Shakespeare exposed to the street | Daily News

Shakespeare exposed to the street

I am fond of reading biographies and autobiographies of great people of all types. What do I get from reading them? Perhaps it is an unanswered question that lies at the bottom of my mind. The book titled Lodger and subtitled as Shakespeare on Silver Street, first published in 2007 was lying on my table for several years. Suddenly I wanted to read the work by Charles Nicholl about whom I have read much.

Nicholl had been in the tradition of writing both which could be termed as alternative biographies or offbeat recordings on people such as Christopher Marlowe, Arthur Rimbaud and Leonardo da Vinci. His works have been translated into several working languages including Chinese, Japanese and French. I held the book authored by Charles Nicholl and determined to start reading.

Court trial

I wasn’t distressed or pulled back even for a single moment. It was page-moving mixture of an investigation into the life of the Bard, who is supposed to have been all the way from Stratford to London.

Shakespeare had been a lodger in an apartment in Silver Street to attend a certain court trial pertaining to a family dispute. The facts linked to the court trial are evidenced by authentic documents culled from several archival and museum material hidden from the human eye for centuries. The reader’s attention is drawn to several court scenes in London where the dialogues that ensue are juxtaposed with some of the lines in Shakespeare plays.

Shakespeare has come as a witness who appears several times in the court case known as a dispute concerning a dowry. A sum of 60 pounds, which a person named Belott alleged, had been promised when he married Mountjoy’s daughter in 1604 and which had never been paid. The court hearings, it is stated, go on for several days where Shakespeare was one of the three witnesses called on the first day. There are interrogators put to him; five in number.

These look sensitive jottings which create a keen interest in knowing another type of Shakespeare who has gained creative inspiration from real life episodes, which may have given an impetus to build up theatrical situations in such plays as The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet.

Family matters

Nicholl, as a scholar, tries to draw parallels in the life of Shakespeare with those situations he has recreated in his own plays. In this direction, the reader gets the view that Shakespeare’s world picture as lying in his plays has been drawn from his own day to day experiences. One such example is the life he lived in the Silver Street in London during the early part of the 17th Century. Shakespeare, according to Nicholl, does not actually reveal why he was involved in those family matters of the people known by the name Mountjoy. But Nicholl, as an alternative biographer of Shakespeare, tries to dig into details by collaborative evidence.

Nicholl says that in the oral tradition, Shakespeare’s deposition in the already cited Belott Mountjoy case has been known for nearly a hundred years, but has been oddly neglected as a biographical source.

But it was found in 1909, along with others in the case, at the Public Record Office in London. Its discoverer, as stated by Nicholl, is one Dr Charles William Wallace a 44-year old American who at the time was an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska. Nicholl attaches a photograph of Dr Wallace in his work with gratitude.

Medium of expression

From another point of view, Nicholl’s alternative biography too looks like a detective story, where the detective in the work is the biographer. He tries to find a whole host of clues to make an effective biography of Shakespeare not as seen by others as a person who just lived as a great playwright in Stratford got married and died there but as a person who hunted source materials by actually living a complex life finding time to write and produce plays for people as a medium of expression.

The life of Shakespeare too is shown as a rich person who had to lead a competitive life amidst others. Shakespeare image is never tarnished or besmeared by Nicholl by trivialities that linger on in many a Stratford folklore of the period.

Instead, his image is well built akin to a scholar who is well versed in classics.

The most striking episodes in the life of Shakespeare while living in Silver Street, come as encounters with brothel keepers, sex peddlers and prostitutes who have supplied him with an immense amount of human experiences. Some of these experiences according to Nicholl has gone into the recreation of dramatic situations in plays like Othello, King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing.

Emphasis is laid on the poetic structures of Shakespeare as influenced by the various teams of balladeers and singers who lived with the masses of the time. It is accepted by most biographies that Shakespeare’s life in London is shrouded in mystery. But Nicholl tries to unveil these gaps via his findings. According to Nicholl, there had been professional theatre groups operating in London.

The first public mention of Shakespeare is marked as around 1592. Shakespeare is reputed to have written a narrative poem titled Venus and Adonis in 1593. This is a work which was popular enough to go through nine reprints within a few years. Another narrative poem, The Rape of Lucrece, appears in 1594, perhaps it is surmised that these narrative poems paved the way for his major plays. He had played the role of actor, shareholder and playwright.


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