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| Notes for Esquire William Gardiner | ||||||||||||||
| Like the two Williams before him, this William Gardiner was a very wealthy man. His will provided that his tenants (there were literally hundreds of them) would own their homes, free of encumberance, upon his death. He was also credited with financing Sir Walter Raleigh's, Roanoke Colony, in VA in 1592 to the tune of six thousand punds sterling, or about 3.5 million dollars in today's world. Shortly after he was first married he came upon a teen-ager, named William Shakespeare in the act of poaching a pet deer on his father-in-law's estate near London. William Shakespear's father was doing some legal work for robert Luce at the time, and William was enjoying 'self-proclaimed hunting privileges' while his father was employed. William Gardiner happened to be the local Justice at the time and sentenced him to three moderate lashes at the whipping post, at the recomendation of his father, John Shakespeare. William Shakespeare, although revered for his acting and writing ability in later life, was a troublesome, headstrong child, of whom his father had apparently lost control. William Shakespeare, while an actor, had some differences with William Gardiner over some operational matters in the theatrical business, which led to Shakespeare's protrayal of William Gardiner as an unsavor character, Justice of Shallow, in the Merry Wives of Windsor. As late as the twentieth century an unknown writer, Leslie Hotson attempted to make a few bucks in resurecting this fued in a book entitled 'Shakespear Vs. Shallow', coming down very hard on the side of Shakespeare. His slander is so intense that it becomes an aborted comedy, not worth the time to read. | ||||||||||||||
| Last Modified 22 Oct 2000 | Created 5 Sep 2005 by Charles Lee Mudd, Jr. using Reunion for Mac |