Robert Long (soldier) - Romeo and Juliet?

Romeo and Juliet?

Southampton was patron of William Shakespeare and some literary critics (e.g. A. L. Rowse, Anthony Burgess, M. C. Bradbrook) have conjectured that the feud may have inspired Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and that Romeo's exile may allude to Southampton's protection of Sir Charles and Sir Henry Danvers, whom he aided in their escape to France.

According to historian John Aubrey, immediately after the murder of her son Henry, Lady Barbara Long, by then a widow and possibly a lady at court, informed the Queen of the 'verie strange owtrage committed by Sir Charles Danvers and Sir Henrie Danvers, Knights', although no indictment was ever preferred against them by either the Long family or the state. Aubrey also wrote that the events relating to the Danvers' escape and concealment hastened the death of the Danvers' father, and their mother soon remarried, to Sir Edmund Carey, a cousin of the Queen, in order to influence the granting of a pardon for her sons, which later eventuated, and the Danvers' returned to England in August 1598. Sir Henry Danvers later became Earl of Danby, and his brother Sir Charles was beheaded in 1600 for joining in a plot with the Earl of Essex against Queen Elizabeth.