Synopses & Reviews
Very little is known about the Life of William Shakespeare; indeed, it is partly because we know so little about him that his achievements in his 'afterlife' have become as important as his achievements during his lifetime. In this remarkable new biography, distinguished Shakespeare scholar and threatre critic Lois Potter explores what Shakespeare might have remembered, what other people have remembered about his work, and what and why we remember it now.
Potter's critical biography also pays particular attention to literary and historical contexts often neglected in other studies: who Shakespeare worked with as an author and an actor, and how these various kinds of collaboration may have affected his writing. The result is a unique and wide-ranging study of the life and work of the great poet-dramatist.
Review
“By keeping her eye on the enduring power of Shakespeare’s writing, Lois Potter manages to gather all the interesting and puzzling questions we have asked about his life into a focused and authentically critical biography. She is adventurous in taking on speculation and counter-speculation but never allows us to confuse conjecture with fact. Richly informative and engagingly written, this book should appeal to general readers as well as to professional Shakespeareans.” Edward Pechter, Concordia University
Review
“Lois Potter’s book provides a delightful guide through Shakespeare’s world. A splendid introduction for those new to the facts about Shakespeare’s life, it is also a revelation for anyone all too familiar with them.
The Life of William Shakespeare revitalizes old truths by asking questions where none seemed necessary, by filling in new detail, and most of all, by approaching the material from the perspective of a would-be, then practicing and collaborating, player-playwright. Lois Potter’s unique emphasis, on Shakespeare’s imaginative life and the words that fed it, works brilliantly to produce what I would have thought impossible: a really new biography that never thins into mere speculation. Learned, modest, witty and above all smart, the book will be a must-read for anyone who cares about early modern theater.”
—Meredith Skura, Rice University
“By keeping her eye on the enduring power of Shakespeare’s writing, Lois Potter manages to gather all the interesting and puzzling questions we have asked about his life into a focused and authentically critical biography. She is adventurous in taking on speculation and counter-speculation but never allows us to confuse conjecture with fact. Richly informative and engagingly written, this book should appeal to general readers as well as to professional Shakespeareans.”
—Edward Pechter, Concordia University
“Lois Potter has produced an astonishing, revelatory, fully literary biography. The Life of William Shakespeare is a product of deep reservoirs of historical knowledge, theatrical experience, and critical acumen, all deployed with an extraordinarily sympathetic imagination. Potter adjudicates standing quarrels about the life story with intelligence and dispassion, offers up scintillating new readings of the works, and produces interesting and original observations on every page.”
—Lena Cowen Orlin, Executive Director, Shakespeare Association of America, and Professor of English, Georgetown University
“This is not just (just!) a biography of Shakespeare: it is a theatrical biography. It uses Potter’s immense, unrivalled knowledge of things theatrical to draw very logical and frequently original inferences.”
—Laurie Maguire, Oxford University
“This is a lively, fresh new introduction to the life of Shakespeare, no mere regurgitating of earlier lives. It reads well. It is judicious, intelligent, coherent, and well documented.”
—David Bevington, University of Chicago
Review
“Lois Potter’s Life of William Shakespeare, ranks with the most distinguished examples of its kind … Her achievement lies in her catholicity, her simultaneous commitment to matters personal, historical, theatrical, literary, cultural. She exhibits an absolute command of the available facts, a lifetime’s acquaintance with the works gained in teaching and playgoing, an unparalleled familiarity with theatrical history from 1567 to the present, and a talent for connecting the fictional and the actual.” (Times Literary Supplement, 10 August 2012)
Review
“Two of the Mighty dead have been brought back to life in exemplary fashion: Shakespeare in Lois Potter’s The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography, which very cleverly uses expert theatre-knowledge as a way of making her enigmatic subject seem plausibly substantial; and Keats in Nicholas Roe’s John Keats: A New Life, which puts the poet properly in his place.” (
The Guardian, 24 November 2012)
“This study will have wide appeal to readers who wish to expand their appreciation of the works of William Shakespeare. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.” (Choice, 1 November 2012)
“A richly suggestive, undogmatic book in which Lois Potter ranges across the entire canon and the period that helped produce it.” (Around the Globe, 1 October 2012)
“Lois Potter’s Life of William Shakespeare, ranks with the most distinguished examples of its kind … Her achievement lies in her catholicity, her simultaneous commitment to matters personal, historical, theatrical, literary, cultural. She exhibits an absolute command of the available facts, a lifetime’s acquaintance with the works gained in teaching and playgoing, an unparalleled familiarity with theatrical history from 1567 to the present, and a talent for connecting the fictional and the actual.” (Times Literary Supplement, 10 August 2012)
Review
“This study will have wide appeal to readers who wish to expand their appreciation of the works of William Shakespeare. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.” (
Choice, 1 November 2012)
“These form the narrative spine of this richly suggestive, undogmatic book in which Lois Potter ranges across the entire canon and the period that helped produce it.” (Around the Globe, 1 October 2012)
“Lois Potter’s Life of William Shakespeare, ranks with the most distinguished examples of its kind … Her achievement lies in her catholicity, her simultaneous commitment to matters personal, historical, theatrical, literary, cultural. She exhibits an absolute command of the available facts, a lifetime’s acquaintance with the works gained in teaching and playgoing, an unparalleled familiarity with theatrical history from 1567 to the present, and a talent for connecting the fictional and the actual.” (Times Literary Supplement, 10 August 2012)
Synopsis
Eine faszinierende, breit gef cherte Untersuchung von Shakespeares Leben und Werk. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf oft vernachl ssigten literarischen und historischen Zusammenh ngen und darauf, wie andere Autoren, Schauspieler und Weggef hrten Shakespeares Schaffen beeinflusst haben.
Synopsis
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
Synopsis
In this remarkable new biography, distinguished Shakespeare scholar and theater critic Lois Potter explores literary and historical contexts often neglected in other studies, drawing in particular on the idea of the literary personality and on new discoveries about collaboration. She looks at Shakespeare's possible role models, both real and fictional, with particular attention to the people with whom he worked as both author and actor, and considers how these various kinds of collaboration may have affected him. The focus throughout is on Shakespeare's words and on what he learned about writing for his audiences - which, Potter suggests, were more varied than has been thought. The result is a unique and wide-ranging study of the life and work of the great poet and dramatist.
About the Author
Lois Potter recently retired as Ned B. Allen Chair at the University of Delaware. She has also taught at the Universities of Aberdeen, Leicester, and Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle, and at Tsuda College, Tokyo. Her publications include Twelfth Night: Text and Performance (1986), the Arden edition of The Two Noble Kinsmen (1997, 2001), and Shakespeare in Performance: Othello (2002). She is also the editor of two volumes in the Revels History of Drama in English series (1981 and 1984), and has been a frequent reviewer of plays for the Times Literary Supplement, Shakespeare Quarterly, and Shakespeare Bulletin.
Table of Contents
List of IllustrationsPreface and Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
The Shakespeare Family Tree
1 “Born into the World”: 1564--1571
Birth and Baptism
William Shakespeare’s Name
John and Mary Shakespeare
Stratford
The Imaginative World
2 “Nemo Sibi Nascitur”: 1571--1578
Grammar School
The Books
Role Models
Becoming a Writer
Becoming an Actor
Recognition
3 “Hic et Ubique”: 1578--1588
John Shakespeare’s Finances
Shakespeare After School
Theater in the 1580s
Marriage and Children
4 “This Man's Art and That Man’s Scope”: 1588--1592
The Playwriting Business and Henslowe
Playwrights of the 1580s
Art and Scope and Shakespeare
5 “Tigers’ Hearts”: 1592--1593
The Early Quartos: Competing Theories
The Henry VI Plays
Actors vs Playwrights
Titus Andronicus
6 “The Dangerous Year”: 1593--1594
Venus and Adonis
Summer 1593
Lucrece
WS and HW
The Early Sonnets
7 “Our Usual Manager of Mirth”: 1594--1595
Theater Companies of 1594
Shakespeare the Actor
The Taming of the Shrew
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Comedy of Errors
Writing for the Lord Chamberlain’s Men
8 “The Strong’st and Surest Way to Get”: 1595--1596
Richard III
Edward III
King John
Richard II
9 “When Love Speaks”: 1595--1596
Romeo and Juliet
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Love’s Labour’s Lost
“Every word doth almost tell my name”
10 “You Had a Father, Let Your Son Say So”: 1596--1598
The Coat of Arms and Hamnet Shakespeare
1 Henry IV
The Merchant of Venice
No Place and New Place
The Merry Wives of Windsor
2 Henry IV
Much Ado About Nothing
The After-Effects of Grief
11 “Unworthy Scaffold”: 1598--1599
Ben Jonson
The Scaffold and the Globe
Satire and Satiric Drama
Sonnets of Competition
As You Like It
Julius Caesar
Henry V
12 “These Words Are Not Mine”: 1599--1601
Recognition: Palladis Tamia and The Passionate Pilgrim
Quotation: Belvedere, England’s Parnassus, and The Parnassus Plays
Appropriation: the Essex Rebellion
Attribution: Love’s Martyr and Attribution
Revision: Sir Thomas More
13 “Looking Before and After”: 1600--1603
Hamlet
Stratford Land
Twelfth Night
Troilus and Cressida
The End of the Reign
14 “This Most Balmy Time”: 1603--1605
Welcoming the New Reign
The 1603/1604 Season
The King’s Playwright?
Measure for Measure
Othello
King Lear
Macbeth
15 “Past the Size of Dreaming”: 1606--1609
“Late Style”
All’s Well That Ends Well
Timon of Athens
Guarini and Tragicomedy
Antony and Cleopatra
Pericles
Coriolanus
Events in Stratford, Events in London
16 “Like an Old Tale”: 1609--1611
Embarrassments of 1609: Troilus and Cressida, "Shakespeare's Sonnets" and Pericles
The Masque
Cymbeline
The Winter’s Tale
The Tempest
17 “The Second Burden”: 1612--1616
John Fletcher and Cardenio
Henry VIII and Its Aftermath
The Two Noble Kinsmen
Last Years
The Survivors
18 “In the Mouths of Men”: 1616 and After
The Folio of 1623
Actors, Biographers, and Editors
Performance
Cornucopian Shakespeare: Criticism -- and Everything Else
Memorializing Shakespeare: National and Global
Conclusion: Myth and “Genius”
Bibliography
Index