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    The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street
    The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street
    The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street

    Written by Charles Nicholl

    Narrated by Simon Vance

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Acclaimed author Charles Nicholl presents a brilliantly drawn detective story with entirely new insights into Shakespeare's life.

    In 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case at Westminster; it is the only occasion on which his actual spoken words were recorded. The case seems routine-a dispute over an unpaid marriage dowry-but it opens an unexpected window into the dramatist's famously obscure life. Using the court testimony as a springboard, acclaimed nonfiction writer Charles Nicholl examines this fascinating period in Shakespeare's life. With evidence from a wide variety of sources, Nicholl creates a compelling, detailed account of the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived and worked during the time in which he wrote such plays as Othello, Measure for Measure, and King Lear. The case also throws new light on the puzzling story of Shakespeare's collaboration with the hack author and violent brothel owner George Wilkins.

    In The Lodger Shakespeare we see the playwright in the daily context of a street in Jacobean London: "one Mr. Shakespeare," lodging in the room upstairs. Nicholl is one of the great historical detectives of our time and in this atmospheric and exciting book he has created a considerable rarity-something new and original about Shakespeare.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMar 15, 2008
    ISBN9781400176281
    The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street
    Author

    Charles Nicholl

    Charles Nicholl has written twelve books of history, biography and travel. The Reckoning, an investigation of the murder of Christopher Marlowe, won the James Tait Black Prize for biography and the Crime Writers’ Association ‘Gold Dagger’ for non-fiction. His other books include an acclaimed biography of Leonardo da Vinci; a reconstruction of a sixteenth-century expedition in search of El Dorado; and the travel classic Borderlines, set in 1980s Thailand (also published by Eland) and The Fruit Palace, about life among the drug-smugglers of Colombia. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sussex.

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    Reviews for The Lodger Shakespeare

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    • 4/5
      Like spending an evening with a chatty Elizbethan-history geek. I would adore spending an evening with a chatty Elizabethan-history geek, so I thoroughly enjoyed the book. Mileage will vary.
    • 2/5
      Surprisingly little is known about one of history's greatest, and most prolific, playwrights, William Shakespeare. There have been attempts (Bill Bryson wrote a good one) to summarize what we know and offer some conjecture to what we do not. Charles Nicholl is attempting such a thing here in The Lodger Shakespeare. However, in this case is, it is more plausible conjecture than simply summarizing the facts (which would take little space indeed). What we have is a plausible account of perhaps the most mundane episode in a great man's life. Nicholl spends a lot of time tediously exploring the use of single terms and trying to find meaningful parallels in Shakespeare's life. The premise, that he was a boarder of a family of Montjoie's -- a husband and wife wig-making duo -- is inferred by several public records, then pumped up by the author's imagination. While a little insight into normal life in the late 16th/early 17th century could be interesting, the author's effort to tie the most insignificant detail to his thesis is utterly tiresome. If you want speculation on the life and times of Shakespeare, do yourself a favor and read the Bryson book instead.
    • 3/5
      GLBT interest tag is because the sum total mention of same-sex social and sexual relationships in Shakespeare's London is limited to one sentence in Note 55 of Section 6.

      Astrology tag because 16th century astrologer/doctor Simon Foreman plays a role.

      Like the Shapiro book, this was gorgeously researched. Unlike the Shapiro book, the scope of this story is extremely narrow, suffers badly from pacing problems, and too often forgets to remind the reader why the grandkids of someone's former servant are even a little bit relevant.

      However, the core connections between the drama of this household and the various plays Shakespeare wrote while living there are fascinating. He tells a compelling story connecting the dots of surviving data -- Marie Mountjoy's life is a novel waiting to happen, I suspect. But I also suspect Nicholl is much better with material that contains more evidence about the characters' lives.
    • 4/5
      I pounced on this because I enjoyed/admired/appreciated Charles Nicholl's [book:The Reckoning], about the murder of Christopher Marlowe, and because I was mad about Simon Vance's reading of [book:Dust and Shadow]. Those two, plus Shakespeare, indicated an instant win. Well… mostly. First of all, I'm going to try to remember not to approach histories through Audible. If an author feels maps and illustrations and charts and the like are useful, then audio is not the way to go. The Civil War series I've already bought should be all right (except maybe for want of maps) – but something like this, which according to Google Books has 36 illustrations, loses in translation. What this is, is an examination of what can be learned or inferred about Shakespeare from his deposition in a case that involved his landlord. "On Monday 11 May 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a lawsuit at the Court of Requests in Westminster. His statement, or deposition, was taken down by a clerk of the court, writing in an averagely illegible hand on a sheet of paper measuring about 12 x 16 inches (see Plate 1) [see?]. At the end of the session Shakespeare signed his name at the bottom. It is one of six surviving signatures, and the earliest of them (though it can hardly be called early: he was forty-eight years old and already in semi-retirement)." "The dispute concerned a dowry: a sum of £60 which, Belott alleged, had been promised when he married Mountjoy's daughter in 1604, and which had never been paid. … Belott also claimed that Mountjoy had promised to leave the couple a legacy of £200 when he died. Mountjoy denied both claims, and now, eight years after the event, the case was before the court." Shakespeare was to be a valuable witness, as (by then) a gentleman and, very likely, a pretty well-known fellow. He turned out not to be so very valuable, and that's part of the story. I appreciate what I have learned from this examination of the period. Shakespeare took up lodgings over a tire-makers' workshop on Silver Street in Cripplegate. "Tire" in the seventeenth century meant not Dunlops or Michelins, but the "tire" from which "tirewoman" and (I believe) "attire" come from: headgear worn by ladies (and those pretending to be ladies on the stage, and those wanting to attract gentlemen). The house was a decent distance away from the playhouse where Shakespeare still labored – getting there involved crossing the Thames, along with a rather lengthy land-bound slog. The whys and wherefores of this decision are explored; we can't know once-and-for-all why, any more than we can know the details of anything else we are not given specifically in the court documents or other reliable sources, but this is one of the places where Nicholl exercises his well-honed art of learned supposition. The tire-makers were Christopher and Marie Mountjoy; they had a daughter, Mary, and an apprentice named Stephen Belott, and, we learn in the course of the lawsuit, Marie had approached Mr. Shakespeare and asked him to persuade Belott to marry Mary. He did so, and the two were betrothed (hand-fasted, apparently) and married – and Mary's father was not forthcoming with what he had promised. (He was apparently a real piece of work.) From the paperwork surviving from this four hundred year old family dispute (turned up by eccentric Shakespeare fanatics Hulda and Charles William Wallace) can be gleaned a surprising amount of information. "It is true that biographical readings of the plays are dangerous, unregulated, prone to sentimentalization. It is absurd to cherry-pick passages of poetry written over more than two decades and infer from them a consistent personal attitude. Lines belong in a dramatic context and in the psychological context of the character who utters them and cannot be taken to reflect Shakespeare's views." There are references to Shakespeare noted throughout this book that I've never heard of before, from contemporary letters and publications. I'm not an expert – but I would have thought I had read enough to have come across some of the contemporary and slightly post-mortem mentions. Dedications, and mentions of "Prince Hamlet", notes about meeting with Shakespeare and so on – surprising. However, this is really a great deal more "The Lodgings of Shakespeare" than "The Lodger Shakespeare". As illumination of the setting in which Shakespeare lived, it's wonderful; it explores the terrain in a fascinating, scholarly manner, and suddenly there are sights and sounds and scents, neighbors and lawsuits and voices and arguments enriching my mental image of Shakespeare. Nicholl, I already knew from [book:The Reckoning], has the ability to milk the smallest historical mention for everything it can possibly give. His caution is exemplary; while he does draw conclusions from the historic record, he never jumps to conclusions. The assumptions he makes are logical and sensible, and hedged about with "maybe"s and "possibly"s. In fact, from what I was able to access on Google Books, I found the following: Likely – 29 uses of the wordPossibly – 31Possible – 24May be – 91May have – 29Could be – 53Perhaps – 87 There are entire chapters which barely mention Shakespeare at all. But close study of the documents surrounding the Mountjoy case and the drawing in of other documented facts allows for intelligent commentary on everything from Shakespeare's sexuality, the state of his marriage, and the identity of the Dark Lady to what his surroundings were when he wrote. This is painting a portrait of Shakespeare by painting his surroundings. I remember one art school assignment being to pick your favorite shoes and to draw them in fine detail; this was, basically, a self-portrait. (Mine, if anyone's interested, were a pair of tall floppy boots, which I often wore to faire.) This works both ways, and through existing information. There is an engraving of a writer's chamber here, and a description of one there, and an average sort of a chamber elsewhere; take into account what Shakespeare's income was and what he was working on at the time and a variety of other factors, and here is what his room looked like. Here is what the house he lived in looked like. Here is what his neighborhood looked like. Here is what he was like. I enjoyed it, for the most part; it strayed into dry areas at times, particularly when it wandered away from the topic of Shakespeare himself. I feel I know more in some ways now about the Mountjoy family than I do about Shakespeare himself. But the portrait of William Shakespeare – the Lodger – drawn through this book is one I enjoyed the evolution of. Barring time travel or miraculous discoveries of documents, we'll never know everything about Shakespeare; this pushed the boundaries of what is guessed into what might be called "known" a little further.
    • 3/5
      An interesting analysis of the locality in which Shakespeare probably passed some of the most productive years of his play-writing career, reconstructed from painstaking analysis of a variety of records.Nicholl, perhaps best known for his previous work, "The Reckoning", an account of the events leading to the death of Christopher Marlowe, has an engaging writing style which quickly grabs and holds the reader's attention. I do think that he might be slightly guilty of leaping to conclusions for which there is not really enough supporting evidence, but his story never lacks for interest.More than anything else, I think that this book serves to demonstrate the very delicate strands of luck on which hang our knowledge of Shakespeare's work and existence. We only have six examples of his signature (two of which are on depositions that he made in the case of Belott v Mountjoy, the civil case which is at the centre of Nicholl's book, and it is only because of the act of homage by some of his fellow playwrights that the Folio edition of his plays was published at all. As that edition contains the only surviving text of several of his plays we would otherwise have had no knowledge of the man, and scant evidence of his work.
    • 3/5
      This biography is based on a court document showing that William Shakespeare testified in a lawsuit while lodging on Silver Street in London. The author uses this information, as well as his knowledge of Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and of Shakespeare's writing to create a biography of this relatively short period of Shakespeare's life.There is a lot of speculation in the book....and the author readily admits it. As he says, "we are searching for facts, but listen also to whispers..." I found this a bit frustrating at times. Also, the book is described as a love story, with Shakespeare bringing two lovers together, but this a very minor part of the writing. It is much more a study of Shakespeare's writing related to the times in which he lived.
    • 5/5
      The author has managed to bring these few years of Shakespeare's life in Silver Street to life as well as Jacobean London itself. Charles Nicholl wears his scholarship lightly: you realise how much research and reading he has done but I felt perpetually engrossed and not overwhelnmed by it all. It isn't the first book I've read about Shakespeare but it sure comes in the top three.