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Overview
In the last ten years, virtually every previously known fact about Shakespeare has been modified by new research. Park Honan draws on this new information to dramatically alter our perceptions of the actor, poet, and playwright.
Here is virtually all that can be factually known or reasonably speculated about Shakespeare's life. Readers will find a vivid picture of what Shakespeare's childhood might have been like in the small English town of Stratford, which had but a dozen streets in 1560. We meet his father, John Shakespeare, the glovemaker of Henley Street, who rose to the office of High Bailiff and Justice of the Peace before he was beset by financial difficulties. There is a fascinating portrait of London and of the life of an Elizabethan actor (a neophyte Shakespeare may have had to learn as many as a hundred small parts per season). Honan casts new light on 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--illuminating Shakespeare's needs, habits, passions, and concerns. The author shows in fresh detail that Shakespeare was well acquainted with violent crime and murder in daily life. And he also 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.
Park Honan's Shakespeare casts new light on a complex and fascinating life, illuminating Shakespeare's extraordinary development into the greatest dramatist of his or any age.
Synopsis
In the last ten years, virtually every previously known fact about Shakespeare has been modified by new research. Park Honan draws on this new information to dramatically alter our perceptions of the actor, poet, and playwright.
Here is virtually all that can be factually known or reasonably speculated about Shakespeare's life. Readers will find a vivid picture of what Shakespeare's childhood might have been like in the small English town of Stratford, which had but a dozen streets in 1560. We meet his father, John Shakespeare, the glovemaker of Henley Street, who rose to the office of High Bailiff and Justice of the Peace before he was beset by financial difficulties. There is a fascinating portrait of London and of the life of an Elizabethan actor (a neophyte Shakespeare may have had to learn as many as a hundred small parts per season). Honan casts new light on 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—illuminating Shakespeare's needs, habits, passions, and concerns. The author shows in fresh detail that Shakespeare was well acquainted with violent crime and murder in daily life. And he also 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.
Park Honan's Shakespeare casts new light on a complex and fascinating life, illuminating Shakespeare's extraordinary development into the greatest dramatist of his or any age.
Baltimore Sun - Terry Teachout
I take this opportunity to laud a recently published biography that belongs on anybody's short list of indispensable volumes on the inexhaustible subject of the world's greatest playwright. Park Honan, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Leeds, has brought together in the compass of one compact, elegantly written volume everything that is now known about Shakespeare, clearly differentiating between fact and speculation.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
Shakespeare in Love has proven a huge hit with audiences and critics alike, attracting huge crowds across the country and snagging 13 Academy Award nominations. The accolades are well-deserved; it's a terrific movie. But it's not exactly what one might call historically accurate. If seeing the film has piqued your interest in the Bard of Avon, you'll want to read Shakespeare: A Life for the straight scoop.From the Publisher
"If you have never read a book about William Shakespeare, please read this one....Exceptional....Honan examines virtually all of Shakespeare's work in impressive detail, weaving his staggeringly clear knowledge of establishable historic fact with literary scholarship."--Michael Parkenham, Baltimore Sun
Paul Dean
[Honan] moves at a stately pace through the chronological sequence of events, and is willing to let the record speak for itself....[He] has to bring off some delicate balancing acts....There are some bold moves....All he can give us is his truth about Shakespeare...[a man who expressed] his sense of life's complexities in works of art which, like himself, are both intimate and lonely.—New Criterion
Lois Potter
...[A]n admirable job....comprehensive, up-to-date and agreeably written...a definitive (for the time being) life of Shakespeare.—New York Times Book Review
Leeta Taylor
Park Honan's Shakespeare: A Life is a welcome Baedeker of a biography, a scrupulous blend of family-history research and political context that never forgets the common reader.— ForeWord Magazine
Terry Teachout
I take this opportunity to laud a recently published biography that belongs on anybody's short list of indispensable volumes on the inexhaustible subject of the world's greatest playwright. Park Honan, an emeritus professor of English at the University of Leeds, has brought together in the compass of one compact, elegantly written volume everything that is now known about Shakespeare, clearly differentiating between fact and speculation.— Baltimore Sun
Robert Taylor
The best available biography....Honan's Shakespeare is good natured, sociable, and extraordinary by any measure.— Boston Globe
Publishers Weekly
So little evidence of Shakespeare's life exists that biographers have had to resort to sometimes far-fetched guesswork to flesh out a vivid chronicle of his days. Many of them would benefit from the healthy dose of common sense evident in Honan's latest critical study. As a leading biographer of Robert Browning and Jane Austen, Honan brings a sensible eye to the Sisyphean task of sifting through what is now called the "Shakespeare Industry." Synthesizing documentary material on Renaissance England with the latest scholarship--be it Helen Vendler on the sonnets or Leeds Barroll on politics and plague in Elizabethan London--Honan attempts to link, perhaps a little too closely, the Bard's life experiences with his literary representations. In an examination of Shakespeare's schooling, Honan refutes the oft-cited remark that he had "small Latin and less Greek" and finds analogies to his student years in such plays as The Merry Wives of Windsor and Hamlet. Honan vibrantly depicts Renaissance urban life, where "the theatre [was] a quick-paced, disenchanting funfair; with jigs, dancing, dumb-shows and clowns' acts interlaced with drama." Despite his insistence on historical context, however, Honan reserves most of his critical energies for the poet's high tragedies. In Hamlet, "pathos arises from his hero's idealization of a prior normalcy"; Othello contains a "flawless structure of feeling"; and Antony and Cleopatra investigates "non-literal truth, in myth, fable, and implicit connections between historical epochs." Studies of Shakespeare frequently reflect hotly contested trends in literary criticism; this biography's value, by contrast, lies in its responsibly researched, unflinching look at what is indisputably the artist's real achievement: "Far from soothing an audience," Honan writes, "Shakespeare depicts human nature in ways that are at once truthful and deeply troubling."KLIATT
Students (and sometimes teachers) who believe that not much is known about the life of William Shakespeare should be directed to Park Honan's impressive work. Readers will realize that, as Honan writes in his introduction, "new material about Shakespeare, his town, his parents, his schooling, his friendships, or his career comes to light continually." This is quite an exciting reality. Honan's work, therefore, is not the definitive biography of Shakespeare, but rather an attempt "to supply a dispassionate, up-to-date report on the available facts." One must assume that others will expand on this work as new research warrants. In its 18 chapters, this work literally discusses Shakespeare's life from "Birth" (Ch. 1) to death in "A Gentleman's Choices" (Ch. 18). Honan effectively uses a narrative style that will be accessible to the majority while including details and insights that will be satisfying to the scholar. Shakespeare's works are examined in terms of the sources that Shakespeare might have used in writing them as well as events in his life that might have influenced his work. Many myths are dispelled by facts. Where needed facts have yet to be uncovered, mysteries remain. One fact, which I thought was undisputed, concerns the date of Shakespeare's birth, widely regarded as April 23, 1564. However, Honan finds no convincing proof and contends that it just as easily could be April 21 or April 22. One myth that is rather convincingly dispelled is that the sonnets were written with a particular Young Man or Dark Lady in mind. Another interesting possibility is presented in a listing of Shakespeare's plays made in 1603 that includes Love's Labour Won as well as Love's Labour Lost.Honan cannot conclude whether the former is a missing work or an alternative title for an existing work such as Taming of the Shrew. Readers will finish this book with the feeling that they have come closer to a knowledge of Shakespeare as a man, a citizen, an actor, and a writer. Honan presents the portrait of a kind and humble individual whose extraordinary talent continues to fascinate generations. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students, and adults. 1999, Oxford Univ. Press, 479p, 22cm, 98-22114, $17.95. Ages 17 to adult. Reviewer: Anthony J. Pucci; English Dept. Chair., Notre Dame H.S., Elmira, NY, November 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 6)Library Journal
Honan (English, emeritus, University of Leeds), author of biographies of Jane Austen, Matthew Arnold, and Robert Browning, aims to create the most up-to-date and accurate narrative of the Bard's life yet penned. Dismissive of other writers who, in his view, have imagined moments and motives in Shakespeare's life, he tries to rely on documentary and contextualized fact. The result is a blow-by-blow account of Shakespeare's life from birth to death, with some attention paid to the historical, political, and social world Shakespeare inhabited. Extensive notes and a study of the biographical writings on Shakespeare to date conclude the work. At times this biography is overwritten for its target audience, the general public, and it can be slow reading. -- Neal Wyatt, Chesterfield County Public Library, VirginiaLois Potter
...[A]n admirable job....comprehensive, up-to-date and agreeably written...a definitive (for the time being) life of Shakespeare.— The New York Times Book Review
Paul Dean
[Honan] moves at a stately pace through the chronological sequence of events, and is willing to let the record speak for itself....[He] has to bring off some delicate balancing acts....There are some bold moves....All he can give us is his truth about Shakespeare...[a man who expressed] his sense of life's complexities in works of art which, like himself, are both intimate and lonely.— The New Criterion
Matt Wolf
...[T]he book's real dramatic juice resides in talk of the plays....[P]erhaps inevitably, the direct links between writer and work are what fascinate most....For all its scrupulous scholarship, this book leaves no doubt that the quest for the genius at its heart will go on.— The New York Times
Norman A. Anderson
...[S]killfully interweaves the little-known facts of Shakespeare's life and many incidental historical details with the most accurate knowledge we have of the writing and performance of the plays. His inferences and suppositions...are carefully reasoned and deeply documented.— The Christian Science Monitor
Times Literary Supplement
The year before Shakespeare was born, the Stratford council whitewashed over the frescos of Doom in the chapel belonging to the Guild of the Holy Cross. The Guild was a religious mutual society, part of the welfare system grandly dismantled under Henry VIII and his successors; its members (who included not only the dead but also women) tended the sick, aided the poor, prayed for the repose of departed souls, ran a school and the town itself until they were demutualized in 1547. A decade and a half later, the reformed authorities nerved themselves to that erasure of past imagery so dear to fragile, new regimes. Shakespeare never saw this superseded apocalypse, but you can discern in his writing, as Baudelaire glimpsed in the eyes of Delacroix's eastern potentates, a nostalgia for something he had never known. For example, in the halted tune which evokes abolished chantries at the end of "The Phoenix and the Turtle" - "For these dead birds sigh a prayer" - or when he places, with exceptional deftness and weight, the scare-word "indulgence" in Prospero's mouth just as it closes: "Let your indulgence set me free".From which it does not follow that Shakespeare was a Catholic. We have no evidence of his views; Eliot was right to ask "did Shakespeare think anything at all?" and half-reply "he was occupied with turning human actions into poetry". Views are, anyway, less important to the workings of the imagination than those who have little in their heads but views are wont to imagine. The Tudor unsettlements and resettlements of Church and State tell on and in Shakespeare's plays and their first audiences at levels other than that of formulated doctrine - in sore alertness such as Hamlet's about "all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past", in a simultaneous hankering for and fear of big words, in wisecracks and a taste for kitsch.
Kirkus Reviews
A meticulously researched, lucidly presented, but oddly undramatic life of English literature's elusive icon. Bardolaters hoping for more speculation about the Dark Lady's identity or adventurous hypotheses of the "missing years" before London will get a refreshing cold shower from this up-to-date, strictly factual life. Veteran British biographer Honan (professor emeritus of English at the University of Leeds; Jane Austen) pitches in with Shakespearean studies' slow work to overturn the romantic tide of mythologizing, garbled oral tradition, and basic errors surrounding the poet ever since Aubrey's gossipy anecdotography in his Restoration-era Brief Lives.With the current accumulation of unearthed Elizabethan documents, Honan's work has a solid footing in the era. Mapping out Shakespeare's post-Reformation Stratford, the author analyzes both his father's business and civic affairs, his family's ties to recusant Midlands Catholics, and his mother's and wife's personalities-at least as far as can be inferred from official documents such as wills. Honan also goes into detail about a grammar school education (and how it would have formed the basis of Shakespeare's tutelage) before he suggests that Will left to become something like a teacher-cum-actor in Lancashire (if "William Shakeshafte," in the employ of Alexander de Hoghton, is indeed the Bard). Picking up his trail in London, Honan's treatment of Shakespeare's career in the tumultuous Elizabethan theater is grounded in documentary evidence wherever possible, with suppositions about Shakespeare's attitudes to his fellow actors and contemporary tastes (such as for child actors) always carefully qualified. By the end,although Honan is impartial about the dogmatic conflicts of Shakespeare's times, he does not approach the final question of Shakespeare's personal religious convictions-as Aubrey noted, he was accused of having "died a papist." Still, this life objectively scrutinizes the public individual rather than the inner man. Synthesizing current scholarship, Honan is as likely to quote from official documents, from church records and business papers, or from law court testimonies, as from Shakespeare's works for his portrait.