Where did William Shakespeare live in London?

The disputed 'Flower portrait' of William Shakespeare now believed
to date for the Nineteenth Century

Where did Shakespeare lodge in London? On 15 November 1597 the Petty Collectors [of Taxes] for Bishopsgate stated in their accounts the names of certain persons who had avoided, for whatever reason, payment of their taxes. Among the names for St. Helen's parish (Bishopsgate) was that of William Shakespeare, assessed five shillings on goods valued at £5, the assessment made in October 1596 and falling due in February 1597. So we can conclude that sometime before October 1596 Shakespeare was living in the St. Helen's parish of Bishopsgate, perhaps near the church which is still standing. What we don't know, however, is whether he paid his five shillings taxes.

Our next sighting of the poet was again through the tax collectors when he was assessed thirteen shilling and four pence on goods valued at £5, the assessment made on 1 October 1598. On 6 October 1660 the amount due was still outstanding, and the Court of Exchequer referred the arrears to the Bishop of Winchester who had jurisdiction in the liberty of the Clink, an area on the south bank of the Thames in the county of Surrey. So we can see that Shakespeare had migrated across the river, perhaps following his theatre which had also relocated about this time. In his accounts for 1600-1 the Bishop reported the amount collected from the names of persons referred to him, including, one images, William Shakespeare. So near the end of the decade, possibly in 1599, the dramatist had taken up residence in the liberty of the Clink in Southwark in the county of Surrey.

Winchester House, the residence in Southwick of the Bishop of Winchester.
From Hollar's View of London circa 1660

How long Shakespeare resided in Southwick is not known, but we do know that no later that 1604 he was back in the city of London residing in the house of a French Huguenot by the name of Christopher Mountjoy in Silver Street in the Cripplegate ward. Mountjoy made ornamental headgear and wigs, and he employed an apprentice by the name of Stephen Bellot. In November 1604 Bellot married Mountjoy's daughter Mary, and in 1612 undertook a civil action against his father-in-law over the amount he alleged he had been promised as his marriage-portion or dowry. On 11 May 1612 Shakespeare was called to testify, and in his deposition stated that he had known both parties 'as he now remembrethe for the space of tenne yeres or thereaboutes'. This indicates that he could have been lodging in Silver Street as early as 1602. He was also asked to state his present address which he gave as Stratford upon Avon. 

One further house in London associated with Shakespeare is the 'Blackfriars gate-house' which he purchased in March 1613 from one Henry Walker 'citizen and minstral of London'. However, the very day after the sealing of the deed he mortgaged the gate-house back to Walker, so the purchase appears to have been purely an investment.

(Silver Street circa 1570 is included in the 'Agas' map of London and can be viewed at address http://mapco.net/agas/agas.htm)

Mr Anonymous : Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550-1604)

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford
by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger

"Here's one I wrote earlier, guv".  [Edward de Vere]

So Hollywood has a new 'Shakespeare' movie coming out. Well, well, nearly 400 years dead and still good for business! The latest well-hyped offering is titled Anonymous and is based on the life of the 17th Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere (1550-1604), whom the film hails as the ‘true author’ of Shakespeare’s plays. This is the also the view of a handful of crackpot Shakespearean actors and academics, though it may have been thought that the fact that de Vere inconveniently died before many of the plays had been written (Macbeth, The Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus, The Tempest) might have deterred them just a little.


One of the arguments they put forward against Shakespeare's authorship is that he did not attend a university and so would not have had the classical education needed to write the plays, many of which are based on stories from the Roman writer Ovid. But Shakespeare almost certainly attended Stratford Grammar School (the school records no longer exist, but Shakespeare's father was a town councillor and it was a 'perk' of all councillors that their sons were educated at the grammar school). They were called grammar schools because what they taught was Latin grammar, and once the boys had mastered the language all the lessons were in Latin. Among the books they studied was the works of - you guessed! - Ovid, and it is estimated that when the boys left the grammar school they would have had the equivalent of a classics degree from a modern university.


Shakespeare also seemed to reminisce on his grammar school days in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor, in which we see a boy, appropriately called William, being given an amusing Latin lesson by his Welsh school master, called in the play Evans. It is known that when Shakespeare was a boy there was indeed a Welsh master teaching at the grammar school.

Shakespeare's dedication in
The Rape of Lucrece to his
patron, the Earl of Southampton

De Vere was a minor poet and writer of song lyrics. Among his lyrics was Come hither, shepherd swain, which was published under his own name: Earle of Oxenforde. So if he published poems under his name, why not plays, too? It is contended by his supporters that the writing of plays was regarded as a lowly profession and certainly not one to which a man of noble birth could associate his name. But Shakespeare also wrote poems. Is it not strange that the earl should acknowledge his authorship of his own trivia, but not of Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece, which are regarded as poetic masterpieces?


The fact is that no one in Shakespeare's lifetime ever doubted that he was the author of the plays. Not the Stationer's Office, which approved books for publication; not the Master of the Revels, the booking agent for court performances of plays; not  his friends and partners in his theatre company; not rival dramatists, such as Ben Jonson, a man famed at the time for his learning and erudition (though like Shakespeare he had no university education). The authorship fashion only arose in the Nineteenth Century, over 200 years after Shakespeare's death, when the Victorians, in search of a national hero, lauded him as a universal genius and a man of family values (yes, it's a good joke!), indeed as a demi-god. But if you put someone up on a plinth in that manner then sooner or later someone's going to want to knock you off. The more so if there's money to be made (conspiracy theorists, publishers, film makers, Mein Herr academics, etc., etc., etc., etc.)


The film also casts de Vere as the incestuous lover of Queen Elizabeth, so it obviously has its tongue firmly in its cheek. But how many Oscars will it win, that is the question.

London: the city of kites and crows

It is 10 a.m. on the eve of St Bartholomew’s Day, Tuesday 24th August 1604, as William Shakespeare leaves the house of Mountjoy, his Huguenot landlord, on Silver street, and sets off eastwards along Cheapside.


The day is warm and sunny, and the streets are full of the cries of traders and the rumble of carts bringing the day’s provisions from the surrounding countryside. 


Arriving at Bishopsgate, Shakespeare glances at the tiny church of St. Helen’s where he worshipped when he first came to the metropolis, then continues his journey towards the Bridge, the pride of all Londoners. It is a large and animated structure with shops and residences, and even a tiny chapel. Shakespeare pays his toll and quickens his step, for he has an important meeting to attend.


He looks to the left, to the Tower of London, the mighty edifice in which Sir Walter Raleigh languishes in his cell in the Bloody Tower, perhaps working on his Historie of the World, or reminiscing on the heady days of the School of Night not long past. Cries of the wherry boatmen, the river taxi-drivers, rise up from the river. Shakespeare stops briefly to buy a herring pie, then continues onward, through Bridge Gate and into Southwick.


Above the gate, impaled on grisly pikes, are the severed heads of traitors. Birds perch on the heads and try to tear the flesh off them. But the birds are useful, cleansing the city of its dead animal carcasses. The people even identify themselves with them….


- Where dwell’st thou?
- Under the canopy.
- Under the canopy?
- Ay.
- Where’s that?
- I’th’ city of kites and crows.          [Coriolanus 4.5]


Southwick is the entertainment hub of London, though technically not in London at all, but under the jurisdiction of the county of Surrey. It exists as a thorn in the side of the puritans who control London on the other side of the river. The entertainments on offer are three-fold: theatres, animal bating arenas, and brothels. And the most celebrated venue is Paris Garden, a brothel and a bear bating pit rolled into one.


Shakespeare continues past St Mary Overie where his brother Edmund was buried a year earlier to the sound of the great bell being tolled; then past Winchester House, the residence of the Bishop of Winchester. Prostitutes are frequently seen entering and leaving the house and have been awarded the charming sobriquet of ‘Winchester Geese’. They are also known as punks, and usually called Doll. [Doll Tearsheet, 2 Henry IV] But beware, for a Winchester Goose can also give you ‘goose bumps’, slang for the symptoms of venereal disease.


And then he is there, his theatre, his destination, a stone’s throw from the Clink prison in the Liberty of the Clink, the Wooden O, the Globe.

Many things have changed, of course, since Shakespeare walked the streets of London, though some things have also remained the same. The Tower is still there, as are St. Helen’s and St. Mary Overie, now Southwick Cathedral. The coney-catchers and cutpurses are there, too, only now called conmen and pickpockets. And also there is the Globe. Not the original structure, of course, that was destroyed by fire in 1613 during a performance of Henry VIII, but a magnificent reconstruction and the inspiration of Sam Wannamaker, an American actor, director, film producer, and lifelong Shakespearean.


The Globe was a large, open-air theatre with a yard in front of the stage and a two-tier terrace. It was constructed entirely from wood and during the reconstruction they remained as faithful as possible to the original. The same type of wood was used, the same carpentry methods and the same kind of tools were employed. It even has a straw roof, the first building in London to do so since the Great Fire of 1666, albeit with sprinklers to comply with fire regulations.


The plans of the original theatre were not, of course, available, but based on excavations of the old Globe, and of the nearby Rose Theatre, it was possible to obtain important information on the dimensions and the position of the stage.


But they had to compromise on audience capacity. The original theatre accommodated 3,000 spectators - 2,000 seated in the terraces, and 1,000 groundlings standing in the yard. But the new theatre only has half this amount, firstly to comply with health and safety regulations, and secondly for reasons of comfort, as people are physically larger today than they were 400 years ago.


Even before the building was finally completed it mounted its first production, on 21 August 1996, a performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Back in 1604 Shakespeare goes into the theatre and heads straight to the tiring room where a sharers’ meeting is planned. The company’s last production, Troilus and Cressida, had not pleased the masses, so this time Shakespeare, the original ’snapper-up of unconsidered trifles’ had turned to Giambattista Cinzio Giraldi for a tale from his Gli Ecatammite (The Hundred Tales) about a Moorish commander.  Shakespeare named his character Othello and is excited about the work.


In the tiring room the sharers are all present, among them Richard Burbage, John Heminges, Augustine Phillips, William Sly and Henry Condell. Dick Burbage wastes no time in asking the question.
“So what have you got for us, Will?”
“Well, lads, I think you’ll like it. It’s the story of a man who in a rage of sexual jealousy murders his wife”.
“He’d been cuckolded by the wench, eh Will? Yes, I do like it!”
“Oh no, she is the most pure, virtuous and innocent of women”.
“Then it must villainy of his part, eh? I‘ll dust off my Machiavellian costume.”
“You won’t need that, Dick. You see, he’s the noblest hero of them all”.
“A noble gentleman killing his virtuous wife? Are you sure you’ve got this one right, Will? ”
“And we’ll need to get some African costumes, too”.
“African costumes? Why the devil do we need African costumes?”
“Oh, didn’t I mention it? He’s also black”.


There is no recorded date for the first performance of Othello, but it was given before King James I on 1 November 1604 at Banqueting House at Whitehall and has now become one of the world’s most popular and enduring plays and Othello himself part of our mythology.


As for the new Globe, it is now one of London’s most visited tourist destinations. But you won’t see the kites and the crows unless you close your eyes. For the theatre, never forget, and especially the theatre of Shakespeare, is a place of the imagination. And with imagination you can see anything.