William Shakespeare
Subtitle: An Illustrated Biography
Publisher: Little Brown Book Group Limited
Published: August 1, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780316851596
Subjects: Biography: general; Shakespeare studies & criticism; Literary; Biography & Autobiography; Biography / Autobiography; English; Biography/Autobiography; Biography & Autobiography / Literary; SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM, 1564-1616_BIOGRAPHY
First sentence: There are no great biographies of Shakespeare, according to the American scholar Harold Bloom, 'not because we do not know enough, but because there is not enough to know'.
Description: Creates a vivid portrait of Shakespeare. Recounts how the teenage Shakespeare was sent to a Catholic household in Lancashire; his shotgun wedding to Anne Hathaway; his time moonlighting as a horse-minder and prompter before acting and co-writing plays. When the plague closed the theatres, he wrote poems -- which he though would prove to be his real claim to immortality. Describes how Shakespeare fell in love, how he endured the pangs of sexual jealousy, and how by the time of his retirement, he had become a wealthy landowner fretting about his daughters' future and haunted by the death of his son.