Wood Michael. - In Search of Shakespeare

Contents

ONE
ROOTS

TWO
A CHILD OF STATE

THREE
EDUCATION: SCHOOL AND BEYOND

FOUR
JOHN SHAKESPEARES SECRET

FIVE
MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN

SIX
THE LOST YEARS

SEVEN
LONDON: FAME

EIGHT
THE DUTY OF POETS

NINE
A HELL OF TIME

TEN
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE?

ELEVEN
SHAKESPEARES DREAM OF ENGLAND

TWELVE
AMBITION: THE GLOBE

THIRTEEN
THE THEATRE OF THE WORLD

FOURTEEN
GUNPOWDER, TREASON AND PLOT

FIFTEEN
LOST WORLDS, NEW WORLDS

SIXTEEN
TEMPESTS ARE KIND

The greatest writer of the English language as he lived and breathed a spellbindingly immediate portrait of William Shakespeare and his world.

Almost four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare is still acclaimed as the worlds greatest dramatist, yet the man himself remains shrouded in mystery. In this newly updated edition of his acclaimed biography, broadcaster and historian Michael Wood looks afresh at Shakespeares life, brilliantly recreating the turbulent times through which the poet lived. Marked by murderous plots and state terror, religious divisions and rebellious movements, Shakespeares world is conjured up here like never before.

Michael Wood was born in Manchester and educated at Manchester Grammar School and Oriel College, Oxford, where he did postgraduate research in Anglo-Saxon history. A broadcaster and filmmaker, he is the author of several highly praised books on English history, including In Search of the Dark Ages, The Domesday Quest and In Search of England. He has over eighty documentary films to his name, including Art of the Western World, Legacy, In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great, Conquistadors, In Search of Shakespeare and In Search of Myths and Heroes. The writer behind three BBC films about Shakespeares early history plays, he was a contributor to Shakespearean Perspective (1985). Michael Wood is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

In this enthralling book, Michael Wood evokes the physical and intellectual environment in which Shakespeare lived and worked with vivid and original immediacy.

PROFESSOR STANLEY WELLS, Editor of The Oxford Shakespeare

There are many books on Shakespeare by professional academics that are full of bright ideas and interesting information, but which lack the arts of the man himself: bringing characters and places to life, grabbing the audience through story-telling, transforming complex intellectual debates into the immediacy of drama ... Thanks to Michael Woods gifts as a story-teller, populariser and interpreter of the past, Shakespeares world is brought alive more vividly than in any other biography of him that I have read.

JONATHAN BATE, Sunday Telegraph

An evocative and occasionally enchanting retelling of the known facts, which are, in reality, numerous. On the question of whether Shakespeare was a secret Catholic like his father now, much discussed, especially among Catholics Wood is at his eloquent best. He describes vividly the insecurity of the changing times ... A perceptive, entertaining companion, his account of the late plays conjures a poignant farewell to a playwright we would love to have known.

FERDINAND MOUNT, Sunday Times

Wood has now brought his unusual talents for research and exposition to the subject of Shakespeare and his times. The results are ... exciting [and] tendentious ... His account of the London of Shakespeares day is excellently done, and interestingly illustrated, sometimes with 19th-century photographs of Jacobean streets and buildings long since destroyed.

SIR FRANK KERMODE, The New York Times

Michael Wood has distilled the dangerous mix of scholarship and controversy to conjure up a Shakespeare who is inspired and practical, engaging and mysterious. Woods Shakespeare is above all believable and will create the popular image of the Elizabethan past for the next generation.

PROFESSOR KATE McLUSKIE, Director of the University of Birminghams Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon

Wood succeeds in putting together a complete account of the greatest poet and dramatist in history, one that is both convincing in its narrative and compelling in its detail.

BBC History Magazine

Michael Wood is such an accomplished popular historian that he could write about anything and readers would pay for the finished product. Wood shows that though there isnt a huge amount of documentary evidence about Shakespeares life, there is enough to place his extraordinary talent in its proper historical context. A lucid, extended footnote to the complete works of the worlds greatest writer.

BARRY FORSHAW, Publishing News

This wonderful book transports us back to the world in which Shakespeare lived and worked. Wood uses previously unexplored archive evidence to shed new light on the bards life, which remains shrouded in mystery, and in so doing brilliantly recreates the sights and sounds of 16th-century London. This vivid text, with stunning breadth of research and information, is both intellectual and entertaining ...

Good Book Guide

Wood has crafted a book of substance and originality. Combing a wealth of scholarship and a bit of his own sleuthing, Wood presents a portrait of Shakespeare as very much a child of Stratford, a poet from whom the people and countryside of his youth were always a part of his conscious, creative life. We are also given a convincing portrait of the artists struggles in the unpredictable world of the Elizabethan theatre ... A highly readable, informative, and artfully illustrated volume for bardolaters and common readers alike.

Booklist

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 ... As an old medieval hand Wood positions Shakespeare on the cusp of the modern age, but with a firm background in the old traditions. Hes also superb at bringing together the Warwickshire idiom and rural nomenclature that runs through the plays. Wood brings 16th-century London to raucous life [and] throughout Shakespeare is treated as a living person inhabiting his time.

US Publishers Weekly

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