Shakespeare on Silver Street

It is probably just as well that Charles Nicholl did not come to the Archives at Dulwich College to research for his latest book The Lodger: Shakespeare on Silver Street as he might have been sadly misled by the forgeries left by John Payne Collier in the nineteenth century. Payne Collier, a Shakespeare scholar of some repute and standing was very frustrated by the lack of documentary evidence concerning Shakespeare and the Henslowe-Alleyn Theatre Papers at Dulwich proved too much of a temptation. He inserted Shakespeare's name on two lists of residents on Bankside and made a false reference to King Lear on the Costume List.

Charles Nicholl's new book, published by Allen Lane deals with a much more reliable source, a record from the May 1612 Court of Requests, in which Shakespeare is a witness. From this one document Nicholl has woven a whole book about Shakespeare's life while lodging in a house in Silver Street, now destroyed, which ran east of Aldgate and north of Cheapside in early C17th London.