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Title: Shakespeare by Michael Wood ISBN: 0-465-09264-0 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.83 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Fascinating, but flawed.
Comment: Wood's biography of Shakespeare has a number of strong points. The images are very good, the writing is lively, and the author spins a very engaging narrative. However, there are also some serious flaws. Wood conjures interesting possibilities and conjectures (the secret Catholicism of Shakespeare's father, the identities of the Dark Lady and the young male subject of the sonnets), which he then proceeds to write about as confirmed facts. I don't fault him for the interesting ideas, but I find his treatment lacking in serious scholarship, a lack compounded by the absence of detailed notes on the sources of his provocative ideas. Good researchers should cite their research sources.
Wood's book is interesting, but misleading. I wouldn't warn anyone away from it, but I would recommend reading a better biography first. Stanley Wells's "Shakespeare: For All Time" or Park Honan's "Shakespeare: A Life" are both fine books. (The former takes a more expansive view, including both biography and theatre history since Shakespeare's time, which is a real plus for anyone interested in how his works have been interpreted in different countries and eras.) Both also treat the "authorship controversy," which is mostly a fringe conspiracy theory quite well. I'd say read one of those first to gain an idea of what responsible scholarship looks like, then read Wood's book with a critical eye.
Rating: 1
Summary: Don't Bother
Comment: This book retreads other (better) scholars' work and the "new" revelations are anywhere from 20 to 60 years old. Most of Wood's interesting material derives from E.A.J. Honigmann's classic "Shakespeare: The Lost Years" (1985, 2nd ed. 1999). Wood's fanciful conjectures about Robert Southwell & Shakespeare come from chapter 18 of Christopher Devlin's 1956 biography of Southwell. I don't have space for his other debts: Save your time and skip reading this one. If you like the pictures (which are good) wait for it to get remaindered (which won't be long). [If you need a good, well-written "popular" biography of Shakespeare get Anthony Burgess--and the Honigmann for supplementary material.] Unfortunately despite Michael Wood's enthusiasm for his subject there is no excuse for slovenly scholarship.
Rating: 5
Summary: shows how a real scholar does it
Comment: Michael Wood presents the information in a calm, rational way, and shows how a real scholar approaches a subject - as opposed to the breathless crackpots who push any number of wacky Shakespeare authorship conspiracies. On the web site for his TV series, Wood notes that there have been more programs on Shakespeare conspiracies than on Shakespeare himself. Sadly true!
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Title:In Search of Shakespeare (2pc) ASIN: B00019JRFY Publisher: Pbs (Direct) Pub. Date: 09 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $39.98 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $34.78 |
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Title: In Search of England: Journeys into the English Past by Michael Wood ISBN: 0520232186 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 06 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: In Search of the Dark Ages by Michael Wood ISBN: 0816047022 Publisher: Facts on File Pub. Date: 01 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Shakespeare: For All Time (Oxford Shakespeare (Hardcover)) by Stanley Wells ISBN: 0195160932 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: The Road to Delphi: Scenes from the History of Oracles by Michael Wood ISBN: 0374526109 Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux Pub. Date: 01 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.00 |
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