Shakespeare's England page 2

The Church of St. Mary Overy, now the Cathedral of Southwark, has been frequently connected with his name, as it is with those of several of his fellow actors and those who published his plays. It is supposed that his wife and children had been with him in London and returned to Stratford in 1597, when he bought New Place, or indeed more probably in the year before, for his little son Hamnet died at Stratford in 1596, and Shakespeare probably attended the funeral. The house in Bankside would be near another playhouse, the Rose. He probably had only a lodging there.

A few years later, in 1601 or 1602, he moved to Silver Street, lodging with a French Huguenot named Mountjoye, a hairdresser and maker of women's head-dresses. Hard by was the printing office of Field, a Stratford man. "On the opposite side of the street was Neville's Inn, and near also were the Church of St. Olave and the Barber Surgeons' Hall. The street was respectable if not fashionable, which could not be said of the Shoreditch neighbourhood." It seems likely that Shakespeare left this house on Madame Mountjoye's death in 1606. He may have returned to the Bankside, near the Globe Theatre, for in 1607 his brother Edmond was buried in St. Saviour's Church. In the next few years he went to and fro, but by 1614 he was certainly settled at New Place. Not far from him there lived his son-in-law John Hall, in a house still preserved and called Hall's Croft. His sister Joan lived in the old house in Henley Street. Another association of his later years may be found in the church and ancient manor house of Clifford Chambers, on the Warwickshire border, where his friend, and it is said boon companion, Michael Drayton stayed. The certain memories of the poet must be sought in the heart of England.