Shakespeare William - Shakespeare: the biography

Acclaim for Peter Ackroyds

Shakespeare

Ackroydnovelist, poet, critic, biographer, historian, omnivorehas been building toward this biography for decades. He knows the 16th century, and he knows the artistic soul. He gives us a Shakespeare rooted in Stratford, energized by London, shaped by theatrical contingencies, but able to transcend all of them through his innate perception and detachment.

The Miami Herald

Extremely thorough and well-researched. [Ackroyd] gives humanity to the portrait, in a somewhat Dickensian fashion.

The Telegraph

The narrative flows so well that at times this biography reads as smoothly as a good work of historical fiction. What makes Shakespeare: The Biography such an entertaining and enlightening read is the ability of Ackroyd to make his subjects and their world live and breathe on the page. The Denver Post

Admirable. [Ackroyd] is (as the biographer of London) at his most vivid describing the feel of 16th-century metropolitan life.The New Statesman

Fascinating doesnt even begin to describe it. Ackroyd takes all the information we have on Shakespeare and puts it into new perspective. It unfurls like fast-moving fiction, is swaddled in atmosphere and is always engaging. The Plain Dealer

A strikingly good read. Ackroyd succeeds perhaps better than any other recent biographer in piecing together the scattered pieces of Shakespeares life for a general audience.

The San Diego Union Tribune

Immensely enjoyable. Ackroyd provides material for a thousand theses. The Providence Journal

Magisterial [with] a vivid grasp of the material elements of the daily life of long-lost England. The Nation

Fascinating. Rich. A vivid and convincing biography.

The Manchester Evening News

Peter Ackroyd

Shakespeare

Peter Ackroyd is a bestselling writer of both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books include The Lambs of London and J.M. W. Turner, the second biography in the Ackroyd Brief Lives series. He has also written full-scale biographies of Dickens, Blake, and Thomas More and the novels The Clerkenwell Tales, The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, Milton in America, and The Plato Papers. He has won the Whitbread Award for Biography, the Royal Society of Literature Award under the William Heinemann Bequest (jointly), the Somerset Maugham Award, the South Bank Award for Literature, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and The Guardian fiction prize. He lives in London.

Also by Peter Ackroyd

FICTION
The Great Fire of London
The Last Testament of Oscar Wilde
Hawksmoor
Chatterton
First Light
English Music
The House of Doctor Dee
Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem
Milton in America
The Plato Papers
The Clerkenwell Tales

NONFICTION
Dressing Up: Transvestism and Drag: The History of an Obsession
London: The Biography
Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination

BIOGRAPHY
Ezra Pound and His World
T.S. Eliot
Dickens
Blake
The Life of Thomas More

POETRY
Ouch!
The Diversions of Purley

CRITICISM
Notes for a New Culture
The Collection: Journalism, Reviews, Essays, Short Stories, Lectures
(edited by Thomas Wright)

Contents

Authors note

Stratford-Upon-Avon

16 Before I Know My Selfe, Seeke Not to Know Me

17 I Can See a Church by Day-Light

The Queens Men

19 This Way for Me

Lord Stranges Men

The Earl of Pembrokes Men

36 That Hath a Mint of Phrases in His Braine

The Lord Chamberlains Men

39 Lord How Art Thou Changed

54 And to Be Short, What Not, Thats Sweete and Happie

New Place

58 A Loyall, Iust and Vpright Gentleman

The Globe

69 I Must Become a Borrower of the Night

73 My Lord This Is But the Play, Theyre But in Iest

The Kings Men

81 That Strain Agen, It Had a Dying Fall

Black friars

91 To Heare the Story of Your Life

List of Illustrations

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT

Title page from The Bishops Bible, quarto edition 1569. G 12188. By permission of the British Library

The Elizabethan clown, Richard Tarlton, depicted as part of a decorated initial. Harley 3885 f. 19. By permission of the British Library

One of Nicholas Visschers panoramas of London and the Thames. Guildhall Library, Corporation of London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library

From Robert Greenes autobiographical pamphlet, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance (1592). The Folger Shakespeare Library

The comedian William Kempe. From his Nine Daies Wonder (printed in 1600) in which he described how he had morris-danced all the way from London to Norwich. Bodleian Library

Rough sketch (1602) of the proposed Shakespeare coat of arms. The Folger Shakespeare Library

The Globe Theatre on Bankside, after an engraving of the time of James I. Bridgeman Art Library/private collection/The Stapleton Collection

Title page to Mischeefes Mysterie or Treasons Master-peece, the Powder Plot. Wood cut by John Vickars. Bridgeman Art Library/private collection

Ben Jonsons Oberon, the Fairy Prince: designs by Inigo Jones (1611). The Courtauld Institute/The Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Reproduced by permission of the Duke of Devonshire and the Chatsworth Settlement Trustees

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE INSERTS

Seventeenth-century gloves. V & A images, Victoria and Albert Museum

Hornbook. The Folger Shakespeare Library

The nave of Stratfords Guild Chapel. Maya Vision International

Queen Elizabeth I. National Portrait Gallery, London

Edmund Campion. By permission of the Governors of Stonyhurst College

Lord Strange (Ferdinando Stanley, the fifth Earl of Derby). Oil on canvas, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. The Right Hon the Earl of Derby/Bridgeman Art Library

Thought to be Christopher Marlowe. The Master and Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Titus Andronicus (1594). By permission of the Marquess of Bath, Longleat House, Warminster, Wiltshire, Great Britain

Frontispiece to The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, printed by Augustine Mathewes, 1633 (woodcut). Private collection/Bridgeman Art Library

Dedicatory epistle to The Rape of Lucrece. The Folger Shakespeare Library

Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. Nicholas Hilliard. Gouache on vellum. Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, UK/Bridgeman Art Library