The Lodger - Shakespeare on Silver Street - Hardcover

Nicholl, Charles

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9780713998900: The Lodger - Shakespeare on Silver Street

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713998903 ISBN 13: 9780713998900

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2007

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In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence at the Court of Requests in Westminster - it is the only occasion his spoken words are recorded. The case seems routine - a dispute over an unpaid marriage-dowry - but it opens up an unexpected window into the dramatist's famously obscure life-story. Charles Nicholl applies a powerful biographical magnifying glass to this fascinating episode in Shakespeare's life. Marshalling evidence from a wide variety of sources, including previously unknown documentary material on the Mountjoys, he conjures up a detailed and compelling description of the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived and worked, and in which he wrote such plays as Othello, Measure for Measure and King Lear.

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About the Author:

Charles Nicholl is a historian, biographer and travel writer. His books include The Reckoning (winner of the James Tait Black prize for biography and the Crime Writers' Association `Gold Dagger' award for non-fiction), A Cup of News: the life of Thomas Nashe, Shakespeare and his contemporaries (Natural Portrait Gallery insights series) and Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa (winner of the Hawthornden Prize). His most recent book was the acclaimed biography, Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind, which has been published in 17 languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has lectured in Britain, Italy and the United States.

From AudioFile:

Nicholl's literary detection--highly conjectural--on William Shakespeare focuses on the years 1603-1605, when the playwright was in his early forties. The well-crafted work is replete with details of daily life and human interactions during the Jacobean era that may have inspired the Bard's writings. Gareth Armstrong deftly narrates this most British of scholarly works but stumbles a bit while attempting the American accents of literary researchers, as well as with some French pronunciations. However, his articulate delivery of this atmospheric slice of life--as well as its embedded theatrical lines--illuminates the historical context of Shakespeare's works. Conjured from the only surviving record of the Bard's spoken words--court evidence given in Westminster--Nicholl's literary meanderings may shed new light on some of the greatest plays ever written. A.W. � AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

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