It seems perfectly apposite that in the month captured within “the lovely April of her Prime”, [Sonnet III c. 1609] the site of Shakespeare’s London residence has been identified.
After ten years research, dedicated theatre historian, Geoffrey Marsh has truffled out the precise location as 35 Great St Helen’s, EC3 at which was written, inter alia, Romeo and Juliet. Sends a positive thrill down the spine to discover the place whence sprang lines transplanting us to the Verona of 1597/98.
Appropriate, then, to view its location at a distance.
Our shot shows the Manhattanizing of the City. The gap between Tower 42 (NatWest Tower as was) on the right is separated from the thicket on the left by Bishopsgate. It is exactly at that point where St Helen’s church is sited. The graveyard over which his rooms looked is gone, the house too. But ground beneath our feet is the ground that once was beneath his. Ain’t that utterly scintillating?
St Helen’s encircled Image courtesy of Geoffrey Marsh/Jack Delaney
Mr Marsh – director of the V&A’s Theatre and Performing Arts department – has delivered up to us a veritable time machine by virtue of Research. It is as compelling an ignition to the imagination as anything could be: like directly plugging into the socket of history.
Shakespeare was a tenant of the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, miraculously still located in St Helen’s.
Alas Romeo would now be hard pressed to wonder “… what light through yonder window breaks?” given that over St Helen’s Place there loom not gothic glories to God but millennial mountains to mammon.
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