Shakespeare expert overturns fly-tipper myth about playwright’s father

Fallow said his work challenged ‘some of the deep tropes that have been built up over the years about the Shakespeares’. Photograph: Art Images/Getty Images

The earliest record of William Shakespeare’s father in Stratford-upon-Avon famously notes his fine in 1552 for making a “muckhill” on a street.

Now the long-held assumption that John Shakespeare was a 16th-century fly-tipper has been overturned as a myth. Far from being punished, he was simply paying a waste disposal toll for detritus relating to his trade as a glover and tanner of leather.