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The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street | 
 enlarge | Author: Charles Nicholl
Publisher: Viking Adult
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 62820
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.7
ISBN: 0670018503
Dewey Decimal Number: 822.33
EAN: 9780670018505
ASIN: 0670018503
Publication Date: January 31, 2008
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Product Description
A brilliantly drawn detective story with entirely new insights into Shakespeares life
In 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case at Westminster and it is the only occasion on which his actual spoken words were recorded. The case seems routinea dispute over an unpaid marriage dowrybut it opens an unexpected window into the dramatists famously obscure life. Using the court testimony as a springboard, acclaimed nonfiction writer Charles Nicholl examines this fascinating period in Shakespeares 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 Shakespeares 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 raritysomething new and original about Shakespeare.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Excellent, thoughtful work August 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you want to learn more about a brief moment in WS's life, and a good deal more about London of that time, then this will be a good book for you. It is definitely for folks with some background and an interest in WS, and its tone (while never dry) is more to the scholarly end of the spectrum.
Not for the Fox News crowd...
 The reckoning was already paid May 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Charles Nicholl's earlier book, *The Reckoning,* about the spy-murder of Christopher Marlowe, combined historical research with the conventions of the detective novel to tell a compelling story. Essentially, Nicholl established that Marlowe hadn't been killed in an Elizabethan bar fight. (That was only the cover story.) Instead, Marlowe was murdered because he was an international spy who knew too much and who'd been trapped between the political factions of the Earl of Essex and Sir Walter Raleigh.
*The Lodger Shakespeare* tries to be the same kind of book, but it isn't as good.
As his starting point, Nicholl takes the fact that in 1604, Shakespeare rented a room in London from a family of French emigres whose livelihood involved making elaborate women's headdresses. Years later, a deposition revealed just how involved the playwright had become in the lives of the Mountjoys: The mother had urged Shakespeare to intervene in the daughter's betrothal. The father had refused to pay the wedding dowry; a lawsuit had ensued.
Much as James Shapiro does in *A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599,* Nicholl meticulously tracks down scenes and objects that the playwright witnessed, along with then people he knew, then draws parallels to the plays. Shakespeare had chosen to lodge with foreigners in a part of London not convenient to the playhouses; we don't know why, but we do know that Sir Thomas More (for which Shakespeare wrote a scene) . Brothels show up in *Pericles* because Shakespeare collaborated on that play with a hack writer who was also a pimp. The plays' many detailed references to dressmaking; the dowry in King Lear; the preoccupation with the technicalities of Elizabethan law regarding betrothals in *All's Well That Ends Well* and *Measure for Measure*; the several late plays that examine father-daughter relationships -- all of these, Nicholl suggests, may well have emerged from the years he lived with the squabbling Mountjoys.
But only suggests. Nicholl conjectures a great deal about what might have happened; while he uncovers new connections, conclusive proofs simply aren't available. *The Lodger* doesn't have the suspense or high stakes of the story of Marlowe's murder. About a minor episode in Shakespeare's life, we're left with some intriguing maybes.
If you love Shakespeare... May 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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!
Shakespeare Among Many April 7, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
 Inspired Conjecture April 5, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
THE LODGER SHAKESPEARE starts with a clever insight. While we have millions of words written by Shakespeare, we have only a few words--a deposition in the case of Belott versus Mountjoy--that may reflect Shakespeare's spoken words. In TLS, Charles Nicholl builds from this deposition to create a story about the world of Shakespeare in 1603-1605, when the Bard rented a room from Christopher Mountjoy on Silver Street and had a role in persuading Stephen Belott, Mountjoy's apprentice, to marry his daughter. In the deposition, Shakespeare testifies about the shortchanging of the dowry.
Overall, I'd say Nicholl has mixed success with this story. On the plus side, Nicholl makes ingenious use of old maps, church registries, court records, and contemporary descriptions of Elizabethan and Jacobean London to create a plausible version of Shakespeare's life on Silver Street. In particular, I enjoyed his chapters on the probable appearance of the Mountjoy house, its neighborhood, its household stuff, and even Shakespeare's chamber--including the books on the Bard's shelves. This stuff is fantastic.
Further, Nicholl explains Shakespeare's decision to rent from the Mountjoys--a French couple in xenophobic London--with great insight. And, he shows how elements of the Mountjoy's trade--the creation of stylish and elaborate female headgears called tires--became metaphors in Shakespeare's plays. In TLS, Nicholl also offers perspective, establishing that the GREAT MAN was, in his days in London, a person in the entertainment business with a mere foothold at court. He was a good match for the Mountjoys who counted the Queen as a client for their tires.
On the other hand, the book does develop information about the Mountjoys, as well others who were deposed in this case, at greater length than this reader needed. While Shakespeare clearly knew and worked with these deponents, these were also ordinary people that Nicholl has pulled from history's dustbin. Yes, their stories enable Nicholl to identify subjects influencing Shakespeare's work. But the plays themselves get pushed to the side, as we learn about tire-making, prostitution, marriage customs, and so on in Jacobean London.
THE LODGER SHAKESPEARE is based on conscientious and inspired research and is a good read. Still, I think I learned more from A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599, Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, and Shakespeare the Man.
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