespeare’s new home in Stratford-upon-Avon. It is a lightly detailed sketch of the front of the structure and some of the left side. The house is three stories tall, with many windows. Lower down the page is a simple floor plan of the house. George Vertue’s 1737 sketch of New Place. Courtesy of the British Library. Shelfmark Add. 70438. Public Domain.
Shakespeare Buys a Home

At the age of 33, the year following his son Hamnet’s death, William Shakespeare had enough money to invest perhaps £120 (about $25,000) in a new house in his hometown. At 60 feet long, New Place was the second largest home in Stratford-upon-Avon. The brick house was equipped with leaded windows and ten chimneys. It had two barns and two orchards on the property. Unfortunately, the building no longer exists. The home was demolished by a subsequent owner, Reverend Francis Gastrill, in 1759.

A History of New Place

Built toward the end of the 1400s by Hugh Clopton, New Place was about 100 years old when Shakespeare bought the property in 1597. After Clopton’s descendants sold the house, it was passed between several owners before William Underhill purchased the house in the fall of 1567. He owned the home until his death three years later, upon which ownership of the house passed to his son, William Underhill II. He owned New Place for nearly thirty years before selling it to Shakespeare. As the owner of New Place, Shakespeare had a special pew reserved for him at church, named the Clopton Pew after the home’s original builder.

Finalized purchase contract between William Shakespeare and Hercules Underhill, 1602. Courtesy of Folger Digital Collections. Public Domain.

The purchase of New Place illustrates Shakespeare’s increasing affluence at the time. He was a successful theatrical entrepreneur in London who maintained his family’s position and comfort in Stratford while he lived in London in rented rooms. Later, prior to his retirement to his hometown, from 1609 until 1611, his good friend Thomas Greene’s family shared the spacious house with the Shakespeares while Greene’s home was being finished.

A Complicated Purchase

The process of purchasing the house was complicated, since there was a scandal to clear up before Shakespeare could take full possession. William Underhill, the previous owner of New Place, was poisoned two months after selling the property and died in July 1597. His 19-year-old son, Fulke, was found guilty of the crime and hanged in March 1599. Following this complex drama of his home’s previous owners, Shakespeare had to wait until 1602, when Underhill’s second son Hercules came of age, before he could finally conclude the last aspects of the property deal, though some sources argue that he had nearly full ownership and was in possession of the house by February of 1598.

The expense of buying New Place may have created some financial problems for Shakespeare, since his name appears as a defaulter on the payment of taxes on 15 November 1597. He owed a sum of five shillings (1/4 of one pound). Nearly a year later, on 1 October 1598, Shakespeare was listed again as being in arrears, this time for thirteen shillings and four pence.

New Place Today

Although New Place was demolished in 1759, The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust owns the property on which it sat, as well as the property next door, a home once owned by Thomas Nash. In celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 2016, the Trust unveiled a newly renovated garden with numerous new sculptures and other displays at New Place that allows visitors to walk the footprint of the home and explore Shakespeare’s life through an exhibition.

Key Print Sources Bearman, Robert. Shakespeare’s Purchase of New Place. Shakespeare Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 4. Winter 2012, pp 465-486. Edmondson, Paul.A Renaissance For New Place in Shakespearean Biography?. Critical Survey, vol. 25. no. 1, 2013, pp. 90-98. Pogue, Kate. Shakespeare’s Friends. Praeger, 2006. Potter, Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.
Key Online Sources Bearman, Robert, and Alan H. Nelson et al.. Shakespeare Purchases New Place. Shakespeare Documented. The Folger Shakespeare Library, https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/shakespeare-purchases-new-place.. Best, Michael. A Major Purchase in Stratford, 1597. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/early%20maturity/newplace.html.. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Image Sources Final Concord between William Shakespeare and Hercules Underhill, Gent. 1602. MS. Folger Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img3321. Vertue, George. Sketch of New Place. 1737. Pencil on paper. British Library, Shelfmark Add. 70438. https://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/asset/46831/.