Southwark Cathedral: Shakespeare's Brother and John Harvard
Why is it significant?
Go inside the cathedral, walk down the south aisle and stop at the reclining alabaster figure of a man with a quill in his hand, lying beneath a stained-glass window crowded with characters from the plays.
Key Facts
| Place | Southwark Cathedral: Shakespeare's Brother and John Harvard |
|---|---|
| Address | London Bridge, London SE1 9DA, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.50610, -0.08960 |
| Part of Walk | Shakespeare's Southwark: Bankside, the Globe and Tate Modern in London |
| Generated | Generated |
Go inside the cathedral, walk down the south aisle and stop at the reclining alabaster figure of a man with a quill in his hand, lying beneath a stained-glass window crowded with characters from the plays. This is the Shakespeare memorial, carved in 1912, and the church around it is the closest thing London has to a parish church of the theatre.
Shakespeare lived on Bankside for a while, and this church, then called St Saviour's, served its playhouse world. On the last day of 1607 his younger brother Edmund, an actor, was buried here, and the register records an expensive tolling of the great bell in the morning... most historians assume William paid for it. Edmund's grave is unmarked, but a stone in the choir remembers him. Philip Henslowe of the Rose lies here too, and so do the playwrights John Fletcher and Philip Massinger.
Further along the nave lies the far older tomb of John Gower, friend of Geoffrey Chaucer and one of the first great poets to write in English, his painted head resting on three of his own books. He lived in the priory here and died in 1408. Two centuries later Gower walked onto the stage as the narrator of Shakespeare's Pericles... so in this one church, poetry and theatre shake hands across the ages.
There is an American chapter as well. In November 1607 a butcher's son called John Harvard was baptised here. He grew up in Southwark, emigrated to Massachusetts, died young, and left his library and half his estate to a new college, which took his name. The Harvard Chapel inside commemorates him, and Harvard graduates still come to see where it all began.
The building itself is older than all of them. A priory church of St Mary Overie stood here from the twelfth century, and its choir is one of the earliest Gothic structures in London, though the church became a cathedral only in 1905. Leave by the south side, cross to Borough High Street and walk south. On the left, a gateway opens into a cobbled yard with an old inn at the back.