Shropshire
Tim Ashton of Soulton Hall sets out his purpose; to highlight the connections between Shakespeare and Shropshire that could bring a huge cultural and economic boost to the county.
My purpose is to reclaim Shakespeare as a writer of Shropshire.
In August 31 Woodhill Park Estate will be hosting Shakespeare's 'As You Like It'. This has special resonance as Shropshire was the original home of the Forest of Arden.
Slumbering south of Soulton Hall lies the ancient Soulton Wood. This wood holds extraordinary secrets – several, in fact. Its connection with Shakespeare's As You Like It has only recently come to light, owing to a link with a 16th century pastoral text.
The wood rests prominently in a 'fair valley, compassed with mountains' beneath Hawkstone Hill', or so it is described in Rosalynde: Euphues Golden Legacie (1590), the sixteenth century bestselling pastoral text by Thomas Lodge Jr. We know of this connection because Lodge's father held the manor of Soulton around the time of Lodge's boyhood, as documented in Soulton’s deeds, now housed in the County Archive at Shrewsbury.
Thus, when Lodge wrote:
"I wander in this forrest, to light on some cottage… and content me with a countrey life: for I haue heard the swaynes say, that they drunke without suspition, & slept without care;"
it was about the cottage that still nestles amongst these very trees.
More profoundly to modern minds, Lodge's Rosalynde is universally accepted as the source material for Shakespeare's As You Like It, and therefore this beguiling work of English drama is firmly linked to Soulton. Thus, we may with confidence claim these words of Shakespeare's for the landscape a short distance north of Shrewsbury, near Wem, and for Shropshire!
"I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it."
As You Like It is obviously a love story in which four couples find their happily ever after. But it is also an intriguing exploration of a quest for national political harmony undertaken in the Forest of Arden (a territory which encompasses Shropshire).
The play contains a cultural monument to the Tudor ‘Old’ Sir Rowland Hill, publisher of the 1560 Geneva Bible, the text which heralded English Renaissance and the Elizabethan Golden Age. The Bible Hill published is the main edition Shakespeare uses and is known to have quoted from extensively.
As You Like It has huge connections with not only Shropshire and its border, but my family home Soulton Hall.
There are excellent reasons to link that play with our county: not least because the parts of Shropshire south of the A5 - better known to Tudors as Wattling Street - are traditionally inside the Forest of Arden, the play's setting.
Not for nothing did Shakespeare substitute the name given to the hero ‘Old Sir John’ in his source book for ‘Old Sir Rowland’: beyond the massive cultural freight of Sir Rowland Hill obviously being invoked, Shakespeare was a cousin of Rowland Hill via his mother Mary Arden.
“That here were well begun and well begot:
And after, every of this happy number
That have endured shrewd days and nights with us
Shall share the good of our returned fortune.”
It is perhaps remarkable that, in the 1990s, when these literary associations remained “[o]bscured in the circle of this forest”, that the builders of the new Globe Theatre in London unconsciously harvested timbers from Soulton Wood – the very setting of As You Like It – to construct their new playhouse dedicated to Shakespeare. But they did. And, indeed that was not the first time our oak was taken for a prestige national project, as tress from Soulton were selected to repair of the bomb-damaged chamber of the House of Commons.
There are other connections between Shropshire and Shakespeare. Juliet may have been a Shropshire woman with a scandalous marriage.
A number of prominent local families in the Tudor period are known Shakespeare patrons and muses, with a lot of these connections running through the parish of Hodnet. These include the Vernon, the Stanley, and the Sidney families, as well as the Devereux dynasty (Earls of Essex) and the Wriothesley dynasty (Earls of Southampton), and the Herbert dynasty (Earls of Pembroke). This renaissance circle was at the heart of the world of both Shropshire and Shakespeare.
One person in this smart set stands out: Elizabeth Wriothesley (née Vernon) of Hodnet. Some associate her – and the scandalising circumstances of her marriage – with the ‘Dark Lady’ of the sonnets, while others have gone as far as to link her with the character Juliet in Romeo and Juliet.
And then the setting of the last two acts of Henry IV, Part I, the play that introduced the celebrated character Falstaff to an adoring audience, is the Battle of Shrewsbury. The town of Shrewsbury has another claim on Shakespeare, following research by Maggie Love which established that performances of The King's Men took place in Shrewsbury between 1603 and 1605 whilst London was being ravaged by plague. They were paid £30 to perform in the town and Maggie’s belief is that Shakespeare was in that tour.
Another history play, Richard III makes reference to the arrest of Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham in 1483 in in Act IV, scene iv. This genuine historical event happened at Lacon, just outside Wem, where the unfortunate rebel was arrested in a ditch. He was disguised as a farm labourer having been betrayed by Ralph Bannister for £1000. Earlier in the same play (Act II, scene ii), Ludlow features as the location from which the Princes in the Tower should be brought as Richard III plots to seize the crown.
The town of Shrewsbury (and Shrewsbury School under its foundational headmaster Thomas Ashton in particular) created an important national cultural engine for amplifying the use of drama in statecraft and education.
This was so important to the Elizabethans that Elizabeth I undertook to make a personal visit to the town to watch drama there staged by Ashton, only turning back because of plague. Before and after Shakespeare’s time the town dedicated 100 acres of Kingsland to the staging of open air drama. The guilds of the town constructed elaborate arbours for these entertainments. Even under Puritan rule, Shrewsbury was famous for never banning a play and continued these productions Into the Restoration period.
These intriguing findings have been presented in public lectures delivered in both The City of London and Shropshire, sparking lively discussions and captivating audiences.
Further lectures are planned for Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, later in 2024. For those interested in delving deeper, a recording of the London lecture can be found on the Byrga Geniht YouTube channel.
With thanks for scholarly support to James D. Wenn and Christine Schmedle.
