With it estimated that travel from Stratford Upon Avon to London might take days or even weeks depending on the weather and mode of transportation, it’s only logical to think that Shakespeare must have had a place to stay when he was in London for work.
There is a court case in which Shakespeare is mentioned by name that places him as a lodger with the Mountjoy family on Silver Street in 1604. There’s also documentary evidence to suggest Shakespeare was neighbors with a young John Fletcher in Bishopsgate. And it only makes sense to expect that Shakespeare might have had a place to stay near The Globe theater in Southwark, but that remains largely a guess. More recently, Matthew Steggle has done new research into the letter written to Mrs. Shakespeare, which places Mr. And Mrs. Shakespeare once again, residing in London.
When it comes to his Blackfriars property, however, scholars have been stumped because documentary evidence suggests Shakespeare did own property in the Blackfriars, but no one knew exactly where until now. Our guest this week, Lucy Munro, has uncovered three new documents including a set of floorplans for the Blackfriars building, that reveal not only where Shakespeare’s property was located, but precisely how large it was, and exactly how it was positioned in relation to neighboring structures in the Blackfriars.
About Lucy Munro
Lucy Munro is Professor of Shakespeare and Early Modern Literature at King’s College London. She is the author of Children of the Queen’s Revels: A Jacobean Theatre Repertory (2005), Archaic Style in English Literature, 1590-1674 (2013) and Shakespeare in the Theatre: The King’s Men (2020), and the editor of a number of early modern plays, including Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed (2010) and Dekker, Ford and Rowley’s The Witch of Edmonton (2016). She is currently finishing an edition of Shakespeare’s King Henry IV, Part 1, for the Arden Shakespeare’s fourth series, and writing a book about the Globe and Blackfriars playhouses. Her research on Shakespeare’s London house appeared in The Times Literary Supplement in April 2026.
Connect with Lucy Munro
What We Talk About
- If scholars knew Shakespeare owned property in the Blackfriars, why did the exact location remain elusive?
- We should mention that one of the documents uncovered in Lucy’s research is a literal drawn plan, of the Blackfriars property itself outlining the dimensions of the space. Lucy, what were you looking for when you discovered these documents, and how did you determine these early 17th century drawings were of Shakespeare’s Blackfriars’ house?
- The reigning theory about Shakespeare, and I’ve even said this before on the show, was that Shakespeare retired back to Stratford Upon Avon after the Globe burned down in 1613. How does this new evidence challenge that idea?
- …and more!
Resources Recommended by Our Guest
Lucy Munro, ‘A Man of Property: Discovering Exactly What Shakespeare Owned’, Times Literary Supplement, 17 April 2026, https://www.the-tls.com/regular-features/commentary/a-man-of-property-essay-lucy-munro
A seventeenth-century plan of part of the Blackfriars precinct, showing property held by Sir Heneage Fetherston at the time of the Great Fire of London, TLA, CLC/522/MS14570/001, no. 38,https://search.lma.gov.uk/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/LMA_OPAC/web_detail?SESSIONSEARCH&exp=refd%20CLC/522/MS14570/001
Alan H. Nelson and Folger Shakespeare Library Staff, ’Shakespeare Purchases the Blackfriars Gatehouse’, Shakespeare Documented, https://shakespearedocumented.folger.edu/node/1011
Robert Bearman, Shakespeare’s Money (Oxford University Press, 2016), 166-71
E.K. Chambers, William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems, 2 vols (Clarendon Press, 1930), vol. 2, 154-69 (available on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/williamshakespea0000cham/mode/2up)
Related Episodes
Explore the Blackfriars parish, the Puritans who lived there, and how Shakespeare finally launched a theater in this elite district.
Lady Elizabeth Russell prevented the opening of the Blackfriars theater by petition against it and that’s just the beginning. Hear her story.
Lucy Munro visits to help us understand the shareholder agreement of Elizabethan theater and what that tells us about Shakespeare’s theaters.
Matthew Steggle shares the research he’s done into a letter written to Mrs. Anne Shakespeare, changing what we thought we knew about Shakespeare’s life in London.
This week’s bonus content includes:
- Elizabethan Barnard’s settlement of the estate that mentions the Blackfriars
- The deed of sale where Shakespeare purchases the Blackfriars Gatehouse
- Hall/Nashe Deed of Settlement protecting what happens to this property after Shakespeare’s granddaughter dies
- … and more!
