Thomas Jefferson and John Adams took a break from negotiating international treaties in England in 1786 to visit the former home of William Shakespeare and actively vandalize his furniture.

A Souvenir from Shakespeare’s Stratford Home

In 1786, while John Adams was serving as the American minister in Britain and Thomas Jefferson represented the United States in France, the two traveled together through England. At Stratford-upon-Avon, they visited the house associated with William Shakespeare and took a small piece from a chair presented there as the playwright’s.

The chair was treated as a relic: an ordinary object made valuable by its supposed connection to a celebrated person. Visitors could carry away a fragment as a tangible link to Shakespeare. Adams and Jefferson’s pocketknife souvenir was therefore part of a broader practice of collecting pieces of places and objects tied to famous lives—not simply a prank with furniture.

Admiration, Made Material

Shakespeare’s reputation had crossed the Atlantic, and the visit shows how strongly the founders engaged with British literary culture even as the United States built its own political identity. A fragment of wood could turn that admiration into something personal and portable.

There is a modern irony in the gesture: preserving a supposed piece of Shakespeare’s past meant damaging an object displayed as part of it. The chair’s claimed connection to Shakespeare is not proof of who had sat in it. What the episode reliably captures is the visitors’ willingness to treat the claim—and the souvenir—as meaningful.