Shakespeare: A Life [Paperback]

Park Honan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2000

In the last ten years, virtually every previously known fact about Shakespeare has been modified by new research. Park Honan draws on this new information to dramatically alter our perceptions of the actor, poet, and playwright.
Here is virtually all that can be factually known or reasonably speculated about Shakespeare's life. Readers will find a vivid picture of what Shakespeare's childhood might have been like in the small English town of Stratford, which had but a dozen streets in 1560. We meet his father, John Shakespeare, the glovemaker of Henley Street, who rose to the office of High Bailiff and Justice of the Peace before he was beset by financial difficulties. There is a fascinating portrait of London and of the life of an Elizabethan actor (a neophyte Shakespeare may have had to learn as many as a hundred small parts per season). Honan casts new light on the young poet's relationships--his early courtship of Anne Hathaway, their marriage, his attitudes to women such as Jennet Davenant, Marie Mountjoy, and his own daughters--illuminating Shakespeare's needs, habits, passions, and concerns. The author shows in fresh detail that Shakespeare was well acquainted with violent crime and murder in daily life. And he also examines the world of the playing companies--the power of patronage, theatrical conditions, and personal rivalries--to reveal the relationship between the man and the writing.
Park Honan's Shakespeare casts new light on a complex and fascinating life, illuminating Shakespeare's extraordinary development into the greatest dramatist of his or any age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

So little evidence of Shakespeare's life exists that biographers have had to resort to sometimes far-fetched guesswork to flesh out a vivid chronicle of his days. Many of them would benefit from the healthy dose of common sense evident in Honan's latest critical study. As a leading biographer of Robert Browning and Jane Austen, Honan brings a sensible eye to the Sisyphean task of sifting through what is now called the "Shakespeare Industry." Synthesizing documentary material on Renaissance England with the latest scholarship?be it Helen Vendler on the sonnets or Leeds Barroll on politics and plague in Elizabethan London?Honan attempts to link, perhaps a little too closely, the Bard's life experiences with his literary representations. In an examination of Shakespeare's schooling, Honan refutes the oft-cited remark that he had "small Latin and less Greek" and finds analogies to his student years in such plays as The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hamlet. Honan vibrantly depicts Renaissance urban life, where "the theatre [was] a quick-paced, disenchanting funfair; with jigs, dancing, dumb-shows and clowns' acts interlaced with drama." Despite his insistence on historical context, however, Honan reserves most of his critical energies for the poet's high tragedies. In Hamlet, "pathos arises from his hero's idealization of a prior normalcy"; Othello contains a "flawless structure of feeling"; and Antony and Cleopatra investigates "non-literal truth, in myth, fable, and implicit connections between historical epochs." Studies of Shakespeare frequently reflect hotly contested trends in literary criticism; this biography's value, by contrast, lies in its responsibly researched, unflinching look at what is indisputably the artist's real achievement: "Far from soothing an audience," Honan writes, "Shakespeare depicts human nature in ways that are at once truthful and deeply troubling."
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Honan (English, emeritus, Univ. of Leeds), author of biographies of Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, and Robert Browning, aims to create the most up-to-date and accurate narrative of the bard's life yet penned. Dismissive of other writers who, in his view, have imagined moments and motives in Shakespeare's life, he tries to rely on documentary and contextualized fact. The result is a blow-by-blow account of Shakespeare's life from birth to death, with some attention paid to the historical, political, and social world Shakespeare inhabited. Extensive notes and a study of the biographical writings on Shakespeare to date conclude the work. At times this biography is overwritten for its target audience, the general public, and it can be slow reading. However, as the most up-to-date biography of Shakespeare, and certainly one of the most complete linear narratives, it is useful and therefore recommended for academic and larger public libraries.?Neal Wyatt, Chesterfield Cty. P.L., VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 512 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192825275
• ISBN-13: 978-0192825278
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,218,845 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Welcome to His World(s), April 22, 2000

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shakespeare: A Life (Hardcover)

Perhaps scholars on the subject of William Shakespeare have some legitimate criticisms to make of certain details and comments in Honan's book. Frankly, I couldn't care less. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, learned a great deal from it, and now plan to read or re-read other books on the same (general) subject. Given the popularity of two recent films, Elizabeth and Shakespeare in Love, I must assume that there are many other readers who would also appreciate having an especially well-informed, charming, and energetic companion during a journey back in time to Elizabethan England. Yes, this is a biography of Shakespeare...but more, much more.

Following a List of Illustrations (which are excellent), an Introduction, and A Note on Conventions Used in the Text, Honan divides his book into for parts:

I. A Stratford Youth

II. Actor and Poet of the London Stage

III. The Maturity of Genius

IV. The Last Phase

At this point in my brief commentary, I want to stress that Honan's writing style is semi-formal but reader-friendly. His prose shares many of the same strengths evident in the works of other authors such as Alistair Cooke, E.B. White, and Charles Kuralt.

The world in which Shakespeare lived and worked was one of the most interesting throughout human history. Honan includes a wealth of social, political, and cultural information about that age in combination with anecdotes, gossip, speculations and conjectures, correlation's between Shakespeare's works and the details in his life, etc. What were Shakespeare's probable circumstances during his childhood and youth in Stratford? What was it like to live in London, especially when that walled city was ravaged by plague? Who attended live performances? When? Where? How were those performances financed? Who was Shakespeare's competitors for recognition and reward? Why did Shakespeare eventually retire to Stratford? What are the probable circumstances of the years there prior to his death in 1616? (Cervantes died on the same day in the same year.) Honan suggests answers to these and hundreds of other questions you may also have about Shakespeare and his age.

Is this the best biography of Shakespeare written thus far? I am unqualified to respond. Is this one of the most entertaining and most informative books I have read about a major figure in the history of western civilization? You bet. It does not "read like a novel" nor was it intended to. If you desire an "easy" read on this subject, try another source (eg Shakespeare for Dummies, Chicken Soup for Elizabethans). But if you want to make that "journey" back in time and would appreciate having an erudite, charming companion while you explore the many worlds in which William Shakespeare lived and worked, Park Honan would be an excellent choice. What about his fee? The cost of this wonderful book.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars exhaustive, meticulous, thought-provoking, June 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Shakespeare: A Life (Hardcover)

What a sad, resourceless bunch of readers your lay reviwers are. The author makes plain at the start the remit of his book, to eschew the romantic speculation about the `bard's' life in favour of a meticulous examination of the facts. This does not make the book `booring,' far from it. If you want cheap thrills, stick to Star Wars. For the intelligent lay-reader with half a brain, this book take a little while to get into, but the effort is well worth it, repaid by insight into London at that time, the theatrical world (in London)and much, much more. I found it enriched my understanding of a much-discussed, much-mythologised figure. Ignore the carpers. Top banana.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Life and Times of Mr. William Shakespeare, June 24, 2002

By 

Big Dave (Boise, Idaho) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shakespeare: A Life (Paperback)

A great deal of Shakespeare's life appears never to have made it into the official record, and Park Honan, for all his skill as a writer, cannot change that.

What Mr. Honan does do, however, is construct in detail the setting for what facts we do know about Shakespeare's life. Even if we lack many of the basic facts of Shakespeare's boyhood, for instance, we know what Stratford was like, and we know what kind of lives boys in Stratford led. Mr. Honan lays out this setting, gives us the known facts about young Will, contents himself with making the occasional relatively safe guess, and leaves it at that.

Despite the fact that Mr. Honan's book is mostly setting, with a fairly scarce plot, it's a good read, flowing well and entertaining. Your study of Shakespeare should start here.