- Hardcover: 480 pages
- Publisher: Clarendon Press; illustrated edition edition (29 Oct 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0198117922
- ISBN-13: 978-0198117926
- Product Dimensions: 21.4 x 14.2 x 3.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 641,929 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Shakespeare:A Life
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Atheist, homosexual, rebel, ladies man, Tory, Catholic: the varieties of "Shakespeare" on offer since the first printed biography of the Bard appeared in 1709 are profuse and often bizarre. The late Ted Hughes even claimed that Shakespeare was a shaman, who visited the former Poet Laureate in a dream to dictate Hughes' (or Shakespeare's?) preposterous Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being. It therefore comes as some relief to read Park Honan's Shakespeare: A Life and find that it eschews the wilder side of Shakespearean biography.
Honan's book is the result of more than 10 years of research into primary sources dealing with Shakespeare's life and career, and the result is an impressively weighty and scholarly study. Honan is particularly strong on the early years in Stratford, and young William's relationship with his father, as well as the poet's attitude towards the women in his life: his intelligent mother, Mary, his shadowy wife, Anne, his sisters Joan and Margaret, and his two daughters, Susanna and Judith. Honan's touch is less sure when he follows Shakespeare to London, where the biography gets bogged down in interpreting virtually all of the plays in relation to biographical "facts", an approach which has been the subject of much criticism within Shakespeare studies in recent years. But if every age gets the biography of Shakespeare that it deserves, then Honan's version perhaps unwittingly offers us a Shakespeare which catches the spirit of Britain's current post-Thatcherite times.
Honan's Shakespeare is a cautious, astute man in both his professional and personal life. This Shakespeare shows routine deference to both kin and country, cautiously negotiating the political and commercial pitfalls of Elizabethan and Jacobean London, painstakingly learning his craft, and with a constant eye on his carefully marshalled financial assets. Honan's biography is detailed, precise, and very well researched, but it ultimately offers a curiously colourless and uninspired Shakespeare, lacking the passion of the Romantics or even the genius of the Victorians. Perhaps this is, after all, the Shakespeare biography that the end of the 20th century deserves. --Jerry Brotton
Review
this is now the best available life of Shakespeare. (Stanley Wells, The Observer 18/10/98 )
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The first bio of Shakespeare I've actually been able to finish! Honan's approach is reasonable, intelligent, and well-researched. It also happens to be quite interesting, providing not only the best and most tantalizing of the available evidence of Shakespeare's life, but also by painting a portrait of the milieu in which he lived and worked. Never before has Shakespeare's achievement seemed so towering, and yet so human. Much better by far than Bloom's bloated and self-serving paean. Although slightly marred by Honan's quirky style, and by the mysterious sudden disappearance from the narrative of Anne (Hathaway) Shakespeare before the poet's death, it nonetheless held me in thrall all weekend. I hate the phrase, but it's a definite "must-read"!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Honan does much to firmly establish William Shakespeare as a solid citizen (if also tax dodger). He gives no handle at all to those who would charge him with homosexuality or even adultery and offers plausible explanations for many disputed aspects of the poet's life. But it is a dreadfully lifeless, plodding, life. It takes a really strong prior interest in Shakespeare to persevere through this book. Those coming first to Shakespeare should avoid it, unless they themselves are doing research and need an excellent guide to sources and interpretation thereof.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
What a sad, resourceless bunch of readers your lay reviwers are. The author makes plain at the start the remit of his book, to eschew the romantic speculation about the `bard's' life in favour of a meticulous examination of the facts. This does not make the book `booring,' far from it. If you want cheap thrills, stick to Star Wars. For the intelligent lay-reader with half a brain, this book take a little while to get into, but the effort is well worth it, repaid by insight into London at that time, the theatrical world (in London)and much, much more. I found it enriched my understanding of a much-discussed, much-mythologised figure. Ignore the carpers. Top banana.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Booooring
The sad fact is, like Jesus, we don't know a lot about Shakespeare-and this title demonstrates it. Read it only if you have an academic-level interest in the subject and want... Read more
Published on 12 May 1999
A pleasure for those with an historical-literary bent.
An excellent and as thoroughly as possible knowable account (for now), of the Bards life. Scholarly, and sometimes dense, but accessible and an enjoyable pleasure for the... Read more
Published on 7 May 1999
Dense, difficult, and scholarly
This book was not written for the faint of heart. Long plane trips and idle vacation time is all that allowed me to finish it. Read more
Published on 26 Mar 1999
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