Did Shakespeare have an illegitimate son?

William Shakespeare may have had an illegitimate son who featured in one of the his sonnets, according to a historical study.

Sonnet 126, which is addressed to ‘my lovely boy’, is believed to have been written for Sir William Davenant , who later became Poet Laureate and who some believe he was Shakespeare’s son.

Portraits of them show that they both share the same facial deformity of a droopy left eyebrow, as the Daily Mail writes.

In a rare biography of Davenant, entitled Shakespeare’s Bastard and written by Simon Andrew Stirling, it is claimed the Shakespeare was his biological father but that academics at the time hidden that fact, because they wanted to portray the poet as a paragon of virtue. So, Shakespeare became known as Davenant’s godfather.

As Mr. Stirling claims in his book, Shakespeare had the illegitimate son with Jane Davenant, a tavern mistress who was also married.

Rumours that Shakespeare was, in fact, Davenant’s father were originally fuelled by John Aubrey (1626-97), a collector of biographical gossips who knew the Davenant family well.

Moreover, the novelist Samuel Butler (1835 –1902) is said to have made the comment: ‘It seemed to him (Davenant) that he writ with the very same spirit that Shakespeare (did), and seemed content enough, to be called his son.’

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 126 has often been suggested to be a homoerotic love poem. But, as Mr Stirling points out in his book ‘The poem appears to have been written to a very young child whose birth caused his mother’s full-moon belly to wane” and the Sonnet is believed to have been written around the time of Davenant’s birth in 1606.

Moreover, poets Alexander Pope, Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo are also said to have previously made similar claims that Davenant is Shakespeare’s illegitimate son.