Shakespeare’s London House Exactly Where We Thought
Plus: Ice cream, the Pope, and lighting yourself on fire
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Shakespeare’s London House Exactly Where We Thought
Ah, the sweet smell of Shakespeare news in April. In honor of Shakespeare’s death/maybe birth day on April 23, there is often exciting Shakespeare-shaped news released around this time. Last year’s was “Shakespeare Slightly Less of a Jerk Than Previously Believed (Maybe)” which continues to be this newsletter’s most popular post, so let’s crack on with the 2026 edition.
Professor Lucy Munro has identified the exact location of the property that Shakespeare bought in London in 1613. He already owned a nice pile in Stratford, but had always been a renter in London.
Shakespeare bought the “dwelling house or Tenement with th’appurtenaunces” near St. Paul’s for £140. The property was previously leased to a haberdasher,2 Shakespeare bought it from a minstrel,3 and rented it to a printer.4 The site was previously a Dominican friary (so, probably haunted) and “substantial enough to have been divided into two houses by 1645.” Plenty of room to pace or crumple paper in a sexy/disheveled manner if he ever did live/work there, which is not known. Shakespeare (co-)wrote Two Noble Kinsmen around this time, so it is tempting to imagine him looking out at London and muttering:
This world’s a city full of straying streets,
And death’s the market-place where each one meets.
There was some legal chicanery over who inherited the property after Shakespeare’s death, but it eventually ended up in the hands of his granddaughter. She sold it one year before it burned in The Great Fire, along with much of the City and a bunch of (Third) Folios.
Since 2013, there has been a blue plaque on 5 St Andrew’s Hill stating that Shakespeare “purchased lodgings in the Blackfriars gatehouse located near this site.” This information wasn’t “lost” or particularly “‘missing,’” but it wasn’t well-known.
As taglines go, “The Victorian Warehouse Where Two Noble Kinsmen Was Written (Maybe)” will never have the same ring as “Shakespeare’s Birthplace.”5 But it is nice to have a new spot to visit, and serendipitous that the plaque ended up in the right place, like Thaisa at the Temple. If you would like to experience the neighborhood as it was in Shakespeare’s day, it is important to know that his house was next to a pub.6
See you there.
Quick Links
Yuvika Tolani will be the first permanent artistic director of Seattle’s Union Arts Center. (previous)
“When I was moving to Seattle, I saw news of the merger, and said, ‘Oh, a contemporary theater is merging with a Shakespeare theater — this is the one I’m going to keep my eye on.’”
Lesley Malin and Scott Helm endow WashU’s Shakespeare summer program.
“Shakespeare was perhaps the greatest humanist of all time,” said Malin, a founder and producing executive director of The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Maryland’s leading proponent of classic theater.7
Laurence Olivier on Mastermind.
Which Italian producer financed Olivier screen adaptation of Henry V, Olivier later gifting him the special Oscar he’d received for the film?9
That time the Pope accidentally stole a Folio.
At the end of the recital one of the actors, Dorothy Tutin, impulsively held up the First Folio to be blessed by the pope who, misunderstanding the gesture, treated it as a gift and handed it to a cardinal to add to the Vatican vaults.
“Our director exited, to a shed outside, caressing vodka.”10
Debra Hanson on genius. (previous)
…an actor can have all of the education, all of the brains, all of the humanity, all of the understanding of what Shakespeare is saying… all of the technical things that have been taught and they can go on stage and they can’t do a damn thing. And then you get other ones who have no sense of decorum…they’re not interested in reading…and they get on stage – they’re like transmitters – something unworldly comes out of them.11
Recommendations
“The wittier the human, the more likely that human would survive.”
“It was here, on the notorious tiger skin rug, that the passionate love
affair between the lady novelist Elinor Glyn and the Marquis Curzon, Viceroy of India no less, took place here before this fireplace.”
Like this one.
William Ireland. Because of course there’s a connection to my favorite Shakespeare forger.
Shakespeare’s Stratford home was demolished in a tax-avoidance scheme and this London property burnt to ash, but you can still visit the place where he was born. Be respectful though: Americans have a history of trying to cart it off or at least bits of it. [Insert “sit down John” joke here.]
One of the three property trustees may also have been a pub landlord.
Lesley features in one of my favorite Good Tickle Brain comics. (source)
While we’re on Shakespeare/food tie-ins: the fact that Angel City Brewing has not yet (to my knowledge) sold flights of Angel beer whenever Hamlet is in town is criminal.
My favorite bit of Oliver trivia: the hands of Henry V’s effigy in Westminster are his.
This description of Brent Carver:
He burns himself when he performs. He lit a little bit of himself on fire every time.^
^If you haven’t seen clips of Parade, go do that.