‘Our Will Shakespeare’ and Lope de Vega: An Unrecorded Contemporary Document

Summary

In 1562 a famous poet, Lope de Vega, was born in Catholic Spain; two years later another famous poet, William Shakespeare, was born in Protestant England. Any fresh documentary record concerning either of these writers would, of course, have its own value; that value would be increased if the names of the two authors were linked; and the document’s value would become still more if it were found to have been penned by a man intimately associated with the one or the other. The possibility of finding such a document today might well seem to be remote, yet it has been my good fortune to unearth a hitherto unrecorded note which does precisely this.

The library of Balliol College, Oxford, possesses a copy of the third edition of Lope de Vega's Rimas, a duodecimo printed at Madrid in 1613. On the fly-leaf at the front of this copy is a short inscription which apparently has so far escaped notice. It reads as follows:

Will Baker: Knowinge

that M^r Mab: was to

sende you this Booke

of sonets, w^ch with Spaniards

here is accounted of their

lope de Vega as in Englande

wee sholde of o^r: Will

Shakespeare. I colde not

but insert thus much to

you, that if you like

him not, you muste neuer

neuer reade Spanishe Poet

Leo: Digges