The former Ship Inn in Grendon, later a private house known as Shakespeare Farm, is traditionally said to be where Shakespeare stayed on his journeys to and from London, and where he wrote Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This tradition was first noted by the antiquary John Aubrey, who lived within 26 years of Shakespeare’s death, and wrote:
The Humour of the Constable in
Midsomernight’s Dreame, he happened to take at
Grendon, in Bucks (I think it was Midsomer night
That he happened to lye there) which is the roade from
London to Stratford, and there was living that Constable
About 1642, when I first came to Oxon.
As there is no constable in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aubrey is thought to have meant Dogberry in Much Ado, hence, according to later accounts, Shakespeare got the inspiration for both Dogberry and Verges from two characters he one met at the Ship Inn.