Until the end of the century, visitors were shown round the church by
an aged parish clerk, some of whose gossip about Shakespeare was
recorded by one of them in 1693. The old man came thus to supply two
further items of information: how Shakespeare ran away in youth, and
how he sought service at a playhouse, "and by this meanes had an
opportunity to be what he afterwards proved." A different visitor to
Stratford next year recorded in an extant letter to a friend yet more
scraps of oral tradition. These were to the effect that "the great
Shakespear" dreaded the removal of his bones to the charnel-house
attached to the church; that he caused his grave to be dug seventeen
feet deep; and that he wrote the rude warning against disturbing his
bones, which was inscribed on his gravestone, in order to meet the
capacity of the "very ignorant sort of people" whose business it was
to look after burials.
Betterton gained more precise particulars--the date of baptism and the
like--from an examination of the parochial records; but the most
valuable piece of oral tradition with which the great actor's research
must be credited was the account of Shakespeare's deer-stealing
escapade at Charlecote.
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