Shakespeare Press

Gerald Jaggard’s Preface to his unfinished memoir

But although No 4 Sheep Street is gaunt and empty, it has a story to tell. It is a tale covering almost a century, when my father first set his sights on Stratford, and resolved to conquer it.

By incredible industry and strength of purpose he achieved many of his targets; by vanity, overconfidence and a complete lack of tact he made so many enemies on the way that his life ended in bitter failure.

Gerald quotes about ‘WJ’

I suppose in a way it was an historic moment – William Jaggard the Sixth bringing his Shakespeare Press to Stratford-upon-Avon, the birth town of his Tudor ancestors greatest client.

Gerald quotes about ‘WJ’

WJ had a horror of putting money into lawyers pockets, as he was, so to speak, a law unto himself.

Gerald quotes about ‘WJ’

His drive was dynamic, his industry tremendous, his patience inexhaustible. Such qualities overcame all obstacles in his work but eroded and finally destroyed his family life.

Gerald boyhood memories of Stratford in 1910

Those boyhood days in the Shipston Road stand out as an endless summer. Such are the tricks of memory that I cannot remember the winter months, the wind or the rain; I can only recall the heavy sweet scent of the privet hedge that seemed to be perpetually in flower, the birds and insects that abounded in the garden and the clouds of dust that passing traffic, mostly carriages, aroused as they went past the front gate.

Gerald’s growing love for the theatre (Old Memorial Theatre)

It was a never-failing pleasure to come away from a summer evening’s performance of ‘The Dream’ or ‘As You Like It’ and walk home by the moonlit river or leave the battlements of Dunsinane and the pageantry of Richard II to linger on the Clopton Bridge. How fortunate we were, and are, to have our theatre in a setting that rekindles the imagination, so that the matchless lines live on in our mind long after the curtain has fallen.

Gerald on the destruction by fire of the Old Memorial Theatre in 1926

… the fire gave the appearance of being selective. It devoured the playhouse and consumed the hundreds of paper-backed copies of the Memorial Theatre editions of the plays, stored in the Tower. This, like a factory chimney, belched flames, and smoke. And from it the wind carried the blackened pages right across the Avon, as though the dying spirit of the old theatre were making a final effort to spread the poet’s message over the countryside.