STRATFORD SHAKESPEARE WARS BROADSIDE: These Highly Valuable Relics...

Printed double-sided on card (9x13cm), the printing on the verso with text upside down. The text relates to Hornby’s ownership of the ‘the various Articles... that originally belonged to the Immortal Bard. These HIGHLY VALUABLE RELIQUES are now shewn at a house opposite his Birthplace, where she was obliged to remove them...’ followed by certificates of Jane Iliff and T. Kite confirming the authenticity of the relics. A little browning only. OCLC locates one copy at the Folger Library; another is owned by the Birthplace Trust.

Mary Hornby had acted as custodian of the Birthplace where she took pleasure in exhibiting the house and its treasures to tourists, continuing to do so even after the Hart family sold the property to the Courts in 1806, being visited by the Prince Regent visited in 1815 as well as Washington Irving. In 1820 she was forced out by Anne Court’s rent increases so she stripped the premises of relics, whitewashed over the names of the great and good on the Birthplace walls and set up her own rival attraction across the road. There are contemporary reports of the two women shouting abuse at each other across the street - this little imprint is a slightly politer physical relic of those slanging matches over ownership of Shakespeare’s posthumous reputation.