Peter Clenott

First published twenty years ago, this witty and learned book--now completely revised and updated--follows the quest throughout history for Shakespeare the man. Taking us on a tour of the countless myths and legends which have arisen to explain the great dramatist's life and work, S. Schoenbaum presents a wealth of material from collections scattered all over the world which yield fresh and often dramatic information about a host of controversial characters and incidents. Beginning with the Shakespeare of documentary record--poet of the London stage and burgher of Stratford--Schoenbaum proceeds to the legends of Shakespeare as deer-poacher, ale-toper, and valiant lover. Other Shakespeares follow: the playwright as protagonist in a host of popular and scholarly biographies, which often reveal more about the biographer than the subject. The Shakespeare for whom imaginary history was invented through forged documents--first by Ireland in the eighteenth century, and later by the clever and more seasoned J. Payne Collier. And lastly the Shakespeare who never was: anti-hero of a vast and frequently eccentric literature crediting his works to luminaries such as Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, and Christopher Marlowe. Enlivened with such notable personages as Johnson, Keats, Hawthorn, Wilde, Joyce, and Freud, Shakespeare's Lives is a book of many lives--both described and lived--during the course of four centuries. From the mists of ignorance and misconception Schoenbaum allows the figure of Shakespeare to emerge, seen through a succession of different eyes and from constantly shifting vantage-points. This new edition makes the latest lives of Shakespeare available to whole new generation of the Bard's devotees.