- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Continuum Publishing Corporation (1 Sep 2011)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1441151850
- ISBN-13: 978-1441151858
- Product Dimensions: 24 x 16.2 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
465,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #83 in Books > Biography > Novelists, Poets & Playwrights > Shakespeare, William
- See Complete Table of Contents
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"'Required reading for anyone interested in Shakespeare's life or in how literary biography gets written. There's no better place to turn for distinguishing facts and traditions from more imaginative accounts of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. Graham Holderness is a terrific guide and a talented writer.' --James Shapiro, author of 1599 and Professor of English at Columbia University
... takes a fresh look at the facts, the traditions, and the possible relations between his life and the works that life created. --Perth Shakespeare Club website
Graham Holderness knows the power of the Shakespeare myth and its fictions, the "fur coat and no knickers" tradition of bardolatrous biography prevalent among Stratfordian autograph-hunters. In this volume, Holderness offers a twist. --Times Higher Education Supplement
... takes a fresh look at the facts, the traditions, and the possible relations between his life and the works that life created. --Perth Shakespeare Club website
Graham Holderness knows the power of the Shakespeare myth and its fictions, the "fur coat and no knickers" tradition of bardolatrous biography prevalent among Stratfordian autograph-hunters. In this volume, Holderness offers a twist. --Times Higher Education Supplement
Product Description
Who was Shakespeare and how did he live? Combining fact, tradition and imagination, Shakespeare's many lives are told in 9 possible ways. We know relatively little about Shakespeare's life, and yet it continues to fascinate us. This new biography of Shakespeare identifies and expounds the many possible 'lives' that can reasonably be drawn around the basic facts, traditions and literary remains of his legacy. Graham Holderness takes a hard and fresh look at the facts, the traditions, and the possible relations between a life and the works that life created. He offers nine possible short 'lives' of Shakespeare, each based on specific facts and traditions, drawn from the documentary record and from biographical interpretation and each supported by a body of critical and biographical work. Each section includes a critical essay detailing the biographical facts and showing how they have been interpreted, paired with a fictional narrative based on those facts. The fictional narratives use various styles, short stories, bogus historical documents, magic-realist fables. Each engages with the key facts, traditions and interpretative consensus, and creates an imaginary space in which the dry bones of historical record can be made to live. "Shakespeare Now!" is a series of short books that engage imaginatively and often provocatively with the possibilities of Shakespeare's plays. It goes back to the source - the most living language imaginable - and recaptures the excitement, audacity and surprise of Shakespeare. It will return you to the plays with opened eyes.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book recalls several theses I have examined where the student compromised what was a shining piece of work by including awkward & unnecessary material with literary pretensions. With judicious editing this would have been one of the better books on Shakespeare studies, just the thing to give the undergrads. But...
As the book's descriptor explains, Holderness directly confronts the at turns irritating, and fascinating, tendency of Shakespeare's biographers and interpreters to apportion different weighting to historical and textual evidence. The result has been a series of conflicting lives of Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt, Germaine Greer and Jonathan Bate have all commented on and analytically scrutinised this tendency; but Holderness has separated these biographical approaches into 9 potential master narratives. In this sense he has a worthy project on his hands.
However, his book's seeming intended readership is a student audience, for it does not surpass the individual efforts of Greenblatt, Greer and Bate (it tends to summarise in easily digested form their results in this matter, along with material from James Shapiro and Stanley Wells). General readers who have already digested a reasonable amount of Shakespeare criticism and biography won't find much here that is enlightening or new.
The book's unforgivable flaw are the fictional sections that Holderness has written and tacked after each chapter. This may sound like a good idea, and it was the reason for my purchasing the book. One of the crits on this page says the outcome is much like a postmodern novel where different voices present their view of the central figure. That is way too flattering a description! Unfortunately, these fictional sections are not accomplished, indeed, at moments they are embarrassing to read. Literary mimicry and clever pastiche they simply are not (the "Hemingway" section deserves a resounding gong). Anthony Burgess, who really could write, remains unchallenged.
One technical complaint: the print is very small.
As the book's descriptor explains, Holderness directly confronts the at turns irritating, and fascinating, tendency of Shakespeare's biographers and interpreters to apportion different weighting to historical and textual evidence. The result has been a series of conflicting lives of Shakespeare. Stephen Greenblatt, Germaine Greer and Jonathan Bate have all commented on and analytically scrutinised this tendency; but Holderness has separated these biographical approaches into 9 potential master narratives. In this sense he has a worthy project on his hands.
However, his book's seeming intended readership is a student audience, for it does not surpass the individual efforts of Greenblatt, Greer and Bate (it tends to summarise in easily digested form their results in this matter, along with material from James Shapiro and Stanley Wells). General readers who have already digested a reasonable amount of Shakespeare criticism and biography won't find much here that is enlightening or new.
The book's unforgivable flaw are the fictional sections that Holderness has written and tacked after each chapter. This may sound like a good idea, and it was the reason for my purchasing the book. One of the crits on this page says the outcome is much like a postmodern novel where different voices present their view of the central figure. That is way too flattering a description! Unfortunately, these fictional sections are not accomplished, indeed, at moments they are embarrassing to read. Literary mimicry and clever pastiche they simply are not (the "Hemingway" section deserves a resounding gong). Anthony Burgess, who really could write, remains unchallenged.
One technical complaint: the print is very small.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Bizarre
24 Dec 2011
Format:Hardcover
Definitely not my cup of tea. The author has decided that since we will probably never have the kind of deeply personal information about Shakespeare we want, he will provide a generous helping of deeply personal speculation. The speculation is all clearly labelled and set off from the factual summaries of each topic; but that doesn't change the fact that some of the "stories" are bizarre in the extreme, nor does it change the fact that the factual summaries are superficial at best. It's certainly one way of solving the problem of writing a biography of Shakespeare, but I hope it's not catching.
Shakespeare has not been well-served in the biography department in recent years. After Schoenbaum, the only writer to attempt a serious, well-documented, and thorough discussion of the evidence is Park Honan. (On the other hand, there have been a number of monograph-like approaches that have yielded some interesting results: James Shapiro and Charles Nicholl have both contributed greatly to our knowledge of limited aspects of Shakespeare's life.)
Shakespeare has not been well-served in the biography department in recent years. After Schoenbaum, the only writer to attempt a serious, well-documented, and thorough discussion of the evidence is Park Honan. (On the other hand, there have been a number of monograph-like approaches that have yielded some interesting results: James Shapiro and Charles Nicholl have both contributed greatly to our knowledge of limited aspects of Shakespeare's life.)
Brilliant
26 Jan 2012
Format:Hardcover
This is like no other biography of Shakespeare. Celebrity biographer Roger Lewis says that it's the best book of is kind since Anthony Burgess's Nothing Like the Sun. That's a tall order but you can see why he says it. Holderness gives the basic facts of Shakespeare's life, grouped under nine headings - Shakespeare the writer, the actor, the businessman, and so on - and then shows how biographers have interpreted them. But he goes on to show how much biographical writing is invention and speculation, and goes one better by writing his own stories about each of the nine lives. Some of these are fictional versions of the historical facts - e.g we see a Catholic Shakespeare reconciled to his faith on his death-bed - while others are brilliantly-written commentaries or responses to the problems raised by Shakespeare's elusive life. My favourites include a Sherlock Holmes story that parallels the gay romance of the Sonnets; and the story of a mysterious island where all the inhabitants look exactly like Shakespeare ... An excellent read for academics or interested general readers. Terrific.
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