Always go back to your notebooks, not to mention original records, if you can. It is the problem of blogging unedited work, but everything would be checked before any actual book appeared. Edmund Shakespeare’s infant son was not christened in Cripplegate and buried in St Leonard’s though, but the other way around, and it has been changed in the text here. The child was baptised on July 12th 1607, Sonne of Edmund Shakesbye, in St Leonard’s Shoreditch. It says “the same daye”, which Peter Ackroyd says proves urgency, but actually it probably just means the same day as other entries, ie July 12th.
Exactly a month later, August 12th, 1607, comes the register of a burial in St Giles, Cripplegate, of Edward Sonne of Edward Shakespeere player, base borne. The confusion of first names is easy. Susanna Shakespeare was married to John Hall in Stratford Holy Trinity on June 5th, 1607.
Part of the point though of blogging Edmund’s story as work in progress, is to open up absolutes of ‘scholarship’ to general correction and discussion, because even records can be wrong and the period is so fascinating. Anyone who writes in should be aware of that. There are many ‘facts’ that have been relayed into the mainstream too, and appear on places like Wikepedia as absolute truth, that mutiply error. Alan Nelson cited the error about Will Kempe and his perhaps not dying in the 1603 plague in Southwark, because the register did not refer to a William Kempe, but he checked back and it did say William Kempe a man.
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