The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street (Hardcover)

by Charles Nicholl (Author) "On Monday 11 May 1612, William Shakespeare gave evidence in a lawsuit at the Court of Requests in Westminster..." (more)
Key Phrases: merry wives, houshould stuffe, twisting wheel, Silver Street, Marie Mountjoy, Christopher Mountjoy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Nicholl, winner of a Hawthornden Prize for Arthur Rimbaud in Africa, re-creates the physical and cultural circumstances of the two-year period of 1603–1605 when Shakespeare, around 40 and at the peak of his profession, was a lodger in the home of a sexually lax Huguenot family who provided raw material for All's Well That Ends Well and other works. At the center of events is a 1612 lawsuit about a dowry unpaid by Shakespeare's former London landlord to his son-in-law. The landlord, Christopher Mountjoy, despite his success as a maker of women's decorative headwear, was a stingy man who withheld his daughter's dowry; after his wife's death, he was censured by church elders for fathering two bastards by his maid. Shakespeare may have played a larger role in the drama, persuading the reluctant bridegroom, who was Mountjoy's apprentice, to marry the daughter in the first place. While details of early Jacobean London are atmospheric, placing Shakespearean works into historical context, Nicholl's determination to sort out the biographical truths in Shakespeare's plays waxes tedious, and only the Bard's cultish devotees will care about the minutiae of headgear and wigs or the Mountjoy lawsuit. For the rest, it's much ado about nothing. 36 illus. (Feb. 4)
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From Booklist
In the warmly readable Shakespeare Unbound (2007), René Weis extrapolated a whole biography from Shakespeare’s writings. Nicholl takes Shakespeare’s signed deposition in a suit involving the Mountjoys, with whom he had boarded, and develops from it the context of a few years in Shakespeare’s life. His former hosts were “tyremakers,” fashioners of elaborate headgear (“tyres”) for wealthy women and theater companies’ wardrobes. The pater- and materfamilias were French Huguenot refugees, and while Shakespeare resided with them—quite comfortably, since he was a landed gentleman—he negotiated the marriage of the family’s daughter and an apprentice. Nicholl opens up the situation’s possibilities for the playwright. He probably honed his French among the immigrants and appropriated physical, emotional, and occupational details from them for the personae of his dramas. Most piquantly, he could have learned much about the demimonde from them and such associates as George Wilkins, the coauthor of Pericles, for the Mountjoys’ circle was involved with adulterers and prostitutes; indeed, Wilkins was a pimp. In an era blessed with them, another treasure trove of Shakespeareana. --Ray Olson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; First American Edition edition (January 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670018503
• ISBN-13: 978-0670018505
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #514,721 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Avaunt ye Baconites!, January 31, 2008

By	A. Hickman (Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria) - See all my reviews

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.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Inspired Conjecture , April 5, 2008

By	Ethan Cooper (Big Apple) - See all my reviews

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.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A few more glimpses into a life that remains one of the most scrutinized in literary history, February 25, 2008

By	Bookreporter.com (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

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" features a young man being forced into marriage, a not-uncommon event during the Elizabethan times when Shakespeare lived. Perhaps his experience with the young couple he met on Silver Street shaped that play.

THE LODGER SHAKESPEARE is very much like the plays Shakespeare crafted in his lifetime. At one level, it is simple and straightforward and can be enjoyed by ordinary readers. At a higher level, Shakespeare scholars will find important biographical materials. In either respect, the characters introduced in this historical biography will provide readers a few more glimpses into a life that remains one of the most scrutinized in literary history.

--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman