Prepare to be amazed, bemused, and finally somewhat sceptical upon this jumble of barely reasoned words, sketching out a history of when, just perhaps, Shakespeare came to Maldon and was inspired!
William Shakespeare, that noble playwright of the Avon, may be one of the most famous men in the world to have ever put pen to paper. His plays shaped the English language, and it is – possibly – a 400 year old trip to Maldon that inspired one of them; Cymbeline.
Cymbeline is the history of Cubobelin, king of the Catuvellauni, and he is the man who founded the city that would one day become Colchester. Cubobelin’s town, however, was called Camulodunon – this is where Cubobelin most probably first came to power and an important part of his history lies there.
There is always the story that Shakespeare liked to visit the places he wrote about, and, as far as this ignorant blogger is aware, there is some fair evidence for that. And I await a better scholar of the man to correct me.
Now, plague was a common problem in London, often causing play houses to be shut up and meaning that acting companies would have to tour the countryside. This was one of the reasons that the King’s Men visited Maldon in the early 1600s. For sure they were there at least twice, in May 1603 and January 1604, at a time when Shakespeare worked with them, and there is no reason to doubt that Shakespeare came to the town with them at this time.
So, why Cymbeline? What has a Celtic king of Colchester got to do with Shakespeare’s visits to Maldon?
Well, thanks to a few mistaken antiquaries, in Shakespeare’s day it was Maldon that was believed to be the site of Cubobelin’s Camulodunon, and not the famous place at Colchester. This throws in an interesting possibility – Cymbeline wasn’t finished until 1611 at the latest, after Shakespeare’s visits to Maldon, and at a time when William Camden’s Britannia and Remaines Concerning Britaine were the talk of the Kingdom, important within which was the tale of Cubobelin and Maldon.
So, pleasant Reader, I pray that within such a tale as this you find some honest possibility, as I hope may be the case, that aside from merely visiting Maldon, that great playwright took such an interest in it that the town was inspired into immortality under his pen.
Adieu, dearest Reader.