Shakespeare: The Biography [Paperback]

Book Description

Publication Date: 2005

Ackroyd both defies and corroborates Emerson's dictum that "Shakespeare is the only biographer of Shakespeare." For while he illuminates the Bard's life with a wealth of scholarship that Shakespeare himself could never have provided, Ackroyd wisely allows the Bard to tell much of his own story through revealing episodes in his own immortal work. When, for instance, we see a young schoolboy being badgered by a severe schoolmaster in Merry Wives of Windsor, Ackroyd lets us know why this unfortunate young scholar bears the name William: his circumstances reflect Shakespeare's own during his years in the King's New School in Stratford-upon-Avon. Others (including Stephen Goldblatt in his Will in the World, 2004) have likewise mined Shakespeare's plays and poetry for telling clues about the playwright's life. But Ackroyd brings to his biographical reading the imaginative insights of a gifted poet and novelist, along with the passions of a scholar so absorbed in the Elizabethan world that he knows which Pembroke actor curled his lip when Shakespeare gave him a line dripping with wrath and which haughty dramatist matched wits with Shakespeare when he visited the Mermaid Tavern on Bread Street. Vivid and capacious, a life study worthy of its subject.

Product Details

• Paperback: 516 pages
• Publisher: Nan A. Talese; Advance Reading Copy Edition edition (2005)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000ANCCDA
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,530,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Shakespeare -Stage and World, November 12, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Shakespeare: The Biography (Paperback)

This life of Shakespeare is distinguished by its providing a detailed, and vivid picture of Shakespeare's world- and too by its reading from the plays back into Shakespeare's life. Thus Ackroyd noting how central the father- daughter relationship is in many of the plays comments on how little there is in Shakespeare concerning the mother- daughter relationship. This is of course hints at Shakespeare's concerned relationship with his principal heir , his older daughter Susanna and his more problematic relationship with his younger daughter ,Anna and her philandering husband. Ackroyd too presents to my mind an extremely intelligent and open approach to many questions about Shakespeare, including his sexual - identity. Here again Ackroyd's understanding of Shakespeare as actor gives him insight , even if only hypothetical insight into the life and character of Shakespeare.

As the work however focuses on the life of Shakespeare it's reading of the plays is not central. Rather it uses the plays where it can to understand something significant about Shakespeare's life.

Ackroyd makes much of Shakespeare's not having been a born Londoner, but rather a person of the country. He makes much of Shakespeare's connection with the world of his time.

As Ackroyd himself indicates since the late nineteenth century biographies about Shakespeare have become something like an industry. But this present one is ,my guess is, one of the more distinguished ones.