The legibility of Shakespeare.

From Shakespeare The World as Stage by Bill Bryson. Page 25.

We are lucky to know as much as we do. Shakespeare was born just at the time when records were first kept with some fidelity. Although all parishes in England had been ordered more than a quarter of a century earlier, in 1538, to maintain registers of births, deaths, and weddings, not all complied. (Many suspected that the state’s sudden interest in information gathering was a prelude to some unwelcome new tax.) Stratford didn’t begin keeping records until as late as 1558—in time to include Will, but not Anne Hathaway, his older-by-eight-years wife.

Relates to James C. Scott's idea of legibility in Seeing Like a State. The state has an interest in measuring things to make them legible to the state, that legibility being needed for all sorts of reasons - including the laying of taxes.