In 1612 Shakespeare gave evidence in a court-case at Westminster - 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. Some eight years earlier, we learn, Shakespeare was lodging in the house of a French immigrant family, the Mountjoys, and while there he was called on by his landlady to ´persuade´ the family´s former apprentice to marry their daughter. Charles Nicholl applies the 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 compellingly detailed account of the circumstances in which Shakespeare lived and worked, and in which he wrote such plays as "Othello", "Measure for Measure", and "King Lear". In this subtle, elegant and often surprising exploration of Shakespeare at forty, we see him not from the viewpoint of literary greatness, but in the humdrum and very human context of Silver Street, where to the maid of the house he was merely ´one Mr Shakespeare´, lodging in the room upstairs. Charles Nicholl is the author of ten books of history, biography and travel, including "The Reckoning" (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), and "The Fruit Palace". His most recent book was the acclaimed biography, "Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of the Mind", which has been published in 16 languages. He has presented two documentaries for British television, and has lectured in Britain, Italy and the United States. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
