The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street

(Paperback)

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Description

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.

Author Bio

Charles Nicholl has written travel books, The Fruit Palace and Borderlines; a study of Elizabethan alchemy, The Chemical Theatre, and a biography of the pamphleteer Thomas Nashe, A Cup of News. He has also written a reconstruction of Sir Walter Raleigh's search for El Dorado, The Creature in the Map, and Somebody Else, which won the 1998 Hawthornden Prize and a biography of Christopher Marlowe, The Reckoning. Charles Nicholl is the author of nine books of history, biography and travel, including the celebrated The Reckoning- The Murder of Christopher Marlowe (winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Biography, and the Crime Writers' Association 'Gold Dagger' Award for non-fiction), Somebody Else- Arthur Rimbaud in Africa (winner of the Hawthornden Prize), The Fruit Palace and The Creature in the Map. He has presented two documentaries for British television, and has lectured in Britain, Italy and the United States. He lives in Italy with his wife and children.