WILLIAM Shakespeare could have worked as a humble schoolmaster during his ‘lost years’, historians claimed Monday.
For more than 400 years, Stratford-upon-Avon has held the unrivalled crown as the playwright’s home. Now devotees of the Bard in Titchfield, Hampshire, have laid claim to their part of the nation’s literary heritage.
They believe Shakespeare spent three years working as a schoolmaster at the Grammar School there between 1589 and 1592. The theory matches Shakespeare’s friendship with his patron Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, who owned Titchfield Abbey, later known as Place House.
Locals have pointed to the fact that Shakespeare wrote just two dedications in his life and they were both dedicated to Wriothesley.
Titchfield Festival Theatre group claim the area’s surroundings may have inspired his plays Henry V and Love’s Labour’s Lost.
They believe his works would have been produced and performed by locals. Members have launched a bid to rival Stratford’s tourist status, including a Shakespeare Trail complete with characters guiding visitors around.
Kevin Fraser, chairman of Titchfield Festival Theatre, said: ‘We should be on the Shakespeare map, there’s no two ways about it. ‘It should really be Stratford, London and Titchfield. Here we have Shakespeare potentially working and living in Titchfield. We’re not saying this is the only idea but we have a lot of evidence - we believe we have the buildings.
‘There is as much evidence if you like of Shakespeare being here as he is in Stratford. I think it’s a fantastic story and it needs to be told to a wider world.’
The players need £600,000 pounds from a Heritage Lottery grant to fund the trail, small Elizabethan theatre, audio guide and interactive exhibition.
Retired physicist Ken Groves, is a Titchfield History Society committee member and has lived in the Old Grammar School since 1969.
Tests on the one-bedroom house’s beams reveal it dates back to 1447 and it is referred to as the school house in records from 1542.
Mr Groves said: ‘It’s well known that William Shakespeare ‘disappeared’ for a number of years and was a school master in the countryside.
‘Because of his well-documented close relationship with the 3rd Earl of Southampton, we think it’s a strong possibility he lived and taught here. It’s such an interesting story. ‘Upstairs the house is in a similar condition to 400 years ago, so sometimes when I’m lying in bed I look up and think how marvellous it is to see the same beams as Shakespeare.’
The theatre group point out landscapes and locations in Love’s Labour’s Lost that fit with those in Titchfield. –DM