What Was Shakespeare Really Like?

How did Shakespeare think and feel? This is an authoritative, provocative reflection on the personality behind the plays and poems.

Stanley Wells (Author), Stephen Fry (Foreword by)

9781009340373, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 September 2023

130 pages
20.5 x 13.6 x 1.3 cm, 0.31 kg

'Inherently interesting, insightful, absorbing, eloquent, thoughtful and thought-provoking, [this book] is an unreservedly recommended pick for personal, professional, community, and college/university library biography collections and supplemental William Shakespeare curriculum studies lists.' James A. Cox, Midwest Book Review

Sir Stanley Wells is one of the world's greatest authorities on William Shakespeare. Here he brings a lifetime of learning and reflection to bear on some of the most tantalising questions about the poet and dramatist that there are. How did he think, feel, and work? What were his relationships like? What did he believe about death? What made him laugh? This freshly thought and immensely engaging study wrestles with fundamental debates concerning Shakespeare's personality and life. The mysteries of how Shakespeare lived, whom and how he loved, how he worked, how he produced some of the greatest and most abidingly popular works in the history of world literature and drama, have fascinated readers for centuries. This concise, crystalline book conjures illuminating insights to reveal Shakespeare as he was. Wells brings the writer and dramatist alive, in all his fascinating humanity, for readers of today.

Foreword Stephen Fry
1. What Manner of Man Was He?
2. How Did Shakespeare Write a Play?
3. What Do the Sonnets Tell Us about Their Author?
4. What Made Shakespeare Laugh?
Epilogue: Eight Decades with Shakespeare.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]