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The Life of William Shakespeare
A Critical Biography
“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.” “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.” “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.” “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.” “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.”
—Meredith Skura, Rice University
—Edward Pechter, Concordia University
—Lena Cowen Orlin, Executive Director, Shakespeare Association of America, and Professor of English, Georgetown University
—Laurie Maguire, Oxford University
—David Bevington, University of Chicago
Lois Potter (Author)
9781118281529, Wiley
Paperback / softback, published 13 April 2012
512 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.5 cm, 0.635 kg
“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)
Eine faszinierende, breit gefächerte Untersuchung von Shakespeares Leben und Werk. Der Schwerpunkt liegt auf oft vernachlässigten literarischen und historischen Zusammenhängen und darauf, wie andere Autoren, Schauspieler und Weggefährten Shakespeares Schaffen beeinflusst haben.
List of Illustrations vi Preface and Acknowledgments vii List of Abbreviations x The Shakespeare Family Tree xii 1 “Born into the World”: 1564–1571 1 2 “Nemo SibiNascitur”: 1571–1578 21 3 “Hic et Ubique”: 1578–1588 40 4 “This Man’s Art and That Man’s Scope”: 1588–1592 64 5 “Tigers’ Hearts”: 1592–1593 86 6 “The Dangerous Year”: 1593–1594 106 7 “Our Usual Manager of Mirth”: 1594–1595 134 8 “The Strong’st and Surest Way to Get”: Histories, 1595–1596 162 9 “When Love Speaks”: Tragedy and Comedy, 1595–1596 181 10 “You Had a Father; Let Your Son Say So”: 1596–1598 201 11 “Unworthy Scaffold”: 1598–1599 231 12 “These Words Are Not Mine”: 1599–1601 258 13 “Looking Before and After”: 1600–1603 277 14 “This Most Balmy Time”: 1603–1605 300 15 “Past the Size of Dreaming”: 1606–1609 330 16 “Like an Old Tale”: 1609–1611 360 17 “The Second Burden”: 1612–1616 384 18 “In the Mouths of Men”: 1616 and After 414 Bibliography 443 Index 475
Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]
