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| The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street | 
 enlarge | Author: Charles Nicholl
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £5.39
You Save: £3.60 (40%)
New (31) from £4.04
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 5753
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0141023740
EAN: 9780141023748
ASIN: 0141023740
Publication Date: July 3, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 6-7 of 7 | | « PREV | | |
 A Face in the Crowds of Jacobean London January 4, 2008
29 out of 30 found this review helpful
Wow. This book is an absolute peach, and kills stone dead the myth that `we know nothing of the real Shakespeare'. Nicholl has impeccable credentials as a student and textual detective of the 16th century literary underworld. If you have read and relished his book on the death of Christopher Marlowe `The Reckoning', you have some idea of the pacy narrative combined with careful scholarship that he deploys in the search for a glimmer of the real Shakespeare, located momentarily in time and place. `The Reckoning `won awards from aficionados of crime writing, and `The Lodger' is no different, providing literary history with a powerful narrative drive.
Nicholl starts with `Exhibit A': the testimony given by William Shakespeare, gentleman of Stratford upon Avon, in a tetchy law case involving his former landlords the Mountjoy family of Silver Street. The dispute about a promised dowry closely shadows plot elements of `Measure for Measure', and most tellingly of all, the deposition given by Shakespeare is our only record of his actual spoken words. From dusty archives comes the voice of a real man, rooted in the bustling London of the 1600s, and woven into the networks of literary and commercial relationships that surrounded him.
If you watched and enjoyed Michael Wood's series and book `In Search of Shakespeare' you have some idea of how the transcendent genius of Shakespeare becomes so much more human when placed in context. While the people surrounding the greatest writer in the English language are far from edifying individuals on the whole, they are powerfully human, flawed and fallible. Nicholl has shown how the actualities of 17th century life were turned into the most enduring dramatic and poetic art. He's done the Lodger of Silver Street a powerful service.
The Ordinary Life of the Most Successful Writer of All Time November 28, 2007
49 out of 53 found this review helpful
It is a rare thing to find a book on the Bard which manages to locate the poet for all time in his own time. Last year James Shapiro's '1599' gave readers an insight into the political landscape during the final years of Tudor rule, now Charles Nicholl zooms in a little closer to Shakespeare's own habitat. 'Shakespeare on Silver Street' raises the bar again for scholars, identifying Shakespeare amidst London's tradesmen and artisans, the back bone of his literature and the society about which he wrote. Here is Shakespeare the economic migrant, spending his working life away from home as an actor, small businessman, and wordsmith. Here are the domestic surroundings in which he toiled far from home.
At the peak of his celebrity, Shakespeare lodged at the residence of Christopher Mountjoy, his wife, daughter and apprentice. The Mountjoys leased the house and ran their business in it, producing elaborate headpieces, "tires" to a fashionable clientele including Queen Anne. Nicholl describes the house on Silver Street as having been much like the Shakespeare birthplace in Stratford from where John Shakespeare ran his tanning and glove making shop. Both premises comprised a workshop as well as space for interaction with customers and family living space above.
Like Shapiro, Nicholl uses Shakespeare's writings to help illuminate this world and does not seek to impose a retrospective academic or ideological approach. It is as though animation has been given to Andrew Gurr's 'The Extraordinary Life of the Most Successful Writer of All Time'. The twist being that prior to his triumphant retirement to one of Stratford's largest residences, so much of Shakespeare's life was spent in very ordinary surroundings.
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