Michael Dobson writes:

One effect of this contagious interest in the people and indeed objects with which Shakespeare shared his world is that The Lodger is a book about Shakespeare that is largely, and perhaps refreshingly, not really about Shakespeare at all, but instead shows us the way his London looked to people who saw it quite differently. Not only does it tell us about Shakespeare’s own life and character only from the perspective of those whom his life briefly and accidentally touched (such as the Mountjoys), but it reconstructs what his room in Silver Street might have been like, for instance, by quoting from contemporary writers who, unlike Shakespeare, were interested in describing what contemporary writers’ rooms were like.

(LRB 8 May 2008)

In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence in a court case concerning an unpaid dowry. Eight years previously he had been a lodger in Silver Street with the Mountjoy family, and had been instrumental in persuading the Mountjoys’ former apprentice to marry the daughter of the house. From this admittedly slender piece of biographical detail, Nicholl weaves a fascinating story of the life of the Huguenot refugees in East London, and casts an interesting new light on the so-called ‘Problem Comedies’ – Pericles, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well that Ends Well – written during Shakespeare’s stay in Silver Street.

Allen Lane | hardback 378 pp. |ISBN: 9780713998900