The play is set in a duchy in France, beginning in a courtly environment; but most of the action takes place in a location called the 'Forest of Arden'.
The Gough Map (c.1360) showing the West Midlands location of the Forest of Arden around Tamworth, Shrewsbury West Bromwich and Henley in ArdenThis location is conjuring more than one place and identity. Firstly, in an Early Modern English mind the Forest of Arden roughly corresponds to the West Midlands to modern ears.[1] It represents an area including Warwickshire and parts of Shropshire,[2][3] Staffordshire and Worcestershire.[4]
The Arden area is effectively bounded by Roman roads as follows: in the West by the Icknield Street, in the South by the Salt Road (the modern Alcester to Stratford Road), in the East by the Fosse Way, and in the North by the Watling Street. It includes Arden, Warwickshire, near Shakespeare's home town, which was the ancestral origin of his mother's family—whose surname was Arden.[5] That area was once heavily wooded, giving rise to the name.
Secondly the name evokes the Ardennes, a forested region covering an area located in southeast Belgium, western Luxembourg and northeastern France.
