Traced to an underground car park

Nine years ago Park Honan published a modest biography of Shakespeare which alerted the literary world to the amount of hard fact that has gradually accumulated over the centuries alongside the speculation and mythology. Honan’s book opened the floodgates. A spate of Shakespeare biographies followed which shows no sign of abating. According to Honan, this is just how it should be: ‘Our collective picture of the poet’s life is surely best when many people test it, doubt it, discuss it …when we are not under any illusion that it is to be finished.’

Charles Nicholl delicately avoids the heavily trampled centre ground by following the example of James Shapiro’s 1599 and narrowing his focus, in this case right down to a single episode: a domestic lawsuit, unearthed in the Public Records Office at the beginning of the last century. The case itself is unremarkable. In 1612 Stephen Belott sued his father-in-law, Christopher Mountjoy, a Huguenot wig and ‘tire’ maker, for the dowry he was promised back in 1604.