Letter: Shakespearian fiction with roots in truth

ANITA MASON seems to think that I am playing literary games by saying in my novel Mrs Shakespeare that two of the drinking cronies of Shakespeare's father were called Bardolfe and Fluellen ('Will well done by his wife', Review, 14 February). Truth can be more playful than fiction. A real- life George Bardolfe and William Fluellen were named along with John Shakespeare in a list of persons not attending Stratford Church in 1592 'for fear of process for debtte'. The game I am playing is actually to ask if Shakespeare's own father might have been the original for Falstaff.

Robert Nye

Cork, Ireland