Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare) [Hardcover]

Stanley Wells (Author)

Book Description

Series: Oxford Shakespeare | Publication Date: January 2, 2003

From the entry of Shakespeare's birth in the Stratford church register to a Norwegian production of Macbeth in which the hero was represented by a tomato, this enthralling and splendidly illustrated book tells the story of Shakespeare's life, his writings, and his afterlife.
Drawing on a lifetime's experience of studying, teaching, editing, and writing about Shakespeare, Stanley Wells combines scholarly authority with authorial flair in a book that will appeal equally to the specialist and the untutored enthusiast. Chapters on Shakespeare's life in Stratford and in London offer a fresh view of the development of the writer's career and personality. At the core of the book lies a magisterial study of the writings themselves--how Shakespeare set about writing a play, his relationships with the company of actors with whom he worked, his developing mastery of the literary and rhetorical skills that he learned at the Stratford grammar school, the essentially theatrical quality of the structure and language of his plays. Subsequent chapters trace the fluctuating fortunes of his reputation and influence. Here are accounts of adaptations, productions, and individual performances in England and, increasingly, overseas; of great occasions such as the Garrick Jubilee and the tercentenary celebrations of 1864; of the spread of Shakespeare's reputation in France and Germany, Russia and America, and, more recently, the Far East; of Shakespearian discoveries and forgeries; of critical reactions, favorable and otherwise, and of scholarly activity; of paintings, music, films and other works of art inspired by the plays; of the plays' use in education and the political arena, and of the pleasure and intellectual stimulus that they have given to an increasingly international public.
Shakespeare, said Ben Jonson, was not of an age but for all time. This is a book about him for our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

One of the Shakespeare industry's most industrious scholars presents the bard's life and times, the composition and (competitive) editing of his works, the "afterlife" of his reputation and his characters' lives presented onstage. The volume combines the format of a well-illustrated coffee-table book with a distillation of scholarship for the average bardolater, if not necessarily the casual student and theatergoer. Although Wells's biographic summary is solid for all its speculative digressions and his literary criticism sound if conservative, this work hits its stride when it gets onstage, from the first performances on the recently unearthed Rose Theater to the modern productions on the newly reconstructed Globe. High points of this performance history include David Garrick's 18th-century Shakespeare franchise, Edmund Kean's scandalous precurtain rituals and Sarah Bernhardt's Hamlet, as well as such lows as Nahum Tate's popular alternate happy ending to King Lear and Shakespeare's literal bowdlerization by Thomas and Henrietta Bowdler. For modern productions, Wells's wide-ranging survey is often charged with his own experience as a theatergoer, such as seeing Olivier's "searing" Coriolanus. With contemporary scholarship, Wells gets entertainingly personal, whether describing his firsthand experience (idiosyncratically) editing the complete works for Oxford University Press's own Shakespeare department or tweaking rival A.L. Rowse for inaccuracy. There will naturally be dissension about Wells's opinions and selectivity-for instance, his assessment of Orson Welles's stagings and filmings or the extent of the Nazi regime's deplorable Shakespeare cult-but this copiously illustrated album admirably compresses more than four centuries of the bard and more than 50 years of Wells's devotion to him.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"Here is a man who has a fair claim to be the most complete Shakespearian of them all.... Now he has distilled a lifetime's work into one crisply written, richly illustrated and entertaining book."--The Sunday Times

"Scholarly, urbane, rich in anecdotes and marvelously readable, it is a meticulously constructed and authoritative survey with a vast and satisfying scope."--New Statesman

"The doyen of modern British Shakespeare scholarship.... Few will deny that he has an indisputable right to produce yet another book on Shakespeare whenever he feels like it.... His subject calls for, and gets, abundant, handsome, and instructive illustration. The book is therefore something of a hybrid, the biography amiable, the afterlife placidly illuminating and useful."--Frank Kermode, The New York Times Book Review

"This copiously illustrated album admirably compresses more than four centuries of the bard and more than 50 years of Wells's devotion to him."--Publishers Weekly

"Written with generosity and humor, Wells's book is an illustrated compendium encompassing new readings of the Bard's Stratford-upon-Avon and London years, thoughtful observations of Shakespeare the writer and a lively history of the Shakespeare legend.... Wells navigates through Shakespeare's afterlife with wit and authority. Whether dealing with his legacy in the fields of the visual arts, music, cinema, theatre or television, the book celebrates all Shakespearean manifestations, their imperfections notwithstanding. The result is that Wells brings us as close to an understanding of the man, the writer and the legend, as is possible in a one-volume study."--American Theatre

"Wells is deservedly the most celebrated Shakespearean scholar of our time.... It is not often you meet a scholar with a sense of humor, but Wells made me laugh out loud at his section which concerns the discrepancies of the various Shakespeare printed text.... Many anecdotes make the richly illustrated text a delight."--Birmingham Post

"One of those heavy, beautifully produced books which is a pleasure to look at as it is to read.... There's no doubting the scholarship here"--Time Out London

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 480 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First Edition, First Printing edition (January 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195160932
• ISBN-13: 978-0195160932
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 7.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,712,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stanley Wells, described by Roy Hattersley as "Our greatest authority on Shakespeare's life and work," is Chairman of the Trustees of Shakespeare's Birthplace, Emeritus Professor of Shakespeare Studies of the University of Birmingham, and Honorary Emeritus Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. He is the author and editor of many books including The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 2nd Edition (OUP 2005); The Oxford Dictionary of Shakespeare (OUP, 2003); and Shakespeare in the Theatre (OUP, 1997).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare: For All Time, September 30, 2003

By 

Michael Gunther (Maryland, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare) (Hardcover)

Stanley Wells' latest book combines two genres: Biography (Shakespeare), and History of Theatre (Shakespeare). It is a history of Shakespeare from his time to ours, including Shakespeare's life and subsequent theatrical performance, but excluding critical analysis and interpretation of the plays.

The first 100 pages present a minimalist biography of the great playwright - "minimalist" in the sense that Wells sticks close to the (relatively few) facts that are known, or can be judiciously inferred, about Shakespeare's life, avoiding any temptation to pad out or speculate where the facts will not stretch. I found this approach to be refreshing and useful; it clarified for me what is actually known about Shakespeare's life, versus what has been inferred (or imagined) in other biographies.

The remainder of the book deals with the history of Shakespeare in performance, from the playright's time down to the present day, both in England and (in less detail) abroad. The history of the original texts of the plays, their theatrical revisions (or mutilations), the theatres, producers, actors, and critical and popular responses (including Hollywood) are discussed. Given the potentially unlimited scope of this topic, Wells' treatment is brief, selective, and to the point (for example, Joseph Papp's seminal New York "Shakespeare in the Park" is given one sentence in the book.)

To summarize, Wells has, a bit unusually, combined a brief but thoughtful biography of Shakespeare, with an introductory history of Shakespeare in performance. It's a fluently written and engaging overview, and as such, I think that many Shakespeare aficionados, as well as students of the history of theatre, will want to have it.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for an age, but for all time, August 15, 2003

By 

Judith C. Kinney (Westerville, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare) (Hardcover)

This is a physically beautiful volume. It's an oversize book printed on thick, glossy paper. It's filled with illustrations, both works of art and photographs, from Shakespeare's time to our own.

It's also packed with solid information that's easy to digest. Wells tells everything that's known about Shakespeare's life and speculates on additional possibilities. All that could have made a book by itself, but it's only about a third of this volume.

He also goes on to tell about the writing of the plays and their staging through the centuries. Something I've not seen elsewhere in one volume is a discussion of the many famous actors who've played the major Shakespearean roles.

Above all, this book goes down easily. It's perfectly easy to understand. There is no deep and esoteric Freudian, feminist, postmodern whatever discussion of individual plays or characters.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you need to know in one book, May 15, 2003

By 

Brian J. Willis (Pico Rivera, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare) (Hardcover)

Ever wanted to read one book to know about the life of Shakespeare and the life of his plays? This is the only book you need. The world's preeminent Shakespearean scholar at long last presents his knowledgable views on Shakespeare's life and how the different ages, including ours, have appropriated Shakespeare for their own. The first 100 pages are straight-up biography, and a spot-on one at that, providing all of the facts that we know and wise, cautious speculation about what we don't. The following 300 pages illustrate how Shakespeare wrote what he did, and how each age has seen and transformed Shakespeare. Most impressive is that each chapter explores theatrical developments alongside textual and editorial innovations. Not ignored is Shakespeare's representations in visual art, music, and opera. A most impressive volume that is written in an easy to understand style. Any person could pick up this book and understand the history of Shakespeare for all time. Highly recommended as a companion volume is Prof. Wells's earlier exploration -Shakespeare: The Poet and his Plays. That volume discusses each individual play and the poems on an interpretative level, and a highly insightful level at that.