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Shakespeare of London
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397 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
November 17, 2017
This book was an eye-opener for me. I've read Shakespeare's plays and seen them performed many times, but I had never researched what is known of Shakespeare himself. Instead, I had a vague collection of ideas about him that have been floating around for decades--for example, not much is known about him, he was a member of the lower class, his father was a butcher, there are serious doubts that he really authored the plays or maybe even existed.
Shakespeare of London refutes all those stories. I found out that Shakespeare's father was an alderman, a well-known public figure in Stratford. Considering that it was over 400 years ago, there's plenty of documentary evidence about the family. And not only is there no doubt that Shakespeare did write the plays, he also acted in them--not at all unusual for Elizabethan times, but not something I'd ever heard before--and entered into ventures with his company to build and own theatres.
Sometimes the author goes off on tangents, as when she spends pages criticizing the Stratford grammar schools that gave town youth a free education, but overall this book is invaluable in understanding Shakespeare's life and times, and a fun read as well.
Shakespeare of London refutes all those stories. I found out that Shakespeare's father was an alderman, a well-known public figure in Stratford. Considering that it was over 400 years ago, there's plenty of documentary evidence about the family. And not only is there no doubt that Shakespeare did write the plays, he also acted in them--not at all unusual for Elizabethan times, but not something I'd ever heard before--and entered into ventures with his company to build and own theatres.
Sometimes the author goes off on tangents, as when she spends pages criticizing the Stratford grammar schools that gave town youth a free education, but overall this book is invaluable in understanding Shakespeare's life and times, and a fun read as well.
September 23, 2012
I first read this 20-25 years ago and have recently reread it.
There are a few niggling annoyances which I notice this time round, but missed the first time. Occasionally Chute's personal views intrude in an unhelpful way e.g. she seems to miss few chances to push her 20th century American capitalist worldview, with any Elizabethan collective practices dismissed as "impractical" and "mediaeval" and examples of free market trade highlighted and praised. She's also on very shaky grounds when she attempts literary criticism, e.g. she dismisses All's Well That Ends Well as an unambiguous failure, ignoring the fact that it was considered a popular part of the canon in the 18th century and her disparaging views of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and Jonson's work would probably meet with little agreement amongst modern critics. Generally, she's too prone to state her literary views as if they were fact. She also has the sports commentator's habit of being rather too ready to speculate what other people must have been thinking or feeling. And, obviously, as the book was written more than 60 years ago, some of the theories she expounds are dated or have been superseded by modern scholarship.
But this is far less a problem than one might expect. It's an uncannily modern-seeming read.
And she brings Elizabethan and Jacobean England to life with vivacity and attention to detail. Reading it, you feel as if you are walking the mean streets of 17th century Southwark. It's packed full of fascinating anecdotes and facts, but is still a smooth and satisfying read as a linear narrative. And the way that she alternates between life in London and life in provincial Stratford gives a real sense of how these distant communities were linked by relatively good transport links and how many prominent figures had links with both towns. I defy anybody to read this and still believe it unlikely that a lower-middle class boy from the Midlands could have written the Shakespearean canon. Chute ably demonstrates the social fluidity, good secondary education and accessibility of books which makes the orthodox attribution of the plays entirely unremarkable.
My biggest grumble is the lack of references in bibliography (in my 1960s edition, at least).
But a thumping good read and about as good an introduction to Shakespeare's life and times and one could ask for.
There are a few niggling annoyances which I notice this time round, but missed the first time. Occasionally Chute's personal views intrude in an unhelpful way e.g. she seems to miss few chances to push her 20th century American capitalist worldview, with any Elizabethan collective practices dismissed as "impractical" and "mediaeval" and examples of free market trade highlighted and praised. She's also on very shaky grounds when she attempts literary criticism, e.g. she dismisses All's Well That Ends Well as an unambiguous failure, ignoring the fact that it was considered a popular part of the canon in the 18th century and her disparaging views of Marlowe's The Jew of Malta and Jonson's work would probably meet with little agreement amongst modern critics. Generally, she's too prone to state her literary views as if they were fact. She also has the sports commentator's habit of being rather too ready to speculate what other people must have been thinking or feeling. And, obviously, as the book was written more than 60 years ago, some of the theories she expounds are dated or have been superseded by modern scholarship.
But this is far less a problem than one might expect. It's an uncannily modern-seeming read.
And she brings Elizabethan and Jacobean England to life with vivacity and attention to detail. Reading it, you feel as if you are walking the mean streets of 17th century Southwark. It's packed full of fascinating anecdotes and facts, but is still a smooth and satisfying read as a linear narrative. And the way that she alternates between life in London and life in provincial Stratford gives a real sense of how these distant communities were linked by relatively good transport links and how many prominent figures had links with both towns. I defy anybody to read this and still believe it unlikely that a lower-middle class boy from the Midlands could have written the Shakespearean canon. Chute ably demonstrates the social fluidity, good secondary education and accessibility of books which makes the orthodox attribution of the plays entirely unremarkable.
My biggest grumble is the lack of references in bibliography (in my 1960s edition, at least).
But a thumping good read and about as good an introduction to Shakespeare's life and times and one could ask for.
May 17, 2010
Long ago Marchette Chute wrote a series of books about literary figures including, and perhaps exclusively as far as I know, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Ben Jonson. I own and have read all of them. I think my favorite is Shakespeare of London, but Chaucer of England is delightful as well. In many ways they are touchstone books, charming, erudite without the ego and just fun. I found Ben Jonson the least interesting but this may be that I absolutely do not like Ben Jonson. I think it's a tribute to Ms. Chute that I even modestly enjoyed that book. And more to the point, finished it.
December 17, 2016
Shakespeare of London is an entertaining read. While much is known about the contours of Shakespeare’s life (especially compared his contemporaries), little is known about his motivations, thoughts or feelings.
Chute tell the story of Shakespeare through the stories of Stratford and London, and his environment. This is not an uncommon approach. (The Year of Lear is one example.) But in the reams of scholarship and knowledge about London and Stratford is inevitably a large dose of speculation. However, I don’t think Chute tries to fool the reader – the speculation is acknowledged and the reader can decide to believe it or not.
Chute emphasizes throughout that Shakespeare was an actor -- he regularly performed in plays by himself and others (like Jonson's Sejanus). This is something we (I?) don't think about a lot. According to Chute, this was key to his financial success moreso than the writing. It might have been a factor in his decision to solely focus on writing plays later in his career.
I was also not aware of the relative stablity of Shakespeare's troupe compared to the others of the day. There was a core group -- Shakespeare, Burbage, Condell, Heminges and others -- who worked together almost their entire lives. Chute repeating emphasizes their comity -- perhaps too much. However, it is worth noting that this stability probably gave Shakespeare a bit of license to do better work.
Although I am a frequent reader of Shakespeare, I’ve never been that interested in his life or biography. In fact, I’ve tried to avoid it. However, I picked up this book at a library book sale for a dollar. Although very well researched, the book is not dry or boring. It’s a very entertaining view of life in London that one Williams Shakespeare did and may have seen.
Chute tell the story of Shakespeare through the stories of Stratford and London, and his environment. This is not an uncommon approach. (The Year of Lear is one example.) But in the reams of scholarship and knowledge about London and Stratford is inevitably a large dose of speculation. However, I don’t think Chute tries to fool the reader – the speculation is acknowledged and the reader can decide to believe it or not.
Chute emphasizes throughout that Shakespeare was an actor -- he regularly performed in plays by himself and others (like Jonson's Sejanus). This is something we (I?) don't think about a lot. According to Chute, this was key to his financial success moreso than the writing. It might have been a factor in his decision to solely focus on writing plays later in his career.
I was also not aware of the relative stablity of Shakespeare's troupe compared to the others of the day. There was a core group -- Shakespeare, Burbage, Condell, Heminges and others -- who worked together almost their entire lives. Chute repeating emphasizes their comity -- perhaps too much. However, it is worth noting that this stability probably gave Shakespeare a bit of license to do better work.
Although I am a frequent reader of Shakespeare, I’ve never been that interested in his life or biography. In fact, I’ve tried to avoid it. However, I picked up this book at a library book sale for a dollar. Although very well researched, the book is not dry or boring. It’s a very entertaining view of life in London that one Williams Shakespeare did and may have seen.
August 15, 2022
Marchette Chute’s aim in writing this “life and times” of William Shakespeare was to limit herself to what can be determined from contemporary sources. I was pleasantly surprised at what she could tease out of the limited available evidence and weave it into an enjoyable, informative narrative.
Along the way, she also portrays the world of Elizabethan theater. I learned much I didn’t know about how plays were created and staged. While Shakespeare towered above other playwrights—which many of them seemed willing to recognize, even if reluctantly—many of them were also skilled craftsmen.
What then set Shakespeare apart? Chute writes that many plays of the previous generation had been comparatively simple affairs that relied on broad humor and spectacle. Their hold on the stage was challenged by a set of university-educated aspiring playwrights, most memorably Christopher Marlowe. The dons at Oxbridge had schooled them in theory, especially concerning the unities they should observe. These principles, as old as Aristotle, had been hardened to dogma. Shakespeare, Chute reports, had little interest in theory.
Chute points to two aspects in which Shakespeare excelled. One was the luxuriant flow of his language, and the other his gift for transcending the types usually portrayed on the stage, replacing them with well-rounded, memorable characters.
Another fact set him apart from rival playwrights: He began as an actor before ever trying his hand at a script and remained one throughout his career. As a result, he knew from ample experience in London theaters, on tour, and in royal palaces what worked in front of an audience. In addition, he was a member of London’s leading troop for most of his career. This meant that as he wrote, he knew the actors who would bring his characters to life. And unlike other playwrights, whose work was done once a theater company accepted the script and paid for it, he remained involved in every step of preparing each production.
His career path set him apart from other playwrights in another way: he became wealthy, not by writing but through his share of the receipts of his acting company (the other full members of the troop profited equally well). Chute details his care in investing his earnings, primarily in real estate in his hometown.
In addition to being an astute businessman, I learned that Shakespeare seems to have been an amiable man, slow to take offense. In this way, too, he cut a different figure from Kit Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and others of the playwright guild.
Chute devotes some space to questions such as the extent of the canon and whether someone else wrote the plays. Suggestions that Shakespeare was a front for a nobleman who chose not to publish under his own name seem rooted in class snobbery. As appreciation for Shakespeare’s excellence rose, for some, it became unthinkable that the grandson of a tenant farmer could have authored them. Nor does the argument from his lack of time at a university carry weight. In Chute’s telling, university men who wrote good plays, such as Marlowe and Jonson, did so despite being hobbled by the theoretical strictures they absorbed there.
As to the vexed question of canon: ironically, here, too, it is Shakespeare’s excellence that opened the door to theories of collaboration and misattribution. He was so good, the argument goes, that he was incapable of writing even one mediocre line. Yet accepting “Henry VI” as his demonstrates that he didn’t arrive fully formed but had to learn as he went. And admitting that “Henry VIII” (written after he retired from the stage) and not “The Tempest” was his last shows that even the deepest springs of genius are not inexhaustible and that he was wise to retire when he did.
Finally, I was interested in Chute’s observation that timing was a part of Shakespeare’s success. He arrived in London at a time when there was an enthusiastic theater-going public and before the Puritan ascendance that silenced the stage for two generations following Shakespeare’s death. This interplay of individual genius and the contingencies of time and place gives pause for thought.
Along the way, she also portrays the world of Elizabethan theater. I learned much I didn’t know about how plays were created and staged. While Shakespeare towered above other playwrights—which many of them seemed willing to recognize, even if reluctantly—many of them were also skilled craftsmen.
What then set Shakespeare apart? Chute writes that many plays of the previous generation had been comparatively simple affairs that relied on broad humor and spectacle. Their hold on the stage was challenged by a set of university-educated aspiring playwrights, most memorably Christopher Marlowe. The dons at Oxbridge had schooled them in theory, especially concerning the unities they should observe. These principles, as old as Aristotle, had been hardened to dogma. Shakespeare, Chute reports, had little interest in theory.
Chute points to two aspects in which Shakespeare excelled. One was the luxuriant flow of his language, and the other his gift for transcending the types usually portrayed on the stage, replacing them with well-rounded, memorable characters.
Another fact set him apart from rival playwrights: He began as an actor before ever trying his hand at a script and remained one throughout his career. As a result, he knew from ample experience in London theaters, on tour, and in royal palaces what worked in front of an audience. In addition, he was a member of London’s leading troop for most of his career. This meant that as he wrote, he knew the actors who would bring his characters to life. And unlike other playwrights, whose work was done once a theater company accepted the script and paid for it, he remained involved in every step of preparing each production.
His career path set him apart from other playwrights in another way: he became wealthy, not by writing but through his share of the receipts of his acting company (the other full members of the troop profited equally well). Chute details his care in investing his earnings, primarily in real estate in his hometown.
In addition to being an astute businessman, I learned that Shakespeare seems to have been an amiable man, slow to take offense. In this way, too, he cut a different figure from Kit Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and others of the playwright guild.
Chute devotes some space to questions such as the extent of the canon and whether someone else wrote the plays. Suggestions that Shakespeare was a front for a nobleman who chose not to publish under his own name seem rooted in class snobbery. As appreciation for Shakespeare’s excellence rose, for some, it became unthinkable that the grandson of a tenant farmer could have authored them. Nor does the argument from his lack of time at a university carry weight. In Chute’s telling, university men who wrote good plays, such as Marlowe and Jonson, did so despite being hobbled by the theoretical strictures they absorbed there.
As to the vexed question of canon: ironically, here, too, it is Shakespeare’s excellence that opened the door to theories of collaboration and misattribution. He was so good, the argument goes, that he was incapable of writing even one mediocre line. Yet accepting “Henry VI” as his demonstrates that he didn’t arrive fully formed but had to learn as he went. And admitting that “Henry VIII” (written after he retired from the stage) and not “The Tempest” was his last shows that even the deepest springs of genius are not inexhaustible and that he was wise to retire when he did.
Finally, I was interested in Chute’s observation that timing was a part of Shakespeare’s success. He arrived in London at a time when there was an enthusiastic theater-going public and before the Puritan ascendance that silenced the stage for two generations following Shakespeare’s death. This interplay of individual genius and the contingencies of time and place gives pause for thought.
Read
February 19, 2022First book I ever read about Shakespeare. Still on my shelf.
August 5, 2019
Here’s what Marchette Chute said she wanted to do: “This book is an attempt to bring a very great man into the light of common day. It is an attempt to show William Shakespeare as his contemporaries saw him, rather than as the gigantic and legendary figure he has become since. He was once life size, and this is an attempt at a life-sized portrait.”
In a remarkably readable way, Chute accomplishes exactly that. She brings the man to life, weaving stage history and political history and social history in a seamless story that is about Shakespeare first and London second, but only barely.
She does this through the most lifeless of documents – real estate records, tax bills, parish lists – and through the more personal – wills, letters, notes in the margins of books and scripts.
With great care, she tells only the story that exists in contemporary records, gently but firmly peeling away the apocryphal episodes added as Shakespeare’s stature swelled after his death. She circled back insistently to Shakespeare’s actual livelihood – acting – and demonstrated how it would have informed his writing.
He understood intimately, for example, the possibilities and demands of bringing a battle to life on stage.
“Not being content with savage, realistic fights in its theatre productions, the London audience also expected to see bloody deaths and mutilations; and it was necessary to find some way to run a sword through an actor’s head or tear out his entrails without improving his usefulness for the next afternoon’s performance.”
Somehow, in two semesters of college Shakespeare, I managed to miss (or have since forgotten!) the fact that almost all his plays are retellings of old stories or even other plays. His genius, Chute argues, is in his poetry and his characterization. A stiff story came to life on his page and on the stage with his troupe.
He used massive numbers of characters in some of his English histories, forcing actors to take multiple roles – and manage multiple speedy costume changes.
“The action of the play had to be carefully arranged to make all this doubling possible, and if the historical events interfered with practical stagecraft it was history that had to be altered.”
His casual handling of facts and chronology infuriated some higher-minded writers, including his friend Ben Jonson. But Chute makes gentle fun of those who idolized the classical unities and traditions that shielded the audience from the most intense moments.
She writes of one university play that had a “use of messengers so correct that none of the action of the story took place on the stage at all.”
Chute doesn’t dismiss the literary quality of some of these other works, but she gives Shakespeare the credit for characters who lived and breathed through his words – exactly what his audiences of real people wanted.
“They did not want words to be treated as masters, to be respectfully arranged according to the best rules. They wanted them to be treated as servants, to bring them real people and real emotions.”
If you have any love for Shakespeare or for London, you should not miss this book.
In a remarkably readable way, Chute accomplishes exactly that. She brings the man to life, weaving stage history and political history and social history in a seamless story that is about Shakespeare first and London second, but only barely.
She does this through the most lifeless of documents – real estate records, tax bills, parish lists – and through the more personal – wills, letters, notes in the margins of books and scripts.
With great care, she tells only the story that exists in contemporary records, gently but firmly peeling away the apocryphal episodes added as Shakespeare’s stature swelled after his death. She circled back insistently to Shakespeare’s actual livelihood – acting – and demonstrated how it would have informed his writing.
He understood intimately, for example, the possibilities and demands of bringing a battle to life on stage.
“Not being content with savage, realistic fights in its theatre productions, the London audience also expected to see bloody deaths and mutilations; and it was necessary to find some way to run a sword through an actor’s head or tear out his entrails without improving his usefulness for the next afternoon’s performance.”
Somehow, in two semesters of college Shakespeare, I managed to miss (or have since forgotten!) the fact that almost all his plays are retellings of old stories or even other plays. His genius, Chute argues, is in his poetry and his characterization. A stiff story came to life on his page and on the stage with his troupe.
He used massive numbers of characters in some of his English histories, forcing actors to take multiple roles – and manage multiple speedy costume changes.
“The action of the play had to be carefully arranged to make all this doubling possible, and if the historical events interfered with practical stagecraft it was history that had to be altered.”
His casual handling of facts and chronology infuriated some higher-minded writers, including his friend Ben Jonson. But Chute makes gentle fun of those who idolized the classical unities and traditions that shielded the audience from the most intense moments.
She writes of one university play that had a “use of messengers so correct that none of the action of the story took place on the stage at all.”
Chute doesn’t dismiss the literary quality of some of these other works, but she gives Shakespeare the credit for characters who lived and breathed through his words – exactly what his audiences of real people wanted.
“They did not want words to be treated as masters, to be respectfully arranged according to the best rules. They wanted them to be treated as servants, to bring them real people and real emotions.”
If you have any love for Shakespeare or for London, you should not miss this book.
February 24, 2018
This biography, first published in 1949, is still an excellent, thoroughly-researched, highly-readable biography of William Shakespeare. I always had the impression that little was known about Shakespeare's life because no one took any notice of him until well after he had died. But Marchette Chute has gleaned, from surviving public records and other documents, a tremendous amount of information about the life of the greatest poet and playwright, as well as a fascinating picture of what life was like in England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. I teach Romeo and Juliet every year to ninth graders, and I'm kicking myself for waiting so long to read this book. This book would be of interest to anyone interested in Shakespeare, English literature, or English history.
July 16, 2017
I cannot say enough about Chute's work: its scholarship, its humor, its contextualization of Shakespeare's life and work. There are memorable insights in every chapter, particularly about the audiences for which the playwright worked. "Elizabethan London was the home of the short-cut, with each of its inhabitants wanting to know as much as possible as quick as he could," she writes, in explanation of why so many gravitated to cities in the late 1500s; Shakespeare shared this ambition with those who paid to see his plays (64). Chute emphasizes that Shakespeare's ear for language may have been a natural-born gift, but his plays were the result of hard work and art. Don't miss the Appendix explaining the publication of the First Folio as his friends' and colleagues' most important memorial to Shakespeare.
November 18, 2020
This book is exquisite in its depth of detail and readability. Chute traces Shakespeare's time in London with such depth and care that I find it preposterous to believe that anyone else could have penned the 37 plays attributed to William Shakespeare.
This book could easily have been boring, a snore-fest, but Marchette Chute's 1949 book is anything but. I found it endlessly fascinating and definitely readable.
For fans of Shakespeare, this book is one of the best explorations of Shakespeare's life in London, away from his wife and children.
This book could easily have been boring, a snore-fest, but Marchette Chute's 1949 book is anything but. I found it endlessly fascinating and definitely readable.
For fans of Shakespeare, this book is one of the best explorations of Shakespeare's life in London, away from his wife and children.
November 6, 2021
Engaging writing throughout, this book gives the reader in-depth history of British theatre during Shakespeare's life. Chute is working from contemporary sources only, and she is clearly convinced that Shakespeare was a genuinely likable man as well as a brilliant writer and actor. I'd like to read other biographies to see how they line up...
November 16, 2017
To begin with I must give this book at least another half star as it was an incredulously interesting and entertaining account of Shakespeare's life. Chute actually brings Shakespeare to life for me in her never tiring account of this mans dedicated life on the stage, simply marvelous.
March 23, 2017
I have tried reading books about Shakespeare before, and for whatever reason they always seemed a little dry and I had problems finishing them. This may be the first book I read that was interesting, well written and filled in a lot of the details about life in that time period. I would definitely recommend it to anybody that was interested in learning more about Shakespeare and theaters in the 1600s.
September 2, 2024
This author surmises that Shakespeare’s free and lyrical approach to his writing can be attributed to that schools during his day were only teaching in Latin.
January 28, 2016
While this book was published in 1949 it does not seem dated at all. Marchette Chute sounds like a modern author and an author who knows her stuff. With very few actual records to draw on, she writes an engrossing story of the political, social and religious environment during which Shakespeare lived and wrote his masterpieces. A fascinating read. And the records she cites appear to debunk the myths about Shakespeare not being the author of his own body of work. Highly recommended for history buffs.
January 5, 2016
This is really wonderful. Chute is thorough, witty, and does excellent research as she reconstructs in prose the world in which Shakespeare lived. For me, it was really wonderful to learn more about the context and place in which he lived. You can almost visualize a London very different from the one we see today, and see how its cultural and political environment affected the development of plays and the theatre. I'm excited to read Chute's biographies of Chaucer and Jonson in the future.
May 3, 2016
Interesting book, but showing its age. Chute lets little American, mid-western value judgements creep in. And its a history that frequently uses terms such as "probably" and "it is likely that" without anything to back up such claims. But apparently we know a lot more about Shakespeare's private life than I realised. This book seems to cover every commercial transaction that is on the record. Not a great deal about the plays, but a good insight into the operation of Tudor theatres.
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August 1, 2016Unlike most other books about Shakespeare, this one details his working relationships with fellow actors in the London playhouses, the plays performed and costumes used, the tours undertaken each year, and also gives vast detail about life and the people of his home town of Stratford upon Avon.
An interesting point that is relevant now is: 'Upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, anyone older than 50 could not remember a time when there was not a man on the throne'.
An interesting point that is relevant now is: 'Upon the death of Elizabeth I in 1603, anyone older than 50 could not remember a time when there was not a man on the throne'.
September 17, 2016
Éste es un libro ya antiguo pero que, desde mi punto de vista, sigue siendo un modelo de trabajo serio en su acercamiento a Shakespeare y a su obra. Muchos de los comentarios que hace el autor ayudan a entender de mejor forma la época y el sentido del teatro isabelino, lo mismo que la distancia que nos separa de esa cultura. Pero, por otro lado, también demuestra la habilidad de Shakespeare para crear textos que siguen funcionando para un tiempo muy diferente al suyo.
November 24, 2012
The highest praise I can give to any historian is just not quite enough for Chute. Immediately became what I will reach for when my faith in humanity takes a dive - beautiful, inspiring, second-only to her Chaucer book.
September 1, 2016
This book written way back in 1949 still is a great read for anyone interested in Shakespeare's life. She takes the few threads we have on his family, neighbors, colleagues and the theatre world of London and weaves a chronicle of the times. She's a very witty writer.
March 27, 2015
I found this account of life in London during the life of Shakespeare very helpful in better understanding his works. Very informative. Even tho it was written in 1947 it was very helpful. Don't know if there has been any more scholarship since then.
December 30, 2008
This book helped supplement a text book I was using,
October 30, 2012
good background on shakespeare, at times a little tedious in following side stories
October 12, 2013
An interesting look into Shakespeare's life... a little long-winded, but enlightening. :)
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January 9, 2016classic
April 19, 2015
Extremely interesting. I almost don't hate Shakespeare.
October 13, 2015
A delightful, wonderful book.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews