Living with Shakespeare

Marsh wonderfully captures life in Shakespeare's time in his original microhistorical depiction of the author's neighborhood. -- Martin Ravn * Kristeligt Dagblad *
Living with Shakespeare is history built up by the accretion of detail, as a way of looking at the bigger theme of the Elizabethan theatre, the beginnings of empire, the treatment of mental illness and the scandal of witchcraft. -- Celia Haddon * Salisbury Review *
In so vividly putting Shakespeare among the rich variety of Saint Helen's parish, Marsh has done a service to the history of London and to the history of Shakespeare's life and milieu. -- Gabriel Egan, De Montfort University * The London Journal *
This gives us a snapshot of Shakespeare’s life and a moment of wider economic change, in which the old structures are shifting. [...] Living with Shakespeare is filled with riches. -- Daniel Swift * The Spectator *
I did, however, learn many other things from Living with Shakespeare, and I expect to carry on doing so because the many lavish illustrations, tables, charts and even diagrams make it an absolutely invaluable reference book. -- Lisa Hopkins, Sheffiffield Hallam University * Times Higher Education *
There are very few writers who can bring the past to life in such an accessible and easily absorbed fashion. Marsh has a light touch as a writer. His prose is direct but never harsh. It is a real joy to read something so detailed, well-researched, fluent and informative. -- Michael Jecks * WriterlyWitterings *
Geoffrey Marsh offers the reader a fascinating, rich slice of London life in the late Elizabethan era. He focuses on lives of the people of the parish of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate – which was home to one William Shakespeare for much of the 1590s, a period of transformation for the playwright and for theatre. Always a pleasure to read (but with its scrupulous research detailed in a lengthy Appendix), this beautifully illustrated book does indeed, as the author hopes, open up vistas upon Shakespeare and his world to people who only have a passing knowledge of his life. It will, however, also inform and intrigue Shakespeare scholars and practitioners. -- Anna Beer, Kellogg College, University of Oxford
Living with Shakespeare offers a vivid portrait of Elizabethan London, one that brings to life St Helen’s parish, Shakespeare’s neighbourhood in the mid-1590s. A fascinating, deeply researched and beautifully illustrated study. -- James Shapiro, author of 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
‘Geoffrey Marsh is a scholar-detective, whose remarkable career at the V & A makes him a contemporary Autolycus, snapping up unconsidered trifles. A perfect sleuth for the investigation of Elizabethan London, his pioneering study of St Helen’s Parish, Bishopsgate, brings to life, in the most brilliant and arresting detail, Shakespeare’s day-to-day experience during some of his most formative years (1593–8). In the library of Shakespeare studies, there can be few volumes to rival this unique compendium for richness of detail or wealth of vivid contemporary insight. Marsh’s attention to the character and humanity of the playwright’s neighbours yields many suggestive footnotes to some world-famous lines. This portrait of a great writer’s creative milieu is extraordinary and magnicent.’ -- Robert McCrum, author of Shakespearean: On Life & Language in Times of Disruption (Picador, 2020)
It is absolutely beautifully produced and has the minutiae I love pouring over. So little is known about him, but if you carefully excavate around the places he lived you can glean a great deal. -- Sue Jackson, London Blue Badge Guide and Lecturer