The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street

I heard about this book because of Michael Dirda's Washington Post Book World review, and I knew I had to read it. Sometimes Michael Dirda's reviews are better-written than the book he's reviewing, but in this case the book is as excellent as he says. If you love Shakespeare and the history around him, you will really enjoy the painstaking detective work that went into putting this book together. It's a glimpse into what life was really like for Shakespeare and the people around him -- the work, the milieu, the perils...it's a great read!

This book offers a fascinating look into everyday life in Shakespeare's London, specifically the few years Shakespeare lived as a lodger on Silver Street. The book is very well researched, and while Mr. Nicholl sometimes speculates on how events in Shakespeare's life may have affected his work, Mr. Nicholl is always cautious about doing so. Because any information about Shakespeare's life is so precious, I highly recommend this book, even though it is more about the people who surrounded Shakespeare than about Shakespeare himself. Finally, I always find it interesting how the sleazy side of life went hand in hand with perhaps the greatest literary renaissance of all time. It certainly adds to my belief that great literature is not reserved for the few, but for the many.

It's hard to imagine how anyone could think of anything else to say on the subject of the Mountjoy depositions, now that Charles Nicholl has had his say. It's a relatively minor incident in the life of Shakespeare, but it offers several advantages, even over the kind of detailed analysis of a single period that James Shapiro offered in "1599". For one thing, as Nicholl notes, it's one of the only times on record that people quoted Shakespeare directly -- not his plays, but his everyday conversation. It's the only time on record that he offered an opinion about another human being. The neighborhood, the business, and the associates open up fascinating avenues of inquiry into what life was like for someone living in London in the early 17th century. The analysis is based on Nicholl's examination of primary documents from legal and other archives. It corrects and extends the basic known facts of the case. Every lead is assiduously pursued until it reaches a natural point of diminishing returns. Hence my description of it as "definitive." (On the other hand, there's always the possibility of fresh discoveries, hence my putting that description in quotes.) As a species of biography, Nicholl's book is at the other end of the pole from Stephen Greenblatt's "Will in the World." To me, the comparison is all to Nicholl's advantage: firmly anchored in documented fact; based on primary documents; admitting when leads have reached dead ends, rather than continuing to build them up into layer upon layer of speculation. It's instructive to note that the incident on which Nicholl's book is based rates barely a mention in Greenblatt's biography -- even though it was one of the best-documented incidents in Shakespeare's life, even BEFORE Nicholl took up the case.

Search the name "William Shakespeare" on Google and you will obtain 46,300,000 hits. The Library of Congress lists 7,000 volumes with Shakespeare as their subject. He is the most celebrated playwright in the English language, yet the mysteries of his life are such that Shakespeare scholar Charles Wallace observed that "every Shakespeare biography is five percent fact and 95 percent conjecture." In this vast ocean of material, one would think that there could be little new information about the man who lived and wrote more than four centuries ago. THE LODGER SHAKESPEARE by Charles Nicholl offers insight into a little-known episode of Shakespeare's life and provides readers with something truly unique. In his plays and sonnets, Shakespeare gave his audience over one million written words. This book offers something far different: the actual spoken words of the man who still remains a mystery as a person to those who know him well as a writer. During the early years of the 17th century, around the period when he was writing "Othello," "All's Well that Ends Well" and "Measure for Measure," Shakespeare lodged in London with a French family named Mountjoy. Christopher and Marie Mountjoy's daughter, Mary, was involved in a romantic relationship with Stephen Belott, the Mountjoys' apprentice. The young Belott appeared reluctant to enter into matrimony, and the senior Mountjoys sought Shakespeare's help to convince the reluctant suitor of the wisdom of marriage. It turned out that Belott's reluctance was due in part to his concern that the father would not honor his obligation to provide the promised dowry. Shakespeare assured the young couple that "they should have a sum of money for a portion from the father." Not only did Shakespeare encourage the marriage, he had Mary and Stephen join hands and swear commitment, a legally binding ceremony identical to the one lightheartedly undertaken by Orlando and Rosalind in "As You Like It. In 1612 Shakespeare was called upon to give testimony concerning the dowry that Belott had never received. His statement, what the law would now call a deposition, was transcribed by a court clerk, reviewed by the 48-year-old playwright and then signed. The document is one of six known Shakespeare signatures, the earliest discovered. While knowledge of Shakespeare's involvement in the Mountjoy family battle has been common knowledge since the discovery of the court papers in 1909, Nicholl provides readers with a vivid portrayal of the Bard's life and times during the period when he resided with them and wrote several of his greatest plays. Scholars have long debated how Shakespeare came to write many of the plays that bear his name. The theories surrounding authorship of his work range far and wide. Regardless of one's views, there can be little debate that events inspired his works. It is Nicholl's view that the time spent living with the Mountjoys may have influenced some of his later plays. "All's Well that Ends Well" f

Charles Nicholl is on a roll. This is at least the fourth Nicholl book I've read (the others being "Borderlines," "The Reckoning," and "Somebody Else"), and each has been better than the last. Nothing could be more mundane, on its surface, than a book about one of the houses where Stratford property owner and family man William Shakespeare lodged when writing his plays in early Jacobean London. Surprisingly, however, the story of how he tendered his services in bringing about a "handfasting" (or betrothal) of his head-tire-making landlord's daughter and his apprentice, and the subsequent story of the couple's suing (some eight years later) of that landlord for failing to pay a promised dowry, makes for compulsive reading. Along the way, we learn something about the seamier side of Shakespeare's neighborhood, as well as the surprising character of some of his neighbors and acquaintances. These latter include a fortune-telling "doctor," Simon Forman, who had the ear of England's distaff elite, and a brothel-keeping poetaster (and the bard's collaborator on "Pericles"), George Wilkins. How all these characters come together makes for a fascinating journey into research on one of literature's most enigmatic geniuses, William Shakespeare himself. The text is supplemented by "the chief documents relating to the Bellott-Mountjoy case," most notable of which is the playwright's own 1612 deposition, signed "Willm Shaks." Francis Bacon could never have made this stuff up.