Shakespeare's Lives

by Samuel Schoenbaum

Book Overview

Fascination with the life of the author has remained a constant in Shakespeare studies, as the recent spate of biographies and books on the authorship question makes clear. Who was William Shakespeare? What can we know about him for certain? Should we be looking at this fellow Shakespeare at all? First published in 1970, and thoroughly revised and updated in 1991, Shakespeare's Lives remains the most celebrated history of the quest for Shakespeare...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0760779325
• ISBN13: 9780760779323
• Release Date: August 2006
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Length: 612 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

a must for serious lovers of shakespeare

If you love Shakespeare, buy this book--you won't be disappointed. Schoenbaum doesn't discuss the plays, but instead the man who wrote them--or, more specifically, the differing ways that his life has been interpreted. That's right, it's a biography of Shakespeare's biographers, leading us step by step through several centuries of interpreters of the Bard, and the various wacky ways they have interpreted his life. It might not sound compelling, but boy it is. The early portions of the book are good enough, but it really takes off when the author starts to discuss the "Baconian" heretics--authors who have argued that Francis Bacon (or some other aristocratic, and therefore supposedly more intelligent, fop) actually wrote the world's greatest plays. He wonderfully illustrates the bizarreness of the men and women who originated this fanciful claim, and explains how it has unfortunately caught on in the popular imagination. (One of the first "Baconians," the not-coincidentally named Delia Bacon, is a tragically grotesque character worthy of Shakespeare himself.) This is a hefty book that you won't finish in a single sitting, but I still highly recommend it.

the life of Shakespeare as researched by S.Schoenbaum

This book is the most thorough book on the life of the Bard