Slogging on.
The bit of Shakespeareana that made the Guardian today seems completely spurious. Known since the late 70's, and the only new bit seems be that it turns out that the impecunious fellow referred to lived in a sort of run-down neighborhood with theatres in it, which might have been a fair guess anyway. And it might not even have been him, just a fellow of the same name. But apparently a headline piece in the subscription journal, so I'll reserve judgment until I o'erleap the paywall and land on the other side.
Frankly seems bit pitched to the present American administration--Shakespeare as the family man, ducks & drakes in a tony London suburb. Much of the Elizabethan cult of the 1950's was an attempt to capture the imaginations of the (sometimes former) colonies. Churchill's 'empire's of the mind.'
There's an obscure reference in Trollope suggesting that the map of the American colonies stayed up on the wall of the Ministry for the Colonies a bit further into the 19th c. than one would think. When an American refers to the king or the queen, it's invariably GB & Northern I by the G of G, never another.
England and St. George. The latter being, at best, half-English as the Billy Bragg song has it. Martyr of the Levant, born in Cappadocia, patron of Malta, Barcelona, Valencia, Arragon, Genoa, and England.