What happened in Shakespeare's "lost years"?

Daniel Swift discusses Shakespeare's arrival on the London theatre scene as a young man, and reconstructs the story of a long-lost Shoreditch playhouse

Published: June 6, 2025 at 9:00 AM

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Shakespeare is now a towering figure of global theatre. But in the 1590s, he was just an up-and-coming young playwright, trying to scratch out a living in Shoreditch's emerging theatre scene. Daniel Swift revisits this early stage of the Bard's career in his new book The Dream Factory, linking it with the story of a long-lost Shoreditch playhouse simply called 'The Theatre'. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Daniel reveals what it would have been like to see one of Shakespeare's original productions, and how he may have been inspired by a terrible play called Hamlet.

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Daniel Swift is the author of The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare (Yale University Press, 2025).

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Authors

Ellie CawthorneHead of content (audio)

Ellie Cawthorne is head of content (audio) at HistoryExtra

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