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Product Description
Product Description
Among Shakespear's many biographers none brings to his subject more passion and feeling for the creative act than Anthony Burgess. He breathes life into Shakespear the man and invigorates his times. His portrait of the age builds upon an almost personal tenderness for Shakespear and his contemporaries (especially Ben Jonson), and on a profound sense of literary and theatrical history. Anthony Burgess's well-known delight in language infuses his own writing about Shakespear's works. And in the verve of his biography he conveys the energy of the Elizabethan age.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is in my opinion the most readable biography of Shakespeare. It is well written and doesn't speculate needlessly. If you only buy one biog of WS, make it this one.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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11 reviews
35 of 37 people found the following review helpful
Wonderfully insightful book!
13 May 2000
Format:Paperback
The late, great Anthony Burgess shares one of the loves of his life--the works of Shakespeare--with the reader, not by providing close analysis of the literature itself (many fine books that do so are already available, as the author points out in his opening paragraphs), but by giving the reader a solid background on the Elizabethan era: on the major political figures, the intrigues, English preoccupations both domestic and abroad, a history of the theater, Shakespeare's contemporaries including Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, and speculation about the life of Shakespeare himself. The information is surprising and fascinating. In the best chapter in the book, Burgess brilliantly imagines the first stage production of _Hamlet_. Likely named for Shakespeare's tragically short-lived son Hamnet, the play features Shakespeare's friend Richard Burbage in the title role. When Polonius tells Hamlet how he was once a player in his youth, and was "killed in the Capitol", acting as Julius Caesar, Hamlet remarks how one could kill "so capital a calf". Burgess reveals the joke shared by the actors and their Elizabethan audience: that in previous weeks, the actor who plays Polonius in the current production probably played the title role in Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_. Mr. Burgess also shows the parallels between the Histories and the current political concerns of the time: Henry V is also a commentary on the rise to power of the Earl of Essex, almost overtly stated by the Chorus in the beginning. Shakespeare's fellow playwrights and actors also figure in his lines. Buried in a play are the words, "It strikes a man more dead/Than a great reckoning in a little room," clearly a reference to the death of Marlowe. By tracing the artistic development and clarifying the backdrop of Elizabethan politics and history, Burgess's brilliant book will illuminate the plays and poems, generousl providing with much loving detail and attention to the reader a far greater understanding and appreciation--and inspiring a greater love--of Shakespeare.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Shakespeare can be thrilling
13 Feb 2003
Format:Paperback
I have to admit that I was not such a big fan of Shakespeare, before reading Mr. Burgess book. I had only the information I got in school, where most of the things we learn are dry and not interesting at all. Well, this biography has nothing to do with it. Its full of history, literary analysis, facts about Shakespare's private life, England at that time, all written with a lot of common sense, a great and intelligent sense of humour. If you dont like Shakespeare or if you think he is not such a big deal, read this book, and I promise you, you will want to read again all his works and see them in a different light.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Fresh and Engaging
17 Jan 2004
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Anthony Burgess, perhaps best known as author of "A Clockwork Orange", wrote this engaging biography of Shakespeare in 1970. As more than one critic has noted, all the Shakespeare biographies that have come out over the centuries are bound by one common thread: they all must work from the same finite set of information. Much is known about Shakespeare, but much is not known. And what is known grows no larger. We know a bit about his Stratford origins, his move to London, his life and business, and his brief retirement back home. And of course, we have Shakespeare's writings. Or as Burgess puts it, "Infuriatingly, whenever Shakespeare does something other than buy a lease or write a play, history shuts her jaws with a snap."
The challenge to a biographer is to present the material in such a way as to be informative to those who've never read a biography, interesting to those who have, and true to the set of known facts. Burgess meets the challenge and then some -- Burgess was, of course, a fine writer, and he was also an erudite scholar and a fan, though a sharp-eyed one, of his subject. Careful to qualify his guesswork, he jumps to many credible and a few incredible though amusing conclusions --for example about Shakespeare's family and home life-- that set a fertile context for the known facts. Burgess has done his homework on the royals and nobles in Britain, describing the climate change after Elizabeth's death, Southampton's eclipse and Essex's treason. He has read the contemporaries, Marlow and Jonson and Philip Sidney (who wrote of writer's block: "Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite; 'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in the heart, and write.'")
The analysis of the plays is strong (particularly the flesh vs. gold themes in "Merchant", not new yet well put). And the final lines are wonderful, the Shakespeare-as-us theme written so as to leave us with a smile. Burgess was a true writer, and his biography of Shakespeare has the virtue of being fresh and witty and insightful, it stands out from the others.
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