# Did a young John Milton meet Shakespeare ? Is the evidence only circumstantial? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 13, 2024, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-young-john-milton-meet-shakespeare-is-the-evidence-only-circumstantial/998788 "2024-03-13T04:23:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Octagon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/2acd7d/32.png) [@Octagon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octagon)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2024, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-young-john-milton-meet-shakespeare-is-the-evidence-only-circumstantial/998788/1 "2024-03-13T04:23:24Z")
Did a young John Milton meet Shakespeare ? Is there hard evidence for this ? Is the evidence only circumstantial? ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2024, 7:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-young-john-milton-meet-shakespeare-is-the-evidence-only-circumstantial/998788/2 "2024-03-13T07:51:04Z")
There is reasonable circumstantial evidence that Milton’s father, John Milton senior, a wealthy scrivener who also wrote music and poetry, may have known Shakespeare. He was almost certainly the John Milton who became one of the trustees of the Blackfriars Theatre in 1620 and some have suggested that he was the ‘I.M.’ who contributed one of the prefatory poems to the First Folio. John Milton junior contributed one of the prefatory poems to the Second Folio. But if the son ever met Shakespeare, he would only have been a little boy at the time. ---
**Author:** ![gkster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gkster/32/14107_2.png) [@gkster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gkster)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2024, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-young-john-milton-meet-shakespeare-is-the-evidence-only-circumstantial/998788/3 "2024-03-14T05:48:38Z")
Aubrey, in his _Brief Lives_, (link below) doesn’t mention a meeting, and considering the level and type of detail that he gives, it would be something that he would mention if the meeting had happened. [“Brief lives”, chiefly of contemporaries : Aubrey, John, 1626-1697 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/briefliveschiefl02aubruoft/page/62/mode/2up?view=theater) The meeting would also have been important to Milton himself, considering his admiration for Shakespeare, so it would have been natural for him to have written something about their meeting, if it had happened. Here’s a _Washington Post_ article that says they never met: "Though Milton and Shakespeare never met— Shakespeare died in 1616, while Milton was born in 1608 — Milton was a fervent admirer of the bard, at one point writing in a poem that Shakespeare was the “dear son of Memory, great heir of fame.” > **[‘Juliet and Romeo’: Newly unearthed text suggests how Milton might have...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/09/17/juliet-romeo-newly-unearthed-text-suggests-how-milton-might-have-edited-shakespeare/)** > > The find sent academics around the world into a tizzy, prompting some to hail it as the most significant literary discovery in recent memory. I’m trying to remember where I read that Shakespeare spent the last 2-3 years of his life in Stratford; if that’s true, then Milton would have been 5 or 6 at most if he met Shakespeare when they were both living in London. The Dictionary of National Biography also contains detail about Milton’s early life and friends, but no mention of a meeting with Shakespeare. [Dictionary of national biography : Stephen, Leslie, Sir, 1832-1904 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofnati38stepuoft/page/24/mode/2up?view=theater) ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2024, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-a-young-john-milton-meet-shakespeare-is-the-evidence-only-circumstantial/998788/4 "2024-03-14T14:02:06Z")
Probably not. Milton would presumably have said so if he did, given that he admired Shakespeare enough to write a poem about him, and he lived well into an era when “I met Shakespeare when I was a kid” gave people bragging rights. (William Davenant, who was almost the same age as Milton, went so far as to hint that he was Shakespeare’s illegitimate son – which he probably wasn’t, although in that case there’s fairly solid evidence that they at least met.)