Morne botes biography of william shakespeare

Ackroyd, Peter. Shakespeare: The Biography. New York: Nan A. Talese, 2005.

A biography that is keen to show a close relationship between the life and the works and that Shakespeare’s art was rooted in his life experience, suggesting that we can read what he wrote autobiographically.

Bate, Jonathan. Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare. New York: Random House, 2009.

Explores Shakespeare’s life through the Elizabethan philosophy of the seven ages of man, based on Jacques’s speech in As You Like It, providing historical information about 16th-century life for each of the seven stages.

Bevington, David. Shakespeare and Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.

A useful resource for those interested in the history of Shakespearean biography, which outlines the issues that have been the focus of several biographies of Shakespeare, including politics, religion, and familial relationships.

Duncan-Jones, Katherine. Shakespeare: An Ungentle Life. London: Arden, 2001.

Shows Shakespeare’s life as a playwright who has a shrewd business sense as well as an aptitude for verse, and consequently is the object of envy in late Elizabethan London.

Greenblatt, Stephen. Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: Norton, 2004.

Like Ackroyd 2005, this book is eager to relate Shakespeare’s works to his life and, in particular, his experiences. Greenblatt makes much of the death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet as an inspiration for Hamlet and Shakespeare having witnessed miracle plays as a youth.

Potter, Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: A Critical Biography. Chichester, UK: Wiley, 2012.

DOI: 10.1002/9781118231746

Considers the role that early modern actors and playwrights had in collaborating, revising, or influencing Shakespeare’s works. Potter explores Shakespeare’s life chronologically through a series of his own words and pays particular attention to the construction of memory in Shakespeare’s works and in their afterlives.

Schoenbaum, Samuel. Shakespeare’s Lives. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.

A comprehensive study of the various myths and narratives about Shakespeare’s life, including those now-discredited yet imaginative tales introduced by famous authors

Shapiro, James. 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. London: Faber and Faber, 2006.

Investigates one year of Shakespeare’s life and the events that took place in that year such as the building of the Globe Theatre, Will Kempe leaving his acting company, and writing Henry V and As You Like It as a turning point in Shakespeare’s career.