Print Price: $481.50

Format:
Hardback
480 pp.
numerous black and white plates, 138 mm x 216 mm

ISBN-13:
9780198117926

Publication date:
October 1998

Imprint: OUP UK

Shakespeare

A Life

Park Honan

In the most complete, accurate, and up-to-date narrative of Shakespeare's life ever written, Park Honan uses a wealth of fresh information to dramatically alter our perceptions of the actor, poet, and playwright.

The young poet's relationships, his early courtship of Anne Hathaway, their marriage, his attitudes to women such as Jennet Davenant, Marie Mountjoy, and his own daughters, are seen in a new light, illuminating Shakespeare's needs, habits, passions and concerns. Park Honan examines the world of the playing companies -- the power of patronage, theatrical conditions, and personal rivalries -- to reveal the relationship between the man and the writing, and using previously unpublished material explores the causes of Shakespeare's success; Stratford childhood, his parents' capabilities, and his preparations for a London career. Shakespeare: A Life casts new light on the complexity and fascination of Shakespeare's life and his extraordinary development as an artist.

Readership : General readers, students, and scholars of Shakespeare, C16 literature and drama, theatre studies, and Shakespearian Studies.

Reviews

• `It does bring us closer to the world that Shakespeare lived in ... This is a timely, well-written and accessible biography of Shakespeare, which is exceptional for its lucid descriptions of the landscapes and locales that Shakespeare knew and maybe wrote about.'
  EMLS, 6.2, Sept 2000
• `a meticulously researched ... authoritative biography ... it is lucid, enjoyable and reliable in excluding (exuding?) colourful, imaginative reconstructions and elaborate psychological theories which strain credulity and are less exciting than newly found factual truth.'
  Patrick Richards, Day by Day, 14/12/00.
• `This engrossing life, using a wealth of new evidence to illustrate personal experiences and artistic development of the greatest English writer, is incomparably vivid and credible ... I know no biography of Shakespeare to rival this one.'
  Patrick Richards, Day by Day, 14/12/00.
• `Honan has gone through town and church registers with a keen eye and a happy wit ... an always interesting book.'
  Peter Ackroyd, The Times, 22/10/98
• `It is fascinating stuff, a wealth of minutiae'
  Max Davidson, Travel section, The Daily Telegraph, 22/05/99.
• `Park Honan's very readable 'Shakespeare's Life' has the latest facts on the Bard's life.'
  Plays and Players Applause, Dec 98-Jan 99
• `his biography of Shakespeare is clearly the product of a lifelong engagement with his works and of a thorough study of the documentary evidence and the life of the time ... others have told the story of Shakespeare's life, but none of them with the fullness of detail, the scholarship, the literary skill and the sheer readability that Honan brings to his task ... this is now the best available life of Shakespeare.'
  Stanley Wells, The Observer, 18/10/98
• `The opening chapters... bring the Stratford of those old days to vivid and pertinent life... Honan's close quarrying of theatrical records yields many suggestive nuggets.'
  Eric Griffiths, TLS 01/09/2000
• `impressive new biography ... Honan's particular flair is for the vivid dramatic reconstruction of small incidents recorded only fleetingly by contemporary documents ... a highly readable book which is more reliable about more aspects of Shakespeare's life and career than any other currently on the market ...'
  Michael Dobson, London Review of Books, 07/01/99
• `Park Honan's Shakespeare: a Life is a sober, searching, coolly-judged narrative, with a strong spirit of place in its evocations of Stratford and London, guarded about the relationship between Stratford's life and works, yet also alert to the mystery at the core of the man. The book eschews sensationalism, even to the point of austerity, but can flare into sudden, oddly moving impassioned passages. It is built to last.'
  English Studies, Vol.81 No.1
• `this fascinating and scholarly book'
  The Lakes Leader, 21/04/99.
• `serious and worthy. Its strength is that it is rooted in the social history of the times ...'
  Ralph Berry, Contemporary Review, May 1999.
• `In this complete, accurate, and up-to-date narrative of Shakespeare's life, Park Honan uses a wealth of fresh information to cast new light on Shakespeare's development as an artist, dramatically changing our perceptions of the actor, poet and playwright.'
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