Gilbert Shakespeare

In London, Gilbert Shakespeare was a haberdasher, a seller of needlework supplies such as thread, needles, and ribbons, living in the parish of St Bride's.

Along with several unsavoury Warwickshire characters, Gilbert was named in a bill of complaint on 21 November 1609 instigated by Joan Bromley, a Stratford widow, but the details of the suit are unknown.

[5] He signed his name in a neat Italian hand, "Gilbert Shakesper", as witness on 5 March 1610 to a lease of property in Bridge Street in Stratford.

[4] Charlotte Stopes tracked every usage of the terms adolescens, adolocentulus and adolocentula and their variants in the Stratford parish register and came to the conclusion that adolescens (Latin: "growing, adolescent") meant only that Gilbert Shakespeare died unmarried, especially in the absence of any records of his marriage, the baptism of a child, any other record of his death, and the fact that he is not mentioned in his brother's will.

"[9][10] Oldys wrote in the mid-18th century, without certainty as to identity: "One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, who lived to a good old age, even some years, as I compute, after the restoration of King Charles the Second [1660]...