Investigating the Shakspaires of Trinity Lane

In 2025, I published an article arguing that a hitherto little-known manuscript letter held by Hereford Cathedral might be a primary biographical source showing William Shakespeare and his wife Anne living together on Trinity Lane in London. That article was lengthy, and largely devoted to heavily footnoted detail aimed at ruling out alternative possibilities. It argued, on the basis of that detail, that there were no other viable candidates for the letter’s Trinity Lane, nor for the Mr and Mrs “Shakspaire” who lived there.
In this chapter I discuss that manuscript letter in a different way, focussing not on who it is not about, but on who it is (or might be) about. I want to think about the letter as a possible factor in the Shakespeares’ life story, and also about the ways in which both the letter itself, and the scholarly process of working on it, interact with Shakespearean biography and biofiction, those two interdependent and multifarious worlds.