Shakespeare: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd Chapter 60

Thou Knowest My Lodging.  Get Me Inke and Paper

There is no doubt that Shakespeare lived south of the river, but his exact location is not known.  The immediate vicinity of the Globe Playhouse was described as a “long straggling place, with Ditches on each side, the Passage to the Houses being over little Bridges, with little Garden Plotts before them.”  It wasn’t any more gentrified during the time Shakespeare lived there.  Nevertheless, it was important for him to be close to the centre of all his activities.  He joined his colleagues from the Globe, Thomas Pope and Augustine Philips.  Philips lived with his large family close to the river.  Southwark was, in fact, something of an actors’ district.  Shakespeare and his colleagues already possessed extensive interests in the vicinity.

Shakespeare himself could have taken temporary at one of the three hundred inns of the neighbourhood.  In a memorandum, Alleyn records that Shakespeare lived close to the Bear-Garden.  He might almost have been described as a gentleman of Southwark rather than as a gentleman of Stratford.

The history of Southwark had for many hundreds of years been associated with public entertainment.  A gladiator’s trident suggests that a Roman arena was once constructed in the vicinity of the Globe.  In the sixteenth century, the area was known for bull-baiting and bear-baiting.  With the bull and bear baiting, the reek of animals probably sullied the actor’s costumes and we can say with some certainty that Shakespeare lived in an area that was characterised by violence and casual cruelty.  Perhaps this is why Southwark provided more soldiers for the realm than any other part of the city of London.  More than a third of the householders in London were watermen who were famous throughout England for their abusive behaviour and foul language.

There was a “sanctuary” at Paris Garden from the early fifteenth century, and the neighbourhood had a history of criminal associations and criminal practice. It had also been a haven for many and varied groups of immigrants, known as “aliens”, much of them Dutch and Fleming.  The topography of the neighbourhood is perhaps then predictable.  There were larger houses and gardens for the most notable residents, such as Henslowe and Alleyn (and perhaps Shakespeare),  but for the rest, it was an area of packed tenements and swarming streets, of stables and alleys.  The “stink trades” also congregated here, breweries and tanneries among them.

It is, of course, easy to exaggerate the stench and horrors of the south bank.  There were fields and woods within easy reach of the busy streets.  Herbalist John Gerard was surprised by the number of flowers he observed in the water ditches of the neighbourhood.  So it was not an altogether disagreeable area.  Like Londoners elsewhere, they were happy to remain in the familiar neighbourhood.  Life in Southwark was not necessarily insupportable, only colourful and occasionally inconvenient.  Why else would Shakespeare choose to remain there for so long?