The Autobiography of Shakespeare a Fragment

The Autobiography of Shakespeare a Fragment PDF

Author: William Shakespeare

Publisher: Brunton Press

Published: 2008-06

Total Pages: 176

ISBN-13: 1409784851

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Autobiography in Shakespeare's Plays

Autobiography in Shakespeare's Plays PDF

Author: William Nicholas Knight

Publisher: Peter Lang

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780820437774

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Shakespeare's authorship of his plays can no longer be in doubt with this book's clear identification of autobiographical passages throughout his work from his legal documents in Stratford and London courts. Shakespeare refers to the loss of his inheritance, by his father mortgaging it to his uncle, from early works such as Taming of the Shrew to the late Lear. His mother is referred to in As You Like It and Coriolanus; his twins in Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night; and the loss of his son from Merchant of Venice to Macbeth. His daughters, as recipients of his accumulated wealth, are subjects of his concern from Lear to The Tempest. More important, the knowledge of the law in his personal pursuits is revealed as a source for the legal content in his works, which found fit audiences among jurists at the Inns of Court law schools and in King James' Court. Shakespeare pleased the king on these matters enough to have him command his plays to be repeated on an occasion. For himself, Shakespeare learned from his own writing how to deal with the language of law theoretically and conceptually with such concepts as equity and mercy in Chancery. He used his own family life, personal documents, and legal problems to give impetus to his version of borrowed characters, plots, plays, and history. These personal events, from the placement of the references, give his plays, which sometimes end with a fictionalized, wish-fulfillment, or literary compensation, an autobiographical initial compulsion.

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition)

Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition) PDF

Author: Stephen Greenblatt

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2010-05-03

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 0393079848

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Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time The Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist, reissued with a new afterword for the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. A young man from a small provincial town moves to London in the late 1580s and, in a remarkably short time, becomes the greatest playwright not of his age alone but of all time. How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

Shakespeare and the Book Trade

Shakespeare and the Book Trade PDF

Author: Lukas Erne

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-04-25

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1107354552

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Shakespeare and the Book Trade follows on from Lukas Erne's groundbreaking Shakespeare as Literary Dramatist to examine the publication, constitution, dissemination and reception of Shakespeare's printed plays and poems in his own time and to argue that their popularity in the book trade has been greatly underestimated. Erne uses evidence from Shakespeare's publishers and the printed works to show that in the final years of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth century, 'Shakespeare' became a name from which money could be made, a book trade commodity in which publishers had significant investments and an author who was bought, read, excerpted and collected on a surprising scale. Erne argues that Shakespeare, far from indifferent to his popularity in print, was an interested and complicit witness to his rise as a print-published author. Thanks to the book trade, Shakespeare's authorial ambition started to become bibliographic reality during his lifetime.

The Life of William Shakespeare

The Life of William Shakespeare PDF

Author: Lois Potter

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-03-07

Total Pages: 514

ISBN-13: 1118231775

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The Life of William Shakespeare is a fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of Shakespeare's life and works focusing on oftern neglected literary and historical contexts: what Shakespeare read, who he worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various collaborations may have affected his writing. Written by an eminent Shakespearean scholar and experienced theatre reviewer Pays particular attention to Shakespeare's theatrical contemporaries and the ways in which they influenced his writing Offers an intriguing account of the life and work of the great poet-dramatist structured around the idea of memory Explores often neglected literary and historical contexts that illuminate Shakespeare's life and works

Shakespeare's Lives

Shakespeare's Lives PDF

Author: Samuel Schoenbaum

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 658

ISBN-13: 0198186185

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This volume presents a study of the changing images and differing ways that the life of English poet and playwright William Shakespeare (1564-1616) has been interpreted throughout history. The author takes readers on a tour of the countless myths and legends which have arisen to explain the great dramatist's life and work, bringing the story right up to 1989. He reconstructs as much of the elusive author's life as possible, considering his family history, his economic standing, and his reputation with his peers; the Shakespeare who emerges may not always be the familiar one.

Shakespeare, Our Contemporary

Shakespeare, Our Contemporary PDF

Author: Jan Kott

Publisher: Doubleday

Published: 2015-01-21

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0804152195

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Shakespeare, Our Contemporary is a provocative, original study of the major plays of Shakespeare. More than that, it is one of the few critical works to have strongly influenced theatrical productions. Peter Brook and Charles Marowitz are among the many directors who have acknowledged their debt to Jan Kott, finding in his analogies between Shakespearean situations and those in modern life and drama the seeds of vital new stage conceptions. Shakespeare, Our Contemporary has been translated into nineteen languages since it appeared in 1961, and readers all over the world have similarly found their responses to Shakespeare broadened and enriched.

Shakespeare by Another Name

Shakespeare by Another Name PDF

Author: Margo Anderson

Publisher: Untreed Reads

Published: 2011-11-04

Total Pages: 667

ISBN-13: 1611871786

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The debate over the true author of the Shakespeare canon has raged for centuries. Astonishingly little evidence supports the traditional belief that Will Shakespeare, the actor and businessman from Stratford-upon-Avon, was the author. Legendary figures such as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman and Sigmund Freud have all expressed grave doubts that an uneducated man who apparently owned no books and never left England wrote plays and poems that consistently reflect a learned and well-traveled insider's perspective on royal courts and the ancient feudal nobility. Recent scholarship has turned to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford-an Elizabethan court playwright known to have written in secret and who had ample means, motive and opportunity to in fact have assumed the "Shakespeare" disguise. "Shakespeare" by Another Name is the literary biography of Edward de Vere as "Shakespeare." This groundbreaking book tells the story of de Vere's action-packed life-as Renaissance man, spendthrift, courtier, wit, student, scoundrel, patron, military adventurer, and, above all, prolific ghostwriter-finding in it the background material for all of The Bard's works. Biographer Mark Anderson incorporates a wealth of new evidence, including de Vere's personal copy of the Bible (in which de Vere underlines scores of passages that are also prominent Shakespearean biblical references).

Contested Will

Contested Will PDF

Author: James Shapiro

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-04-19

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1416541632

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Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro explains when and why so many people began to question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays.