Reviewed by:

• Living with Shakespeare: Saint Helen's Parish, London, 1593-1598 by Geoffrey Marsh
• Christopher Highley (bio)

This is the latest of several recent books about the bard's connections to the city. Some, like Stephen Porter's Shakespeare's London: Everyday Life in London 1580-1616 (Amberley, 2011) or David Thomas's A Visitor's Guide to Shakespeare's London (Pen and Sword, 2016), use the name of Shakespeare as a hook on which to hang a more general account of the early modern metropolis. Others, like the collection of essays Shakespeare in London, edited by Hannah Crawforth, Sarah Dustagheer and Jennifer Young (Bloomsbury 2014), and Duncan Salkeld's Shakespeare and London (Oxford, 2018), explore the ways in which Shakespeare would have experienced London and how those experiences shaped his works.

Marsh has written a kind of hybrid book that will appeal to both the educated general reader and a more specialist academic audience. At the core of the book is a microhistory of the parish of St Helen's in the late-sixteenth century where Shakespeare can be placed around 1597. The evidence for his presence, however, is slim, consisting of the appearance of his name on several tax-related forms that suggest he defaulted on his payments. Assessed at $5 by the local authorities, Shakespeare was one of the better off parishioners.

The story Marsh tells, however, reaches both in time and place far beyond the short period Shakespeare spent in St Helen's. For example, Parts 1 to 2 explore the theater industry in London beginning with the building of the original Shoreditch Theatre itself in 1576. This is a familiar narrative, but one that Marsh places in the context of broader national and international events relating to mostly Reformation and counter-Reformation violence.

Marsh takes the reader on a fascinating historical, topographical, and prosopographic tour of St Helen's. Well before Shakespeare's arrival, St Helen's was a well-to-do and intellectually lively part of London, full of prominent organizations and people. Adventurers like Sir Humphrey Gilbert and venture capitalists like Sir Thomas Gresham belonged to a group of local worthies interested in global trade and the establishment of overseas settlements. The notoriously anti-theatrical Lord Mayor, Sir John Spencer, lived in the impressive Crosby House (later home to the East India Company), while the Company of Leathersellers took over various parts of the old convent. Members of other professions like doctors, antiquarians, lawyers, and musicians also settled here, many part of the avant-garde of their specializations. Marsh is especially good on the parish church itself, where many of the local great and the good were buried, and whose tombs survive to this day. [End Page 422]

Marsh may lament the paucity of sources for studying St Helen's in this period, but the survival of the Leathersellers' Company property leases and deeds, as well as extensive parochial records, makes it one of the better-documented parishes of early modern London. Marsh's impressively extensive research in the archives is documented in copious footnotes, tables, spreadsheets, charts, maps, and an Appendix that forms a kind of book-within-a-book. It's in the appendices that Marsh tries to fix Shakespeare's exact address, his probable landlord, and likely neighbors.

As March acknowledges, the sources only take us so far, and we ultimately fall back on informed speculation about Shakespeare's life in St Helen's. This is a book full of speculation, of course, but the speculation is built upon a solid evidentiary basis. We can forgive Marsh if occasionally he gets a little carried away—imagining our hero finding inspiration for the gravediggers' scene in Hamlet as he gazes out across the parish churchyard (306). It is tempting but dangerous to push too hard at the question of whether Shakespeare's "life in St Helen's impacted on his writing in any way" (302).

Weighing in at 4.23 lbs. and measuring 8" x 11," this is an unusually large book that is quite uncomfortable...

审核人：

• 与莎士比亚一起生活：伦敦圣海伦教区，1593-1598杰弗里·马什 (Geoffrey Marsh)
• 克里斯托弗·海利（生平）

这是最近几本关于吟游诗人与这座城市的联系的书籍中的最新一本。有些，例如斯蒂芬波特的莎士比亚伦敦：1580-1616 年伦敦的日常生活（Amberley，2011 年）或大卫托马斯的莎士比亚伦敦游客指南（钢笔与剑，2016 年），使用莎士比亚的名字作为挂钩对早期现代大都市的更一般的描述。其他书籍，例如由汉娜·克劳福斯、莎拉·达斯塔格尔和詹妮弗·杨编辑的散文集莎士比亚在伦敦（布卢姆斯伯里出版社，2014 年）和邓肯·索尔克尔德的莎士比亚与伦敦（牛津，2018 年），探讨了莎士比亚经历伦敦的方式以及如何这些经历塑造了他的作品。

马什写了一本混合型的书，既能吸引受过教育的普通读者，也能吸引更专业的学术读者。这本书的核心是 16 世纪后期圣海伦教区的微观历史，可以将莎士比亚放在 1597 年左右。然而，他存在的证据很少，包括他的名字出现在几个税单上- 表明他拖欠付款的相关表格。莎士比亚被地方当局估价为 5 美元，是教区居民中较富裕的人之一。

然而，马什讲述的故事在时间和地点上都远远超出了莎士比亚在圣海伦度过的短暂时期。例如，第 1 部分到第 2 部分从 1576 年最初的肖尔迪奇剧院本身的建造开始探索伦敦的戏剧业。这是一个熟悉的叙述，但马什将其置于更广泛的国家和国际事件的背景下，这些事件主要与宗教改革有关和反宗教改革暴力。

马什带领读者对圣海伦进行了一次引人入胜的历史、地形和地貌学之旅。早在莎士比亚到来之前，圣海伦就是伦敦一个富裕且知识分子活跃的地区，到处都是著名的组织和人物。像汉弗莱吉尔伯特爵士这样的冒险家和像托马斯格雷沙姆爵士这样的风险投资家属于一群对全球贸易和建立海外定居点感兴趣的地方权贵。臭名昭著的反戏剧市长约翰·斯宾塞爵士住在令人印象深刻的克罗斯比故居（后来成为东印度公司的所在地），而 Leathersellers 公司接管了旧修道院的各个部分。医生、古物学家、律师和音乐家等其他职业的成员也在这里定居，他们的许多专业都是前卫的。【422页完】

马什可能会感叹这一时期研究圣海伦的资源匮乏，但 Leathersellers' Company 的财产租约和契约以及广泛的教区记录的幸存，使其成为近代早期伦敦记录更完备的教区之一。马什对档案的广泛研究令人印象深刻，记录在大量脚注、表格、电子表格、图表、地图和附录中，形成了一种书中书。在附录中，马什试图确定莎士比亚的确切地址、他可能的房东和可能的邻居。

正如马奇承认的那样，消息来源只带我们走了这么远，我们最终只能依靠对莎士比亚在圣海伦的生活的知情猜测。当然，这是一本充满推测的书，但推测是建立在坚实的证据基础上的。我们可以原谅马什，如果他偶尔有点忘乎所以——想象我们的主人公在凝视教区墓地时为哈姆雷特中掘墓人的场景寻找灵感 (306)。过分强调莎士比亚“在圣海伦的生活对他的写作有任何影响”（302）这个问题很诱人但也很危险。

重量为 4.23 磅。尺寸为 8 英寸 x 11 英寸，这是一本非常大的书，非常不舒服......