Shakespeare [Hardcover]

Michael Wood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2003

A brilliant piece of historical investigative journalism, Shakespeare is a fresh telling of the playwright's life based on a wide range of newly discovered sources, such as police and torture records. Rather than approaching Shakespeare as an isolated genius, Wood argues that he was very much a product of his place and time--a period of upheaval that straddled the medieval and modern worlds. It was a time of great tensions, marked by murderous plots and purges of the Elizabethan police state, from the Somerville Plot and the Essex rebellion to the Gunpowder Plot, which can now be shown to have touched Shakespeare and his family directly. If we wonder why Shakespeare was so obsessed with violence, and especially the violence of the state, there is an answer: This was Shakespeare's world.Furthermore, Wood reveals new and surprising evidence about: Shakespeare's Catholic faith, his work, and his attitudes on sex and on race. In doing so he reinstates the image of Shakespeare as a thinking artist, his work based firmly in the religion, politics, culture and class antagonisms of his day. Shakespeare plunges us headlong into the turbulent life and times of William Shakespeare. Presented in a beautifully designed package, with over 100 four-color and black-and-white illustrations, the result is a more convincing and complete portrait of the artist than was previously thought possible.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With Shakespeare Michael Wood has provided a wide-ranging summary of contemporary historical research regarding the most celebrated author in the English language. Beginning with an analysis of the roiling religious and political conflicts in Shakespeare’s boyhood England, Wood observes that, if "great writers are made by their times, then to be born in 1564 was to be born in very interesting times indeed." For Wood, the tensions of the times generated the modern era and formed Shakespeare, one of the first modern men.

In addition to the investigation of the political context for Shakespeare’s work, Wood also explores Shakespeare’s erotic life and the genesis of his theater career. Readers learn early on that Shakespeare’s marriage to Anne Hathaway was likely a "shotgun wedding" due to her impending pregnancy. From there, Wood speculates about the "lost years" of Shakespeare’s life: the ten year period for which virtually no documentary evidence is extant and, unfortunately, the period that marked Shakespeare’s departure from Avon and entry into London theatrical circles. Later, in the requisite investigation of the identity of the "Dark Lady" of the Sonnets, Wood revitalizes a theory dismissed by some scholars: that the woman was none other than Emilia Lanier, mistress of Shakespeare’s patron.

A companion to the PBS documentary series, the book is not comprehensive of Shakespeare studies--probably no book could be. Beyond some early investigations of Shakespeare’s Midlands dialect and some short examinations of the plays and poems, Wood provides far less close reading of the poetry and the plays than one would expect. But the book does provide a broad historical understanding of Shakespeare’s world and a flavor for his daily life. The volume is also complemented by lavish illustrations, detailed maps, and period artwork. --Patrick O’Kelley

From Publishers Weekly

The companion volume to Wood's four-part PBS documentary, to air in early 2004, this life of Shakespeare has all the vividness of a good television profile, backed up with a keen and contentious historical perspective on his turbulent era. Like many of the Bard's biographers who want to surpass the few official documents and brief contemporary testaments that form the official record, Wood's lively portrait is half hypothesis and half argument, embellished with speculative digressions. Addressing both Shakespeare's artistic universality and his religious beliefs, Wood considers him a Catholic with a capital "c" as well as a small one. Wood doesn't have new evidence to support this necessarily, but he does delve into the Warwickshire region's history as a flashpoint of crypto-Catholicism, which may have touched Shakespeare's family and their neighbors and distant relatives. As an old medieval hand, Wood (In Search of the Dark Ages) also positions Shakespeare on the cusp of the modern age, but with a firm background in the old traditions. He's also superb at bringing together the Warwickshire idiom and rural nomenclature that run through the plays. Wood brings 16th-century London to raucous life-even if his view of the Elizabethan era concentrates on its grim politics at the cost of its cultural renaissance. Throughout, Shakespeare is treated as a living person inhabiting his time (although sometimes Wood draws parallels too close, such as between the Diggers' revolt and Coriolanus). The absence of source notes will frustrate serious readers, but the copious color illustrations and lively readability will satisfy others until the TV documentary airs.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books; First Edition edition (October 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465092640
• ISBN-13: 978-0465092642
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #698,746 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For all time, April 9, 2007

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shakespeare (Paperback)

Most of Michael Wood's books are companions to television documentary series which I have never had the fortune to see. His books, though, are stand alone and fulfilling on their own and I have to wonder how he squeezed so much of their complex detail into the picture and sound media. There are two clues, however, that SHAKESPEARE originated as a documentary: the narrative voice of the text is fluent and bright as one that must be heard to be understood and the text is not littered with footnotes. Instead, a detailed reading list and acknowledgment section appears at the end, and Wood often credits sources directly in the narrative. This format has irritated some of his academic critics but for the general reader, it suits just fine.

Wood chooses to follow Shakespeare through the local and global influences that shaped his life, his artistic methods and themes, and the work that poured from them. Though Shakepeare's adult religiosity is not particularly known, he was raised in rural England by Catholics who were watching their world being torn violently away by the Reformation. He was also the product of a public education grounded in the classics and trained in rote. As a child he saw the mystery plays and as an adolescent may have been in a theater company for a while. Put this together with a mind like a sponge and an unparalleled artistic vision, and he was ready for London and the rapidly changing world that brought new cultures and possibilities to mix with the old. Wood offers a strong reading of many of the poems and plays, matching them up with Shakespeare's personal experiences. He goes as far to propose an identity for the Dark Lady of the sonnets and the young gentleman who also figures in them. The picture of Elizabeth's administration with its intrigues, censorship and violence is not pretty, which makes Shakespeare's ability to thrive in the midst of it all that more remarkable.

Wood's books always gleam with his apparent interest for his subjects, but SHAKESPEARE shows him at his most passionate. He truly brings the man alive.

30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, but flawed., April 26, 2004

By 

24mark "24mark" (Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shakespeare (Hardcover)

Wood's biography of Shakespeare has a number of strong points. The images are very good, the writing is lively, and the author spins a very engaging narrative. However, there are also some serious flaws. Wood conjures interesting possibilities and conjectures (the secret Catholicism of Shakespeare's father, the identities of the Dark Lady and the young male subject of the sonnets), which he then proceeds to write about as confirmed facts. I don't fault him for the interesting ideas, but I find his treatment lacking in serious scholarship, a lack compounded by the absence of detailed notes on the sources of his provocative ideas. Good researchers should cite their research sources.

Wood's book is interesting, but misleading. I wouldn't warn anyone away from it, but I would recommend reading a better biography first. Stanley Wells's "Shakespeare: For All Time" or Park Honan's "Shakespeare: A Life" are both fine books. (The former takes a more expansive view, including both biography and theatre history since Shakespeare's time, which is a real plus for anyone interested in how his works have been interpreted in different countries and eras.) Both also treat the "authorship controversy," which is mostly a fringe conspiracy theory quite well. I'd say read one of those first to gain an idea of what responsible scholarship looks like, then read Wood's book with a critical eye.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awesome Book!!!, May 21, 2010

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C. Chambell (CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Shakespeare (Hardcover)

This is an excellent companion book to the Documentary from PBS. I watched the documentary as a requirement for a lit class I was taking and loved it so much I bought the book. There are great details in here that were not included in the television program. If you are interested in learning more about Shakespeare and the world he lived in this is an excellent read!