The Lodger Shakespeare: His Life on Silver Street by Charles Nicholl Page A

was an important street of well-to-do merchants’ houses. It could be reached from Marie’s house in about ten minutes, walking east along Addle Street and across Aldermanbury.
    We learn a little of Henry Wood’s dealings in the import- export business. In early December 1597, while Marie worries about pregnancy, Wood sails to Amsterdam with two ‘hoys’ (small trading vessels), the Paradise and the Griffin . A few weeks later he is asking Forman if he will get a good price for his ‘Holland cloth’ in France. He also asks if he should buy a consignment of ‘bay salt’ (salt from the Bay of Biscay). In the summer of 1598 he has business problems: ‘It seemeth that his goods will be attached [confiscated].’ But perhaps the malaise is personal too - Forman divines, ‘Some great enemy will proffer him friendship but treachery will follow.’ Wood was a householder and a businessman, but not a very big fish: in the Coleman Street subsidy lists of 1599 he is assessed on goods valued at £3. 63
    Sometimes it is Mrs Wood who visits Forman, anxious for Henry’s safety on his trips abroad. On one occasion, she fears he has been ‘taken by the Dunkirkers’ - pirates in the English Channel. Forman reassures: ‘They away shall arrive safe, so shall himself also, & let him take heed & look well, and he shall pass very swiftly within these 3 days.’ And then there is a further twist, as Mrs Wood comes to ask Forman if she should ‘keep shop’ with Marie Mountjoy. ‘They may join,’ he opines, ‘but take heed they trust not out their wares much, or they shall have loss.’ We can surmise that the shop would combine the cloths imported by Henry Wood with the couturier skills - and perhaps the upmarket clientele - of the Mountjoy workshop. The relationship between Henry and Marie is thus commercial as well as carnal. Mrs Wood discusses a partnership with Marie, apparently unaware of any backstairs intrigue between Marie and her husband. Marie is a deceiver in this, though of course her relationship with Henry may now be over.
     
    On the last page of Forman’s casebook for 1597 is another brief note about Marie Mountjoy (see Plate 18). 64 The contents of the page are miscellaneous - fragments of information and gossip, non-astrological, generally mundane. There are five distinct chunks of writing; the first two, which fill up most of the page, are dated early January 1598. The others, more in the nature of jottings, are not necessarily the same date, but are likely to be before 20 February, when Forman began a new casebook.
    The note on Marie consists of three words, of which two are her name. Rowse comments: ‘A tantalizing marginal note reads: “Mary Mountjoy alained” - which means concealed.’ I am unconvinced by this reading. First, ‘alain’ is not a word recognized by any dictionary I have consulted, including the OED , which sails serenely from ‘alaik’ (an obsolete form of ‘alack’) to ‘alala’ (a Greek battle-cry). Second, the orthography does not support the reading. The word is hard to read because it is written in an oddly narrow, squashed-up script, and because much of it is a series of minims almost impossible to differentiate. In my view, what Forman wrote after Marie Mountjoy’s name is not the tantalizing but non-existent ‘alained’, but something rather more prosaic - her address. The word is ‘olaive’, referring to her parish of St Olave. 65 Addresses feature in other memoranda on the page.
    Immediately below this is another line, almost certainly written at the same time, so in effect Forman has written a short list, as follows:
     
    mari Mountioy / olaive /
madam Kitson yellow haire /
     
    This ‘Madam Kitson’ may be connected to the wealthy Catholic Sir Thomas Kitson. If so she is a relative of another woman found in conjunction with Marie in the casebooks - Lady Hunsdon, who was Sir Thomas Kitson’s niece. Sir Thomas and his wife Elizabeth lived in a stately pile in