Ungentle Shakespeare: Scenes from his Life

This lively, readable and challenging new biography, by the editor of the acclaimed Arden edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets, takes a fresh look at an enduring cultural icon, about whose life it is widely claimed that nothing is known. As a result Shakespeare has tended to be viewed in Romantic isolation: the Bard as lonely inspired singer enthroned on a mountain peak. The aim of this study is to replace the image of the lonely genius with one of Shakespeare as deeply involved, even enmired, in the geographical, social and literary context of his time. This Shakespeare is a man who lives in a congested city and has to deal with disease, debt and cut-throat competition; his manifest brilliance often makes him the object of envy and malice, rather than adulation. Much of his life and writing is seen as the result of accident and circumstance, rather than the product of artistic vision or a grand career plan. From his shotgun wedding at the age of 18 to the burning down of the Globe Theatre over 30 years later, he is beset by bad luck. His most brilliant works are seen as creative responses to external constraints, such as the plague outbreaks that frequently closed the public theatres during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Katherine Duncan-Jones also takes a fresh look at the tradition of Shakespeare's love for a 'Dark Lady' and concludes rather that he devoted his most personal and passionate writing to the service of young men.

Katherine Duncan-Jones has published over forty articles on Elizabethan and Jacobean literature. Her biography Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet appeared in 1991, and her edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets was published by Arden in 1997. She is a Tutorial Fellow in English at Somerville College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

"Good friend, for Jesu's sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here.

Blessed be the man who spares these stones

And cursed be he that moves my bones."

The words carved on Shakespeare's gravestone in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, seem to repel attempts to disinter or reanimate him. The claim that virtually nothing is known about his life has been used to support a Romantic view of Shakespeare as free-standing genius in lofty isolation from the mundane doings of the Renaissance world. In fact, as this compelling and challenging study confirms, a substantial body of records bears witness to material aspects of the dramatist's life from baptism to burial and with much in between. There are also many contemporary allusions both to Shakespeare as player and poet and to his writings.

Yet this material casts little immediate light on the more personal questions asked by today's readers. Katherine Duncan-Jones has set out to write a different kind of life of Shakespeare, both by exploring areas that other biographers have neglected, and by looking afresh at many familiar documents and episodes. She sheds new light on such matters as the ill-fated grant of a coat of arms to Shakespeare, and the much debated Will, with its bequest to his wife of his "second-best bed."

She shows the dramatist as a man among men and a writer among writers. This Shakespeare lives in a congested city, where he encounters disease, debt, and cut-throat competition. His brilliance often makes him the object of envy and malice rather than adulation. He is a shrewd purchaser of property in his home town, but unlike other local worthies, or his actor-contemporary Edward Alleyn, shows no inclination to divert any of his wealth towards charitable, neighborly, or altruistic ends. He appears to be more interested in relationships with well-born young men than with women.

Rather than chronicling each recorded event, play, or poem, Duncan-Jones identifies topics and issues associated with particular phases of Shakespeare's life, weaving them into a complex narrative which brilliantly carries the reader through the complexities of life in late Elizabethan and early Jacobean England. A key element throughout is her analysis of Shakespeare's dealings with fellow writers with whom he both collaborated and competed.

If Duncan-Jones's portrait is of a not-so-sweet Master Shakespeare, she is nevertheless alive to his inexhaustible capacity to please and astonish. She combines original and unusual critical insights with deep knowledge of the period and imaginative human understanding to create an engaging and witty study which gives a vivid sense of the tough, competitive life of an actor and playwright in Shakespeare's England.

"This is a work of extensive scholarship and even wider reading, and Katherine Duncan-Jones's knowledge of late 16th century writers is probably greater than that possessed by anyone at the time . . . Ungentle Shakespeare is a model of lucid scholarship which tries neither to beautify nor vilify its subject, but to present him as a living figure in the heat and the dust of the passing world."—Peter Ackroyd, The Times of London

"An uncommonly good book. There are riches on every page."—The Spectator

"Katherine Duncan-Jones's constantly illuminating and hugely enjoyable biography restores the author and his plays to bubbly life."—The Observer

"Ungentle Shakespeare strikes me as a brilliant book. It is also a fresh and original one . . . All told, I can recommend Ungentle Shakespeare both to those who think they know their Bard and to those still virgin in the matter."—Literary Review

"Ungentle Shakespeare is beautifully produced and lavishly illustrated. Its author's scholarly credentials are impeccable. At the same time, she tells a good story."—The Independent

"Ungentle Shakespeare takes us on vivid biographical sojourns into the plays and poems."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Duncan-Jones is very good at bringing to life - and exploring the historical context - of a figure whose life is notoriously difficult to document because so many facts are missing."—The Stage

London Times - Peter Ackroyd

This is a work of extensive scholarship and even wider reading, and Katherine Duncan-Jones s knowledge of late 16th-century writers is probably greater than that possessed by anyone at the time. As a result she is able to put Shakespeare in a wholly fresh context where he is seen in competition with the wits of the age. He was part of the living fabric of his time aligning himself with Essex, arguing with Jonson, writing private satire under the guise of public entertainment. The book is also full of suggestive detail such as the death by drowning of Katherine Hamlett, in the Avon just outside Stratford, thus prefiguring Ophelia in more than circumstance. Ungentle Shakespeare is a model of lucid scholarship which tries neither to beatify nor vilify its subject, but to present him as a living figure in the heat and the dust of the passing world.