Shakespeare : his life, work, and era

Including Index

1. Stratford and the Shakespeares
2. Upbringing in Stratford
3. The 'Lost Years'
4. From the Country to the City
5. 'The only Shake-scene in a Country'
6. The Plague and the Poems
7. 'Right Happy and Copious Industry'
8. Art and Politics
9. 'The Arte and Faculty of playinge', 1603-6
10. Three Classical Plays
11. 'A world ransom'd, or one destroy'd,: The Romances, 1608-12
12. 'Let's go off, and bear us like the time': The Last Years

This new biography looks beyond the established facts of Shakespeare's life and traces how the events of his era affected the way he lived, thought and wrote. Shakespeare emerged as a survivor, never completely alienating either his political masters or his audience. Discussion of the plays, poems and sonnets is interwoven with relevant moments in both Shakespeare's life and his age: the financial ruin of his father; his marriage to an older woman; the ravages of the plague on both his family and theatre audiences; the pressure of royal patronage; the Essex rebellion and the final family disgrace just before his death.