Shakespeare’s Family

This scholarly study investigates the family and ancestry of William Shakespeare, sifting records, wills, and parish documents to reconstruct the world of the Ardens, the Hathaways, and the Shakespeares of Stratford. Charlotte Stopes brings patient research and genuine curiosity to the perennial questions surrounding the poet’s origins and relations. For readers fascinated by Shakespeare the man rather than the plays, it offers a window into Elizabethan family life and the documentary traces of the greatest writer in English. A careful, absorbing work of literary history and biography.