It is quite likely that Shakespeare left Stratford with a company of travelling actors, and reaching town with them, gradually drifted into regular employment at one of the only two London theatres that then existed, “The Theatre” and the “Curtain” both in Shoreditch.
It is of some interest to speculate upon the manner in which Shakespeare journeyed to London, and the way he went. Was he obliged to walk it, in the traditional manner of the poor countryman seeking his fortune in the great metropolis? Or did he make the journey by the carrier’s cart? There are two principal roads by which he may have gone; by Newbold-on-Stour, Long Compton, Chapel House, and Woodstock to Oxford, Beaconsfield and through High Wycombe and Uxbridge, 95 miles; or he might have chosen to go by Ettington, Pillerton Priors, Sunrising Hill, Wroxton and Banbury, through Aynho, Bicester, Aylesbury, Tring and Watford to London, 92¾ miles. Such an one as he would probably first go to London by way of Oxford, for, like Thomas Hardy’s “Jude the Obscure,” he would doubtless think it “a city of light.” There are traditions at Oxford of Shakespeare’s staying at the “Crown” inn in the Cornmarket in after years. Sometimes he would doubtless go by the Banbury and Bicester route: and along it, at the village of Grendon Underwood, to the left of the road between Bicester and Aylesbury, as you journey towards London, there still linger very precise traditions of Shakespeare having stayed at what was formerly the “Old Ship” inn.
Grendon Underwood, or “under Bernwode” as it is styled in old records, appears in an old rhyme as—
“The dirtiest town that ever stood,”
but it was never a town, and, whatever may once have been its condition, it is no longer dirty.
It is not at first sight easily to be understood why Shakespeare, or any other traveller of that age journeying the long straight stretch of the old Roman road, the Akeman Street, between Bicester and Aylesbury, should want to go a mile and a quarter out of his way for the purpose of visiting this place, but that they did so is sufficiently proved by the comparative importance of the house that was until about a hundred and twelve years ago the “Old Ship” and is now known as “Shakespeare Farm.” It is clearly too large ever to have been built for an ordinary village inn, and is said to have formerly been even larger. If, however, we refer to old maps of the district, it will he found that, for some unexplained reason, the ancient forthright Roman road had gone out of use, and that instead of proceeding direct, along the Akeman Street, the wayfarers of old went a circuitous course, through Grendon Underwood. When this deviation took place does not appear; but it was obviously one of long standing. The first available map showing the roads of the district is that by Emanuel Bowen, 1756, in which the Akeman Street is not shown; the only road given being that which winds through Grendon. The next map to be issued—that by Thomas Jeffreys, 1788—gives the Akeman Street, running direct, between point and point, and avoiding Grendon, as it does now. That was the great era of turnpike-acts, providing for the repair and restoration of old roads, and the making of new; and this was one of the many highways then restored. The “Old Ship” inn, at Grendon Underwood, at which Shakespeare and many generations of travellers had halted, at once declined with the making of the direct road, and soon retired into private life.
The Shakespeare tradition comes down to us through John Aubrey, who, writing in 1680, says—
“The humour of the constable, in Midsomer-night’s Dreame, [21] he happened to take at Grendon, in Bucks—I thinke it was Midsomer night that he happened to lye there—which is the roade from London to Stratford, and there was living that constable about 1642, when I first came to Oxon.”