by Peter Parkinson

Discover how Shakespeare spent his infamous ‘Lost Years’. Possibly... He was born in 1564. What was he doing in the 1580s? Was a young, impressionable Will “getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting”? It is generally accepted that he got at least one wench with child, that there were persistent rumours of poaching deer, that he wasn't regarded as polite to his elders and, as for fighting... you only have to read the first scene of Romeo and Juliet to see that Shakespeare knew how to start a punch-up.