Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Historical Account of the Birth-Place of Shakespeare
The fact that Shakespeare was born in the house in Henley Street, which is now assigned as the place of his birth, rests solely, as to the event itself, on tradition - on the unvarying tradition of the inhabitants of Stratford. An attempt has indeed been made to invalidate this testimony by a bold assertion that no attribution of the Birth-place was made till after the year 1790 but this statement is altogether incorrect, for it was indicated as such, as a spot of peculiar interest, at the Jubilee in 1769, when the song, Here Nature nurs'd her darling boy, was sung opposite to it and Gough, in his additions to Camden's Britannia, published in 1789, expressly mentions the house in which constant tradition has uniformly affirmed he first drew breath remains unaltered, being built of timber and plaister, like most in the town. A still earlier notice of it occurs in the Annual Register for the year 1765, where it is stated that an old walnut tree, which ?ourished before the door of Shakespeare's father, at stratford-upon-avon, at the birth of that poet, having been lately cut down, several gentlemen had images, resembling that in Westminster Abbey, carved from it. The tree here alluded to probably stood in the Guildpits. The kind of evidence here adduced would obviously not be sufficient to establish the truth of the tradition as to the title of the house to be called the Birth-place, but there are important early testimonies, bearing upon the fact, and yet in themselves independent of it, that tend to confirm the general belief, and substantiate it as strongly as could be expected in regard to any circumstance of the kind belonging to so remote a period.
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